Opinion ID: 1036834
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Murder of Christopher Drabik

Text: After his own arrest on drug charges in April 2003, Christopher Drabik agreed to cooperate with Albany police in making controlled drug purchases from identified traffickers, including an individual known to Drabik by the street name, “Murder.” Police subsequently identified “Murder” as petitioner Michael Hoffler who, based on a license he produced in the course of a traffic stop, also used the name “Ernest Hoffler.” On May 1, 2003, and again on May 6, 2003, Drabik made controlled purchases of cocaine from Hoffler. Police recorded the men’s initial telephone conversation leading to these transactions, and they videotaped their face-to-face drug transactions. On May 14, 2003, in the course of a third controlled drug purchase by a different cooperator, police arrested Hoffler. At Hoffler’s July 1, 2003 arraignment—at which he was released on bail—the prosecution revealed the dates, times, and locations of the charged drug sales. Subsequently, the prosecutor provided defense counsel with police reports detailing the transactions, and at a November 2003 pretrial hearing, a police detective testified as to the surrounding circumstances. On none of these occasions did authorities identify Drabik as an informant or explicitly reveal that he would be called as a prosecution witness at the trial scheduled to begin on January 5, 2004. Nor were Hoffler’s recorded conversation and videotaped meetings with Drabik provided to defense counsel before Drabik’s murder. 5 The week prior to trial, on December 30, 2003, Drabik was found shot dead in front of 478 Sixth Avenue in Troy, New York. Even without Drabik’s testimony, a jury found Hoffler guilty on the pending drug charges, and the trial court sentenced him to an aggregate prison term of 17 to 34 years. See People v. Hoffler, 41 A.D.3d 891, 892, 837 N.Y.S.2d 750, 752 (3d Dep’t 2007). B. Hoffler’s Initial Conviction for Drabik’s Murder On March 19, 2004, a grand jury indicted Hoffler on homicide charges stemming from the Drabik murder. On May 19, 2005, the trial jury found Hoffler guilty of the most serious charge, first-degree witness-elimination murder, see N.Y. Penal Law §§ 20.00, 125.27(1)(a)(v), for which crime the court sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole. The prosecution theory at trial, which it supported largely through circumstantial evidence, was that Hoffler murdered Drabik—with the assistance of Albany confederate Lance Booker and Brooklyn gunman Gregory Heckstall—by luring Drabik to 478 Sixth Avenue in Troy, New York where, early on the morning of December 30, 2003, Heckstall shot Drabik dead.1 To facilitate our discussion of Hoffler’s sufficiency claim, we summarize some of the pertinent evidence. 1 Booker and Heckstall were tried separately and apart from Hoffler, with each convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy in the second degree. See People v. Booker, 53 A.D.3d 697, 698, 862 N.Y.S.2d 139, 140 (3d Dep’t 2008) (affirming conviction); People v. Heckstall, 45 A.D.3d 907, 908, 845 N.Y.S.2d 488, 489 (3d Dep’t 2007) (same). 6 Several witnesses placed Hoffler and an armed Heckstall together in Albany during the last week of December 2003. One such witness, who stated that Hoffler introduced Heckstall to her as his “cousin,”2 reported seeing the two men on December 28, 2003, parked near her house in a gray SUV. That same day, an individual who identified himself as “Ernest Hoffler” had rented a gray Ford Escape SUV from Budget in Albany. Another woman testified that she too had met Heckstall and Hoffler sometime during the last week in December when the two men were sitting with her neighbor, Booker, in a dark-colored SUV parked on her street. Heckstall spent the night with the woman and, when he undressed, she saw that he was carrying a firearm, which he indicated to her was loaded. Early the next morning, Hoffler arrived at the woman’s home and spoke quietly with Heckstall, after which Heckstall quickly dressed, collected his gun, and left with Hoffler. Telephone records showed that at 7:48 p.m. on December 29, 2003, a call was placed to Drabik’s cell phone from a cell phone registered to Hoffler’s residence and used by him on a regular basis. While it is not clear that this particular call connected, Drabik’s parents recalled overhearing their son speaking on his cell phone sometime between 7:45 and 8:00 p.m. on December 29 to someone whom he agreed to meet the following day to discuss a possible construction job. 2 Other evidence showed that the two men had been neighbors in Brooklyn some years earlier. 7 Telephone records showed that over the next several hours and into the early morning of December 30, there were frequent calls between Hoffler’s cell phone and a phone number assigned to the residence of Pamela White, Booker’s then girlfriend. In the early morning on December 30, Hoffler arrived at White’s residence and waited while Booker dressed, after which the men left in a dark-colored SUV. At about this same time, Drabik received a 6:09 a.m. call on his cell phone from an unidentified incoming number. His mother overheard Drabik agree to meet the caller in 20 minutes at 478 Sixth Avenue in Troy, New York, an address he wrote down on a piece of paper received into evidence at trial. A subsequent forensic examination of computers seized from Hoffler’s home would show that, on the night of December 29, 2003, one computer accessed an online real estate listing for 478 Sixth Avenue in Troy. At 6:37, 6:45, and 6:54 a.m. on December 30, Drabik called a number assigned to a “Trac Fone”—a prepaid phone with no named subscriber—that had been activated only the day before. Soon thereafter, at approximately 7:00 a.m., Drabik was fatally shot once in the chest in front of 478 Sixth Avenue in Troy, which is near the intersection of 112th Street and Sixth Avenue. Andrew Bridgers testified that early on the morning of December 30, while delivering newspapers in Troy, he was slowing his car to a stop on Sixth Avenue near 112th Street when he spotted two men and heard a gunshot. Bridgers then saw one of the men fall to the ground while the other walked in the direction of Bridgers’ vehicle, affording Bridgers a 8 view of the man’s face. Bridgers testified that the man who fell to the ground was Drabik; the one who walked away was Heckstall.3 Mary Ann Fath, who lived on the corner of 113th Street and Sixth Avenue, a short distance from the murder scene, testified that, early on the same morning, through the window of her home, she saw an unfamiliar tan or “taupey”-colored SUV parked on 113th 3 Because no hearsay objection was raised as to how Bridgers learned Heckstall’s name, we view this evidence, like the rest of the record, in the light most favorable to the prosecution in assessing a sufficiency challenge. Booker’s role in the Drabik murder was less clearly established at Hoffler’s trial than at his own. As summarized by the Appellate Division in affirming Booker’s conviction, [I]n early December 2003, Hoffler showed [Booker Drabik’s] driver’s license, drove [Booker] to [Drabik’s] house to show him where [Drabik] lived, and offered to pay [Booker] to kill [Drabik]. . . . When [Booker] failed to commit the crime, Hoffler enlisted Heckstall to kill [Drabik]. The day before the murder, Hoffler, after informing [Booker] that he needed a cellular “TRAC phone” to call [Drabik] without calls being traced back to him, was provided one by [Booker]. The evidence revealed that the TRAC phone was used to call [Drabik] and lure him to the site of the murder. . . . Later that evening, [Booker] received a phone call from Hoffler, who informed him that he had found a location to which he could lure [Drabik]. Between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. the following morning, [Booker] received two telephone calls from Hoffler, who, accompanied by Heckstall, picked him up shortly thereafter in a rental car. . . . Hoffler, Heckstall and [Booker] then drove to [478 Sixth Avenue]. [Booker] recounted that, shortly after Heckstall got out of the car, he heard a gunshot and Heckstall ran back to the car and got in. Hoffler immediately asked Heckstall if [Drabik] was dead and, after Heckstall responded that he had shot [Drabik] in the chest, Hoffler complained that Heckstall had not shot the victim in the head. People v. Booker, 53 A.D.3d at 702–03, 862 N.Y.S.2d at 143–44. To the extent this evidence was not received at Hoffler’s trial, however, it plays no role in our resolution of this appeal. 9 Street with its headlights on. Soon after, she saw someone enter the SUV from a passenger side door, whereupon the vehicle pulled away. Telephone records showed that between 7:19 and 7:45 on the morning of December 30, six telephone calls were placed between Hoffler’s cell phone and a landline registered to his residence. Approximately three hours later, at 10:58 a.m., a New York City police officer wrote a ticket for a vehicle illegally parked in Brooklyn: the gray SUV rented from Budget under the name “Ernest Hoffler.” Later that same day, the vehicle was back in Albany, where it was returned to Budget at 6:17 p.m., having been driven a total of 640 miles during “Ernest Hoffler’s” three-day rental. On December 30, Budget debited $432.11 from Michael Hoffler’s bank account to cover the cost of the rental, and subsequent forensic analysis would locate Hoffler’s DNA in the rented SUV. Meanwhile, when Heckstall arrived at his sister-in-law’s Brooklyn home between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m. on December 30, he had several hundred dollars in cash. C. Post-Conviction State Court Proceedings
In challenging his murder conviction on direct appeal, Hoffler argued that the trial evidence was insufficient to support his conviction and that the venire panel had not been sworn in accordance with New York law. As to the latter point, New York law requires that two oaths be administered during the jury selection process. The first, administered to the venire panel before voir dire, is 10 intended to ensure that prospective jurors provide truthful answers to questions about their qualifications to serve. See N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 270.15(1)(a) (providing that venire panel “shall be immediately sworn to answer truthfully questions asked them relative to their qualifications to serve as jurors in the action”). The second oath, administered to persons selected to serve as trial jurors, is intended to ensure that these jurors will be impartial and that they will return a verdict based on the law and the evidence. See id. § 270.15(2) (stating that selected jurors “must be immediately sworn . . . to try the action in a just and impartial manner, to the best of their judgment, and to render a verdict according to the law and the evidence”). In Hoffler’s case, the venire panel was mistakenly sworn in accordance with § 270.15(2), i.e. the trial oath, rather than § 270.15(1)(a), i.e. the voir dire oath. Thereafter, the trial jurors were again sworn in accordance with § 270.15(2). The Appellate Division concluded that the failure to administer the § 270.15(1)(a) oath to the venire panel was a fundamental error that “invalidated the entire trial,” requiring reversal of Hoffler’s conviction without regard to prejudice. People v. Hoffler, 53 A.D.3d at 124, 860 N.Y.S.2d at 272. In remanding the case for a new trial, the appeals court did not address Hoffler’s sufficiency claim. See id.
On remand, Hoffler moved the trial court to dismiss the indictment against him, arguing that, in the absence of an appellate determination that the evidence at the first trial 11 was sufficient to support conviction, he could not be retried without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause. The trial court denied the motion, concluding that the Appellate Division was not obliged by either state or federal law to review the sufficiency of the evidence in ordering retrial based on a trial error that did not implicate guilt or innocence. The trial court also declined to conduct its own assessment of sufficiency in the absence of any authority for it to do so on remand where the Appellate Division had not. The trial court nevertheless observed that it had already rejected Hoffler’s sufficiency challenge when raised prior to the entry of the now reversed judgment of conviction. Hoffler next attempted to prevent his retrial by pursuing his double jeopardy/sufficiency challenge in an Article 78 petition to the Third Department. See N.Y. C.P.L.R. 7801 et seq.4 In denying relief, the Appellate Division concluded that, as a result of the failure to administer the proper oath to the jury, Hoffler was never placed in jeopardy at the Drabik murder trial. See Hoffler v. Jacon, 72 A.D.3d at 1185, 897 N.Y.S.2d at 757–58. The court explained its conclusion as follows: [U]nder New York’s statutory double jeopardy scheme, a person is considered to have been “prosecuted” on an offense after the action proceeds to trial and the jury has been impaneled and sworn ([N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 40.30(1)(b)]). Thus, in a trial on an indictment, the constitutional protection against double jeopardy is not implicated—and jeopardy does not attach—in the absence of a duly impaneled and sworn jury. . . . [B]ecause it has been 4 “In an Article 78 proceeding, New York state courts are empowered to issue common law writs of certiorari to review, mandamus, and prohibition.” New York State Nat’l Org. for Women v. Pataki, 261 F.3d 156, 168 (2d Cir.2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). 12 established [in this case] that the jury was never properly sworn pursuant to [N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law §] 270.15(1)(a) and that such failure “invalidated the entire trial,” the trial was a nullity and petitioner was never “prosecuted” under the indictment. Id. at 1184–85, 897 N.Y.S.2d at 757–58 (citations omitted). In these circumstances, the state court concluded that it was not required to address Hoffler’s sufficiency claim on direct appeal before ordering his retrial. See id. at 1185–86, 897 N.Y.S.2d at 758. The New York Court of Appeals denied both Hoffler’s application for leave to appeal, see Hoffler v. Jacon, 15 N.Y.3d 768, 906 N.Y.S.2d 812 (2010), and his subsequent motion for reconsideration, see Hoffler v. Jacon, 15 N.Y.3d 872, 912 N.Y.S.2d 561 (2010). D. Federal Habeas Petition On April 11, 2011, Hoffler petitioned the district court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied the petition on November 17, 2011, observing that, in light of the Appellate Division’s identification of an error that “invalidated the entire trial, it is patent that petitioner was never placed in jeopardy at his original trial,” eliminating any double jeopardy concern with respect to retrial. Hoffler v. Bezio, 831 F. Supp. 2d at 579 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Even if Hoffler had been placed in jeopardy at the Drabik murder trial, however, the district court identified a “sound reason” for the Appellate Division not to reach his sufficiency challenge. See id. at 578 n.6 (internal quotation marks omitted) (construing United States v. Bruno, 661 F.3d 733, 743 (2d Cir. 2011), to permit court ordering retrial not to consider sufficiency of the evidence where sound reason warranted). “Since the Appellate 13 Division determined that no trier of fact could properly consider the evidence offered at Hoffler’s trial, any discussion regarding the evidence presented to that improperly empaneled body may well have been viewed by that court to be advisory in nature,” and it is “well-settled that the giving of [advisory] opinions is not the exercise of the judicial function of New York appellate courts.” Id. at 577 (alteration and emphasis in original; internal quotation marks omitted). In any event, the district court concluded that any error in the Appellate Division’s failure to rule on Hoffler’s sufficiency challenge before ordering retrial was necessarily harmless because the record evidence was sufficient to establish the elements of first-degree witness-elimination murder. See id. at 578 n.7. This timely appeal followed.