Court Opinion

ID: 9471511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:34:30.65321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:26.884225
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Apart from the question as to whether Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981), should be applied retroactively, I am convinced that admission of defendant’s statements constituted harmless error under Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). I therefore dissent.
Defendant’s contention at trial was that he shot his wife accidentally while unloading his gun. One need not even consider the contested statements to recognize the implausibility of defendant’s story. Less than a half hour before his wife’s death, defendant purchased the weapon and ammunition with which she was killed, and made a remark which may have been taken to indicate he was thinking about killing someone. He claimed to have loaded the gun in his car when he arrived home. Before shooting his wife, defendant fired a shot through the floorboard of his car. The state argued that the shot in the car was a “test shot”; defendant maintained that the first shot occurred accidentally, while he was loading the gun. To believe defendant’s story therefore requires that one believe that, within a short time after purchasing a gun, defendant accidentally fired the gun twice; it further requires that one believe that defendant, shortly after accidentally discharging the gun while loading it, nevertheless unloaded the gun while pointing it at his wife’s heart from a distance of four feet. Given this remarkable defense theory, admission of the contested statements here was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Furthermore, the procedural posture of this ease seems to support the conclusion that any error here was harmless. Because defendant testified, the district court found that the contested statements would have been admissible for impeachment purposes even if obtained unconstitutionally; defendant did not dispute that conclusion. Despite this conclusion, the district court issued the writ of habeas corpus, noting that the statements, while admissible for impeachment, were not admissible for the truth of the matter asserted. That distinction, however, is of no significance m this case. The contested statements here were intended to be exculpatory: if either had been believed, or if they created a reasonable doubt, defendant could not have been convicted of intentionally killing his wife. Because the statements were supposedly exculpatory, their only possible use was for impeachment; any error in admitting them here was harmless, even if Edwards is applicable.
Accordingly, I would reverse the district court’s grant of habeas corpus relief.