Court Opinion

ID: 9521620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:08:59.641571+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:00.758620
License: Public Domain

BOEHM, J.,
dissenting.
I concurred in the unanimous order of this Court entered June 27, 2003 denying Williams's June 9, 20083 "Motion for Forensic Testing" and his concurrent request for permission to file a successive petition for post-conviction relief. Williams now asks this Court to revisit essentially the same issues under new subsection (k) to Indiana's death penalty statute. Ind.Code § 35-50-2-9(k). PL. 147-2008 effective July 1, 2008. It is an open question whether that statute creates any procedural route to review a sentence of death than is already afforded under Indiana's post-conviction rules. Regardless of the resolution of that issue, I would grant Williams's request for DNA testing and postpone his execution for sufficient time to permit that testing to be performed and, if it shows what Williams claims, for the results to be considered by the post-conviction court.
By all accounts, Williams and Gregory Rouster invaded the home of Mr. and Mrs. Rease and left the pair dead from multiple gunshots.1 I agree with the majority that Williams's current motion presents no evidence that is undiscovered. However, DNA analysis of the blood found on Williams's shorts, if performed, would obviously be undiscovered. Indeed, it does not exist as of this day. Although undiscovered, this Court, in an Order dated June 27, 2003, unanimously concluded that this DNA evidence, even if it showed the blood not to be from Mrs. Rease, would not affect confidence in Williams's death penalty. That conclusion was based on a large body of evidence pointing to Williams as not merely Rouster's accomplice, but as the person who executed Mrs. Rease.
Williams's June 9, 2003 Motion made little reference to the interview of Elliott Streeter conducted by the prosecutor two days after these 1986 killings.2 Our June *103127 Order disposed of Streeter's statement, correctly, by noting that in 1986 it was identified by the prosecutor to the defense before the trial. It therefore was not new or undiscovered evidence. Although Streeter's version is not new, it was not presented to the jury and in my view, it does, in concert with other evidence, establish a reasonable possibility that the blood evidence is indeed significant.
Streeter lived in the neighborhood and knew both Williams and his accomplice Rouster. He told the prosecution several things in his interview that are significant as to whether the jury would recommend the death penalty or the trial judge impose it. Streeter reported hearing the statement from Rouster to his girlfriend immediately following the killings that "I killed [the Reases] ... I killed them." This statement, describing Rouster shooting both victims, was cumulative of a report by another witness at trial who testified to exactly the same words from Rouster. Not all of Streeter's account was cumulative of other evidence, however. He also reported seeing Williams fire two shots at the Reases' furniture, then seeing Williams outside the house when seven more shots were fired from a different sounding gun. The jury did not hear any of this testimony because Streeter was never called at trial.
The blood on Williams's shorts was cited by the prosecution as establishing that Williams was in the room, and close to at least one of the victims, at the time the fatal shots were fired. This in turn was presented as supporting the death penalty for Williams, not just his liability as an accomplice to Rouster's murders or a participant in a felony murder. Based on the other evidence cited by the State and recited in our June 27 Order, we concluded that the blood evidence was not critical to the conclusion that Williams was a direct participant in the killings. The most important evidence placing Williams at the scene of the killings was the testimony of Derrick Bryant, who testified that he hid in the house and heard Williams tell Mrs. Rease "It's your time" immediately before gunshots were fired. I agree that Street-er's testimony is itself procedurally defaulted because Williams did not call Streeter as a witness in 1986. I also agree that Bryant's mental health history was presumably inadmissible. The trial court so ruled and there was no appeal of that issue. However, when Streeter's account is matched up with admitted animosity between Williams and Bryant, I believe it underscores and bolsters Williams's claim that there is a genuine issue as to Williams's direct participation as an executioner of this couple. Evidence that Williams had the victims' blood on his clothing would be powerful in tipping this balance. At the time of trial the best science could offer was to confirm that the blood sample was consistent with that of the victims and of 41% of the population at large. We now have the technology with the potential to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that the blood was or was not from the victims.
This is a death penalty case, and Williams seems to me to have presented a plausible claim that DNA testing would present a reasonable possibility of affecting the decision of a jury to recommend the death penalty. For that reason, and that reason alone, I would permit the test to go forward. The public's confidence in the imposition of the death penalty in every case is extremely important. Although I join the majority in viewing the *1032likely outcome of the exercise with considerable skepticism, I would nevertheless permit the process to unfold. If the test confirms Williams's presence at the scene, the cost to the public in either expense or delay seems minimal in relation to the benefit of confidence in the verdiet. And if Williams is correct that the blood was not from one of the victims, I would find the death penalty sufficiently unreliable that it should be set aside and a new penalty phase ordered.
On all other issues I agree with the majority that Williams has not presented a persuasive claim. Specifically, I would not permit his effort to attack the jury's 1986 recommendation based on the 2008 views of individual jurors as expressed in affidavits he solicited from them. Williams seeks to bolster his contention that the blood evidence is significant with affidavits from jurors that they considered the blood evidence important in assessing the death penalty. Indiana Rule of Evidence 606(b), like its federal evidence counterpart, and like the rules of evidence, common law, or statutes in virtually every state, does not allow individual jurors to offer their accounts of the jury's reasoning to upset the collective finding. See, eg., McDonald v. Pless, 238 U.S. 264, 35 S.Ct. 783, 59 L.Ed. 1300 (1915)(common law); Shillcutt v. Gagnon, 827 F.2d 1155 (7th Cir.1987)(Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b)); Ward v. St. Mary Medical Center of Gary, 658 N.E.2d 893 (Ind.1995) (Indiana law pre Rules of Evidence). This rule, which was long followed at common law before the Rules of Evidence were adopted in Indiana and elsewhere, is grounded in very sound reasons. Jurors should not be subjected to post-lawsuit one-on-one arguments for rehearing by unsuccessful litigants. Both the jurors' privacy and the interests of justice require that once the jury has delivered its collective verdiet, no individual juror can contradiet it. Unilateral entreaties from the losing party will be less than balanced, and are likely to produce a skewed view. This is particularly a concern in efforts to revisit cases long after the trial. Moreover, jury duty is a critical civic responsibility, but onee jury duty is complete, jurors should be permitted to resume their lives unbothered by disgruntled litigants. For all these reasons, I would not accept the juror's affidavits, however well intentioned they may be. To accept them in this case is to invite losing parties to hound future jurors in thousands of others. Accordingly, I agree that the jurors' affidavits should not be considered. I base my dissent solely on my view that the issues Williams presents collectively raise a reasonable objective possibility that DNA evidence could affect a reasonable jury's recommendation of the death penalty.
Finally, I join the majority in expressing frustration at the manner in which this issue is raised. The potential significance of DNA testing has been an issue in this case for at least two years. At the time of the 1997 appeal to this Court from the denial of post-conviction relief, Williams says he concluded that the then current state of technology did not permit DNA analysis that would resolve this issue. In April, 2001, however, Williams sought a federal court order for DNA testing. He did not present the issue to this Court until June 9, 2008, after the Seventh Circuit had denied an appeal from the denial of habeas and after the State had moved to schedule execution. Williams presented his claims of Bryant's instability and more than cursory reference to the Streeter interview for the first time in his July 18, 2008 "Petition for Consideration of New Evidence". That timing certainly lends credence to the State's claim that there is little merit to Williams's contentions and *1033his objective in playing one card at a time is delay, not justice.

. The evidence is recited in this Court's opinion affirming both Rouster's and Williams's convictions on direct appeal, Rouster v. State, 600 N.E.2d 1342 (Ind.1992), and affirming denial of post-conviction relief to Williams, Williams v. State, 706 N.E.2d 149 (Ind.1999).

. Williams filed his Motion on June 9, 2003. He did not initially file a copy of the interview with his Motion, but supplied it on June 20 along with other exhibits to his federal habeas petition when the Court Administrator pointed out that the Motion referred to habeas exhibits that were not available to the court. His Motion noted that Streeter claimed that *1031Williams was outside the house at the time fatal shots were fired, but did not elaborate the significance of the point.