Court Opinion

ID: 9488709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:53:42.72201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:03.708582
License: Public Domain

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Kamathene Adonia Cooper confessed to law enforcement officers on three separate occasions that he had murdered Rheupert W. Stewart in Lake City, South Carolina. After conducting a separate hearing, the state trial court found that Cooper’s confessions had been given voluntarily and were not otherwise constitutionally impaired. Based on those confessions, a jury convicted Cooper, and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court of South Carolina affirmed the judgment.
In his petition for habeas corpus, filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, Cooper argues that his confessions were admitted at his state criminal trial in violation of his right to counsel under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. He contends that police took his *1471confessions without honoring his desire to remain silent or his request for an attorney.
Cooper’s habeas petition was referred to a magistrate judge who reviewed the entire record and concluded that Cooper’s first two confessions were voluntary and not otherwise constitutionally infirm. While finding that Cooper’s third confession had been admitted in violation of his right to counsel under Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981), the magistrate judge held that the state trial court’s erroneous admission of that confession was harmless because the confession was cumulative and the jury would have convicted Cooper solely on his first two valid confessions. Accordingly, the magistrate judge recommended that the district court deny the petition for the writ of habeas corpus.
The district court reviewed the matter de novo and agreed with the magistrate judge, concluding that Cooper’s first two confessions were not constitutionally infirm and that the admission of the third confession in violation of Cooper’s right to counsel was harmless. The district court denied Cooper’s petition, and Cooper appealed. For the reasons that follow, I would affirm the district court’s decision.
I
Rheupert Stewart was found murdered in his home on December 1, 1984. The right rear pocket of his pants had been turned out and pieces of a broken chair were scattered about his body. An autopsy revealed that Stewart had been beaten with a blunt object and stabbed in the head and chest with a knife. The coroner concluded that Stewart had died on November 30, 1984, from a stab wound to his brain.
A few days after Stewart’s body was found, an investigation of a forged check drawn on Stewart’s account led police to Cooper. Cooper had written his driver’s license number on the back of the check. Based on that information, a warrant issued for Cooper’s arrest.
Upon Cooper’s arrest, officers advised him of his Miranda rights. When custody of Cooper was transferred to other officers, they too advised him of his rights. Although Cooper did not invoke his right to counsel, he indicated that he did not wish “to make any comments.”
Cooper was thereafter taken to the Florence County Sheriffs Department and delivered to Agent Vause. Agent Vause read Cooper his rights, yet again, and asked him if he wished to take a polygraph examination. Cooper responded affirmatively.
On the way to Columbia, South Carolina, where Cooper’s polygraph test was to be conducted, the officers stopped in Lake City to drop off an officer. While the car was stopped in Lake City, Cooper saw Philip Grimsley, an officer of the State Alcoholic Beverage Commission, whom Cooper had known for some time. Cooper said, “There goes Phil. I would like to talk to him.”
Cooper informed Grimsley that he had been arrested “for stealing a check and cashing it,” but insisted, “I ain’t killed no man.” Grimsley then asked for and obtained permission from Cooper’s custodial officers to talk to Cooper in private. Before proceeding, Grimsley asked the officers whether Cooper had been advised of his Miranda rights. When informed that he had, Grims-ley returned to the room with Cooper and, nevertheless, read Cooper his rights for a fourth time. Grimsley then asked Cooper if he had anything to say. In response, Cooper indicated only that he had cashed a check in Lake City. According to Grimsley’s account, the following then occurred:
[Cooper] became upset. He was nervous. Tears came into his eyes. I could tell there was something definitely bothering him. I asked him if there was something he needed to say. Something he needed to get off his chest, now was the time to do it.
At this time, he reached over and grabbed my hand and held onto it tightly. And he asked me if I did do it, what would happen to me? What would I get. I looked at him. I asked him, I said you don’t want me to lie to you, do you? If you killed Mr. Stewart and you’re convicted in Court, you could die in the electric chair or you could receive a life sentence. That *1472would strictly be left up to a judge and jury. At this time, he told me, I did it.
Upon hearing Cooper’s admission, Grimsley asked Cooper to be more specific so that he could verify Cooper’s statement. Although Cooper initially expressed reluctance “to go back through it,” he then continued his confession without interruption. Explaining in detail how he had murdered Stewart, Cooper told Grimsley that he had hit Stewart over the head with a chair and stabbed him in the head and chest. Cooper also agreed to make a taped statement in front of other officers.
When the officers in whose custody Cooper was traveling were brought into the room, Agent Vause asked Cooper if he understood his rights as read to him by Officer Grimsley and whether he would talk to the other officers. Cooper responded that he understood his rights and repeated his confession to those officers. Cooper stated that he had visited Stewart’s home to discuss repairs to the house that the Cooper family rented from Stewart. Cooper also indicated that he had asked Stewart for a basketball. As Stewart bent over to pick up the basketball, Cooper took a chair and hit Stewart over the head with it three times. Cooper also admitted taking Stewart’s checkbook and throwing both the checkbook and the knife he had used to kill Stewart behind a Lake City warehouse.
After confessing twice, Cooper gave a third tape-recorded confession, which described Stewart’s murder in yet greater detail. During the course of this third confession, Cooper expressed a desire to have a lawyer present. At the same time, Cooper agreed to continue answering questions without a lawyer.
II
Cooper’s petition for habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 presents us with the question of whether the state trial court’s decision to admit his third confession into evidence at his murder trial unconstitutionally undermined the reliability of his conviction.
The process already afforded Cooper by the State of South Carolina deserves mention. South Carolina authorities have arrested, tried, and convicted Cooper, and that state’s highest court has affirmed his conviction. We must begin, therefore, with a healthy respect for the state courts’ ability to conduct just trials and to ferret out constitutional error, both at the trial and appellate levels. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 515, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1201-02, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982) (“[Habeas corpus jurisdiction] should be exercised in light of the relations existing under our system of government, between the judicial tribunals of the Union and of the States, and in recognition of the fact that the public good requires that those relations be not disturbed by unnecessary conflict between courts equally bound to guard and protect rights secured by the Constitution.”) (quoting Ex parte Royall, 117 U.S. 241, 251, 6 S.Ct. 734, 740, 29 L.Ed. 868 (1886)). This respect not only enables the federal and state judicial systems to function with a spirit of cooperation and harmony but also conserves their scarce resources.
In the context of those principles, there remains a special role conferred upon federal courts by 28 U.S.C. § 2254: to ensure that persons do not remain in custody because of violations of the United States Constitution. But the scope of federal courts’ authority under § 2254 is quite limited. Unless the defendant’s custodial status exists by reason of a violation of the federal constitution, federal courts must yield to the state judicial process. See Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946).
Thus, before granting the writ of habeas corpus to a petitioner whose state custody resulted from a criminal conviction, we must determine whether the petitioner’s trial violated his federal constitutional rights and whether that violation was the cause of his detention (i.e., whether the error was harmful). Recently, in O’Neal v. McAninch, the Supreme Court instructed that for a state trial error to justify issuance of the habeas writ, a federal court must have “grave doubt as to the harmlessness of [the] error.” — U.S. -, -, 115 S.Ct. 992, 994, 130 L.Ed.2d 947 (1995). This case causes me no such doubt.
*1473To the contrary, I am convinced beyond doubt that the jury in this case would have convicted Cooper without his third confession. I reach this conclusion because, absent any objection or defense, Cooper’s two earlier, valid confessions would have accurately presented at trial the position Cooper voluntarily expressed to the police concerning Rheupert Stewart’s murder: “I did it.” In Arizona v. Fulminante, the Supreme Court acknowledged the unique power of confessions:
A confession is like no other evidence. Indeed, “the defendant’s own confession is probably the most probative and damaging evidence that can be admitted against him____ [T]he admissions of a defendant come from the actor himself, the most knowledgeable and unimpeachable source of information about his past conduct. Certainly, confessions have profound impact on the jury, so much so that we may justifiably doubt its ability to put them out of mind even if told to do so.”
499 U.S. 279, 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1257-58, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) (quoting Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 139-40, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 1630, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968) (White, J., dissenting)).
My conclusion that the trial court’s erroneous admission of Cooper’s third confession was harmless is buttressed by indicia confirming the reliability of Cooper’s first two confessions. Cooper initiated the first of his confessions after observing a police officer with whom he had a prior acquaintance. It was Cooper, moreover, who first suggested to the officer that anyone had been killed— Cooper was only being held for forgery. Furthermore, in his first two confessions, Cooper not only described the broken chair and Stewart’s stab wounds without ever having been given any prior information about the murder scene but also revealed the location of Stewart’s stolen checkbook and the knife used to kill Stewart. When that information is coupled with Cooper’s handwriting exemplar, the evidence confirming his driver’s license number on the back of Stewart’s check, the independent description of the murder scene provided by the officers, and the autopsy evidence concerning the cause of Stewart’s death, the conclusion that Cooper murdered Stewart is inescapable. Finally, but by no means least importantly, Cooper never proffered any evidence to rebut either the information he provided in his confessions or any other part of the government’s case.
Nor did the circumstances that rendered Cooper’s third confession inadmissible cast any doubt on the trustworthiness of his earlier two confessions. By all accounts, Cooper’s third confession was not factually coerced or otherwise produced by threats; Cooper gave it freely and calmly. While Cooper’s right to counsel prevents courts from considering his third confession in determining his guilt, that confession nevertheless indicates that the denial of his request for counsel in no way undermined the trustworthiness of his earlier confessions.
The majority were particularly impressed by the facts that Cooper’s third confession was recorded, that its transcription spanned more than 19 pages, and that it revealed details not included in the earlier confessions. But in light of the information provided in Cooper’s first two confessions, the circumstances surrounding those confessions, the corroborating evidence presented at Cooper’s trial, and Cooper’s failure to rebut any of the overwhelming evidence against him, I cannot conclude that the facts relied on by the majority render reversible the trial court’s error in admitting Cooper’s third confession.
Once we set aside the state trial court’s constitutional error as harmless, our task ends and we must yield to the state judicial system that convicted Cooper of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. I would, therefore, affirm the district court’s decision to deny Cooper’s petition.