Court Opinion

ID: 9429784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:51.815419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:21.582074
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins,
dissenting.
The State of Florida intends to electrocute the applicant Ernest John Dobbert, Jr. in several hours. Dobbert seeks a stay of his execution pending the orderly disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari. He raises substantial issues concerning the constitutionality of his death sentence and the proper measure of federal deference to state-court factfinding under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). I would grant Dobbert’s application and stay his execution.
I
Dobbert was convicted in 1974 of the first-degree murder of his 9-year-old daughter Kelly. Although the jury recommended a life sentence by a vote of 10-2, the presiding judge, R. Hudson Olliff, overrode the recommendation and imposed the death sentence.
Dobbert’s 13-year-old son, John III, testified at trial that he saw Dobbert kick Kelly in the stomach several times on the night before her death and that, on the subsequent evening, he saw Dobbert choke the girl until she stopped breathing. John III was “the State’s key witness” at trial. Dobbert v. State, 414 So. 2d 518, 519 (Fla. 1982). There was abundant evidence that Dobbert had committed unspeakably brutal acts toward his children, but John Ill’s testimony was the sole evidence that Dobbert had actually and deliberately strangled Kelly to death. “While the evidence presented without his testimony was adequate to convict of second-degree murder, young Dobbert’s testimony supplied the *1232sole basis for finding premeditation. There is no doubt that Dobbert inflicted injuries that caused the death of his daughter, but only through the trial testimony of young Dobbert is there evidence of his intent to cause that death.” Dobbert v. State, 456 So. 2d 424, 431 (1984) (McDonald, J., dissenting in part).
In 1982, eight years after his father had been convicted and sentenced to death, John III recanted his trial testimony. His affidavit, set forth in full as an appendix to this opinion, is direct and to the point: “I did not testify truthfully about the cause of my sister Kelly’s death at the trial. . . . My father did not kill Kelly.” John III stated that, in fact, the “kicking incident” had occurred two weeks before Kelly’s death. With respect to the fatal night, John III now states that he remembers Kelly “sitting in bed eating some soup. She started vomiting, and then choking on her own vomit and food. My father tried to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation, but it didn’t work. Kelly was not killed by my father; she died accidentally, choking on food or vomit.”
Why had John III earlier testified that Dobbert choked Kelly to death? First, at the time of the trial “I was still deathly afraid of my father after all I’d been through and seen, and wanted to be sure he’d be locked up where I’d be safe from him.” Second, in the time leading up to and following the trial, John III was living at a children’s home in Wisconsin where he was undergoing hypnosis and kept “heavily medicated” on Thorazine. Finally, “[although no one ever said it directly,” John III “knew” that the staff at the children’s home “wanted me to testify that my father killed my sister. I looked up to these people and wanted desperately to please them — they were good to me and concerned about me in a way I hadn’t known for years.”
Dobbert has twice argued in state court that his capital conviction and sentence are unconstitutional in light of John Ill’s perjured testimony. The first time, in connection with his request to file a petition for a writ of error comm nobis, the Supreme Court of Florida held that John Ill’s recantation is not “new evidence” and therefore does not deserve judicial attention. Dobbert v. State, 414 So. 2d, at 520. The court argued that, because John III had given a statement to the police after Kelly’s death which contradicted the testimony he later gave at trial, defense counsel could have cross-examined the boy at trial on the inconsistencies between the earlier statement and his testimony. Ibid.
*1233The second time, in connection with a motion to vacate the conviction, Circuit Judge R. Hudson Olliff held that, even in the face of the recantation, there is no “evidence or proof” to support Dobbert’s claim of perjured testimony. State v. Dobbert, No. 73-5068, p. 81 (Fla. 4th Cir. Ct., May 1, 1984), aff’d, 456 So. 2d 424 (1984). Judge Olliff, who had presided over the original trial, reviewed John Ill’s statements to the police, deposition testimony, trial testimony, and subsequent deposition testimony in a civil proceeding. Although John Ill’s initial statements to the police contradicted his subsequent trial testimony, Judge Olliff found that the inconsistencies were easily explained away in light of the boy’s terror of the father. Judge Olliff then reviewed John Ill’s other prerecantation statements and held that they “are all consistent and each corroborates the other.” Thus, he concluded, even in the face of the recantation “it is obvious that the murder conviction was not based solely — or in part — upon perjured testimony. Nor is there any evidence or proof to support [Dobbert’s] allegation of perjury.” State v. Dobbert, No. 73-5068, at 81. Judge Olliff made this conclusion without any discussion or analysis of John Ill’s recantation. The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed, holding that Dobbert’s claim of perjury is “without merit” because “there is no evidence or proof to support present counsel’s allegation of perjury.” 456 So. 2d, at 429.
Dobbert then filed a successive petition for federal habeas relief in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Although there is no question that Dobbert was not abusing the writ on this issue — John Ill’s recantation had come after Dobbert’s first federal petition had been denied — the District Court denied the petition because Judge Olliff had found that “even in light of the 1982 recantation John’s trial testimony was not perjured. Judge Olliff found, instead, that there was 'no evidence or proof to support [petitioner’s] allegation of perjury.’” 593 F. Supp. 1418, 1427 (1984). This finding, the District Court concluded, commands deference under 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). See Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539 (1981). The Eleventh Circuit has now affirmed 2-1. 742 F. 2d 1274 (1984) (Clark, J., dissenting).
II
Recantation testimony is properly viewed with great suspicion. It upsets society’s interest in the finality of convictions, is very *1234often unreliable and given for suspect motives, and most often serves merely to impeach cumulative evidence rather than to undermine confidence in the accuracy of the conviction. For these reasons, a witness’ recantation of trial testimony typically will justify a new trial only where the reviewing judge after analyzing the recantation is satisfied that it is true and that it will “render probable a different verdict.” See, e. g., Brown v. State, 381 So. 2d 690, 692-693 (Fla. 1980).
Dobbert argues that, notwithstanding the strong presumption against recanting testimony, the circumstances of John Ill’s recantation in this capital case raise important constitutional issues that demand sober and measured reflection. First, although federal courts traditionally have held that a conviction supported by perjured testimony is not unconstitutional unless the prosecutor or judge knew or had reason to know that the testimony was perjured, Dobbert argues that this approach is no longer valid after Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (1979). Dobbert correctly notes a split among the Circuits concerning the authority of federal courts to grant habeas relief when “newly available evidence conclusively shows that a vital mistake ha[s] been made.” Grace v. Butterworth, 586 F. 2d 878, 880 (CA1 1978). Compare Grace (such claims are cognizable); United States ex rel. Sostre v. Festa, 513 F. 2d 1313 (CA2) (same), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 841 (1975), with Drake v. Francis, 727 F. 2d 990 (CA11 1984) (such claims are not cognizable because habeas is not concerned with questions of guilt or innocence), rehearing en banc granted, id., at 1003.
Second, Dobbert argues that the federal courts should give attention to formulating proper standards for evaluating the materiality and credibility of recantations. He notes that the need for such consideration is especially great where, as here, the recanted testimony was the sole evidence supporting a conviction of first-degree murder.
Dobbert argues finally that, whatever the usual procedural rules regarding the consideration of a recantation, those rules must bend in the face of the Eighth Amendment. He notes that this Court has repeatedly invalidated procedural rules that ‘“diminish the reliability of the guilt determination’ ” in capital cases, Application for Stay of Execution 16, quoting Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625, 638 (1980), and argues that Eighth Amendment scrutiny should be applied to rules barring postconviction reconsideration of guilt as well as to procedural rules employed at trial.
*1235However we ultimately might resolve these issues after research, argument, and reflection, they certainly are not frivolous. Yet the federal courts are about to let Dobbert go to the electric chair out of misplaced deference to an unexplained, and palpably inexplicable, state-court “factual” finding that there is, in fact, no “evidence or proof” to support his claim of perjury.
A
If Judge Olliff’s “finding” that there is no “evidence” of perjury found fair support in the record, the law would mandate that the federal habeas court defer to that finding. 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d); see Sumner v. Mata, supra. But no fair-minded person could conclude on the basis of the record before us that the “finding” is plausible. It is absurd on its face. Dobbert has offered stark “evidence” of perjury — the recantation affidavit of John III. Rather than analyzing that evidence for its strengths and weaknesses, Judge Olliff reviewed John Ill’s previous statements— statements which John III now recants — and on finding that those statements “are all consistent and each corroborates the other,” proceeded to conclude that notwithstanding the recantation “it is obvious that the murder conviction was not based solely — or in part — upon perjured testimony. Nor is there any evidence or proof to support [the] allegation of perjury.”
This “factual determination” should not stand because it most certainly is not “fairly supported by the record.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(8). Some may choose to argue that Judge Olliff’s “finding” represents an implicit rejection of the materiality and credibility of John Ill’s recantation. Perhaps it does. Cf. LaVallee v. Delle Rose, 410 U. S. 690, 697 (1973) (in the “ordinary case,” federal courts may assume that a state court which did not articulate its reasoning fairly considered the merits of the factual dispute). But Judge Olliff’s asserted reasoning — that earlier statements were consistent with each other, thereby demonstrating the absolute lack of any “proof or evidence” of perjury — is not entitled to deference where the recantation asserts that those statements were untrue. There may well be numerous reasons why John Ill’s recantation should not be entitled to controlling weight, but there is nothing here to suggest that Judge Olliff considered those possible reasons, let alone relied upon them in reaching his conclusion. In the face of a specific recantation of critical testimony, a court must evaluate the recantation itself and explain what it is *1236about that recantation that warrants a conclusion that it is not credible evidence.
That Judge Olliff’s rejection of the recantation was not based on any evaluation of the recantation itself is demonstrated, I believe, by the District Court’s opinion. The court made an urgent effort to demonstrate that Judge Olliff’s finding was related to a consideration and analysis of the recantation itself, noting, for example, that “Judge Olliff reviewed the facts depicted in John’s [earlier testimony] and determined that they were much more detailed than . . . the 1982 recantation. (Olliff’s Order at 63, 67).” 593 F. Supp., at 1427. Nothing in the cited pages supports the District Court’s characterization of Judge Olliff’s analysis; the recantation is not even mentioned in these pages. In fact, nowhere in the order does Judge Olliff compare the earlier testimony with the recantation.
The proper analysis under § 2254(d), I submit, is illustrated by a case cited with approval in Sumner v. Mata itself, see 449 U. S., at 547-548. In Taylor v. Lombard, 606 F. 2d 371 (CA2 1979), cert. denied, 445 U. S. 946 (1980), defense counsel came forward after the state conviction -with an affidavit charging that key testimony had been perjured and that the prosecution nevertheless had knowingly used it. In a post-trial proceeding the state court concluded that there was “no showing” of perjured testimony. 606 F. 2d, at 374. The Second Circuit reviewed the record and concluded that the state court’s finding that “there was no factual basis for the claim of perjury is not fairly supported by the record, and therefore is not entitled to deference.” Id., at 375. The Second Circuit’s requirement of fair support in the record was not, of course, an exercise of judicial fiat — it was required by Congress in 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(8). I cannot comprehend how the federal courts in this capital case can in good conscience avoid that statutory command.
I emphasize again that John Ill’s recantation ultimately may not deserve controlling weight. But such a conclusion cannot rest upon a finding that there is no “evidence or proof” of perjury at all, especially when that clearly erroneous finding is coupled with a complete failure to analyze the recanting evidence itself.*
*1237B
The strong presumption against recantation testimony reflects an uneasy balance between, on the one hand, society’s interest in resolving factual disputes in one proceeding and in according finality to those resolutions, and, on the other, the interests of a convicted individual and society at large in ensuring that only the guilty are punished. However the balance is ultimately struck in the ordinary criminal case, the Eighth Amendment requires that courts — state and federal — strike a special balance in the capital context. “Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. Because of that qualitative difference, there is a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.” Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 305 (1976). See also Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S., at 638 (normal procedural rules must give way in the capital case where they “diminish the reliability of the sentencing determination”). For this reason, the Court historically has taken special care to minimize the risk that death sentences are “imposed out of whim, passion, prejudice, or mis*1238take.” Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104, 118 (1982) (O’Connor, J., concurring).
In the face of a sworn recantation from the only witness who provided testimony supporting Dobbert’s conviction of first-degree murder, are we confident that there has been a reliable factual determination of his guilt, sufficient to warrant public confidence in the outcome as he proceeds to the electric chair? I believe there are compelling reasons to stay Dobbert’s execution while we give this question further thought. First, no federal court addressing Dobbert’s claim has yet even attempted to analyze the appropriate ground rules for considering the materiality and credibility of John Ill’s recantation. As Dobbert has demonstrated, these are open issues that sooner or later will require our attention. Second, the sole reason for this failure has been the federal courts’ mistaken invocation of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d) in relying on Judge Olliff’s “finding” that in the face of the recantation admitting perjury there is no “evidence or proof” of perjury. In the “ordinary case” it may well be appropriate to engage in all manner of tidy assumptions about what Judge Olliff “really” meant to say. Cf. LaVallee v. Delle Rose, 410 U. S. 690 (1973). But this is no ordinary case. I must conclude at this juncture that there is no fair support in the record for the “finding” that there is no “evidence or proof” of perjury where (a) the “finding” is absurd on its face, and (b) the “finding” has been made without any discussion of the merits of the recantation itself. I would submit that what really is going on in this case can be gleaned from Judge Olliff’s introduction to his opinion: “This case has been pending for a longer period of time than this nation was involved in World War II and the Korean War combined.” State v. Dobbert, No. 73-5068, at 2. In the face of such impatience, I believe that any confession by John III to perjured testimony, however strong, would in the end have made not one bit of difference.
III
I continue to adhere to my view that the death penalty is m all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 227 (1976) (Brennan, J., dissenting), and would therefore grant the application in this case. But even if I believed otherwise, I would stay the execution to permit for a fair and rational consideration of Dobbert’s claims.
*1239Only two men know whether Kelly Dobbert was strangled or whether she accidentally choked to death. One of them will die in several hours. The other will live with the consequences of his damning testimony for the rest of his life. Both now swear that the testimony was false. I would have thought that the federal courts would take the time to ensure that John Ill’s recantation truly deserves no weight, or at the very least that it has received principled consideration in the state courts. This is not another mere example of “ordinary” deference to state-court factfinding. It is an outright abdication of our responsibility to minimize the risk that innocent people are put to death.
I dissent.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF BRENNAN, J., DISSENTING
COUNTY OF EAU CLAIRE
STATE OF WISCONSIN
AFFIDAVIT
Ernest John Dobbert, III, being first duly sworn, deposes and says:
1. I am the son of Ernest John Dobbert, Jr., who was convicted and sentenced to death in Jacksonville, Florida in April, 1974, for the murder of my sister, Kelly Ann Dobbert. I testified as a witness against my father at his trial. I did not testify truthfully about the cause of my sister Kelly’s death at the trial.
2. On Sunday, January 31, 1982, I read in the newspaper that my father was to be executed within two days. After learning of my father’s execution date, I called my close personal friend and lawyer, Paul Kelly, and asked him to help me correct my untrue testimony that was responsible for my father being convicted of murdering Kelly.
3. Some of the questions asked of me at trial by Mr. Shorstein, the Assistant State Attorney, are listed below. The answers in the left column are some of the answers given at trial that were false. The true answers are listed on the right under the column designated “Correct Answer.”
Question: “Let me go back to the night before New Year’s Eve. Did he [your father] do anything to Kelly the night before she died?” [T.T. 2113]
Answer at trial: Correct Answer:
“Yes.” “No.”
*1240Question: “What did he do to her?” [T.T. 2113]
Answer at trial: Correct Answer:
“Kicked her.” “Nothing.”
The answers indicating that my father kicked Kelly the night before she died were untrue. My father did kick Kelly in much the way I described, but weeks before she died.
Question: “Did he [your father] do anything to her [Kelly] the night she died?” [T.T. 2113]
Answer at trial: Correct Answer:
“Choked her.” “No.”
All the answers indicating my father choked Kelly the night she died are untrue. He did not choke her that night, nor did he kill her. Her death was accidental.
4. I am making this affidavit because there are statements I made at trial that were untrue, and need correcting. I do not make this affidavit out of any great love for my father. I still have not forgiven him for the abuse that I (and my brother and sisters) suffered at his hands for the four years before Kelly died and I ran away. I have no desire to see him free. He should be in prison for the abuse to his children.
5. I read my testimony at trial again recently. Although it is accurate in parts, there are statements that are clearly false, and parts of the story came out in a way that is very misleading about what happened before Kelly’s death. The story as it came out is just untrue. The trial testimony creates this story: The night before Kelly died, my father kicked her several times in the stomach. The next night, after she ate some soup, he choked her and she stopped moving. I listened to her heart, but couldn’t hear a beat. My father then tried mouth to mouth resuscitation, but it didn’t work.
What happened in reality was that the kicking incident occurred long before the night Kelly died, more like two weeks before she died. The night she died, she was sitting in bed eating some soup. She started vomiting, and then choking on her own vomit and food. My father tried to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation, but it didn’t work. Kelly was not killed by my father; she died accidentally, choking on food or vomit.
6. I’d like to explain a little more about why I think I testified as I did at the trial, and why I’m taking action to correct it now.
*1241At the time of the trial I was thirteen years old. I was still deathly afraid of my father after all I’d been through and seen, and wanted to be sure he’d be locked up where I’d be safe from him. I was undergoing hypnosis in a psychologist’s office in Wisconsin for about a year before the trial. (The therapy ended one month after the trial.) I was hypnotized approximately two times a week for a period of time, and then about once every week thereafter. At each session, I’d be hypnotized and then asked questions about my father and how he abused us. I was later kept heavily medicated on what I was told was Thorazine, from 1972 to 1976, and then on other medication until 1978.
Although no one ever said it directly, I knew that my social worker, Mrs. Lenz, and other people on the staff at the children’s home wanted me to testify that my father killed my sister. I looked up to these people and wanted desperately to please them — they were good to me and concerned about me in a way I hadn’t known for years. Mrs. Lenz, in particular, influenced me. I saw her almost every day for the period before the trial. She developed some emotional difficulties herself, and began to obsess about my father.
When I finally left the institutions in 1978 and came off the medication, I thought about what I had done in testifying that Kelly was murdered when she died accidentally. Although I knew I had done something wrong, I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I wanted to do about it. After awhile, I spoke to Paul Kelly, and asked him to locate and notify my father’s attorneys to see what might be done. I now want to make it known that I did not testify truthfully at my father’s trial, as this affidavit shows. My father did not kill Kelly.
ERNEST JOHN DOBBERT, III

It might be argued that the State Supreme Court’s earlier determination that John Ill’s recantation is not “new evidence,” Dobbert v. State, 414 So. 2d 518, 520 (Fla. 1982), now serves as a procedural bar to federal review. That *1237finding should not preclude the federal courts from considering the merits of Dobbert’s claim. First, the state courts themselves have failed to abide by the finding. Judge Olliff professed to consider the recantation itself and concluded that there was no “evidence or proof” of perjury, and the Supreme Court of Florida affirmed on those grounds.
Second, as Judge Olliff himself found, there were compelling reasons why Dobbert could not effectively have used John Ill’s initially inconsistent statements to the police at trial: The inconsistencies, such as they were, could easily have been explained away; John III might well have broken down under such questioning, thereby further inflaming the jury; and such questioning would almost certainly have led to a “parade of horribles” concerning Dobbert’s abuse of his children.
Finally, I believe it manifest that John Ill’s 1982 recantation is “new” evidence. It seems obvious that it is much more powerful for John III now to state that his father did not kill his sister than it was when the boy first suggested this in 1972. At that time, John III clearly was terrified of his father and was living in a nightmare world, both of which (as Judge Olliff found) probably would have led a jury to discount the inconsistencies as part of the boy’s effort to protect himself. Now that John III is a grown man and is willing to recant his trial testimony — when he has no reason to fear his father and has, we can only hope, recovered from the trauma to which he was subjected — his statements carry much more powerful force. Thus the recantation is not merely duplicative of the earlier statement.