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Ninth Circuit:
Evidence of Another Suspect Was Improperly Excluded
Opinion Reverses Denial of Habeas Petition Challenging Murder Conviction
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reversed an order denying a writ of habeas corpus sought by a man who was convicted of a murder that occurred 35 years earlier, holding that it was error to exclude potentially exculpatory evidence that police had another suspect, one who had dinner with the victim on the night of slaying.
The exclusion was contrary to clearly established U.S. Supreme Court case law, Circuit Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson said in reversing an order by Senior District Court Judge John A. Kronstadt of the Central District of California. She declared that defendant Douglas Bradford must be freed within 30 days unless the prosecution gives notice of an intent to retry without excluding the contested evidence.
Senior Circuit Judge Marsha S. Berzon joined in the opinion and Senior District Court Judge John Antoon II of the Middle District of Florida, sitting by designation, dissented.
Rawlinson explained that the analysis of the merits on appeal required evaluating the California Court of Appeal decision affirming the defendant’s conviction as the “last reasoned decision” in the state court proceedings and said:
“Under the compelling facts of this case, we are persuaded that this is one of the rare instances when the state court’s determination that there was no constitutional error in excluding third-party evidence was unreasonable.”
Murder Case
Bradford was convicted in 2014 of the Aug. 30, 1979 murder of Lynne Knight. Knight’s neighbor Richard Rolleri found her lying on her bed in her Torrance apartment with multiple stab wounds and a garrote—a strangulation device made from wire and wooden handles at the ends—underneath her body.
Bradford, an ex-boyfriend of Knight, had been seen by a neighbor outside of Knight’s apartment about a month before the murder. Knight had told friends that he had once ripped the screen door off her home and called her a “slut” after seeing her inside with another man.
On the night of the murder, Knight had dinner with Joseph Giarusso (now deceased), an ex-boyfriend and close friend. Knight had told friends that Giarusso hit her once during a misunderstanding.
The case was reopened after it was discovered that Bradford had been accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend following their breakup in 2009. Police discovered picture-hanging wire at Bradford’s mother’s home that was “of the same class” as the wire used to create the garrote found beneath Knight’s body.
Motion to Exclude
Bradford was prosecuted by Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, who moved to exclude evidence relating to Giarrusso. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis B. Rappe granted the motion.
A jury convicted Bradford of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.
Rawlinson commented that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) standard governs the review and under that standard:
“[A] federal court may only grant habeas corpus relief when the state court’s ruling was (1) ‘contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,’ or was (2) ‘based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.’ ”
Supreme Court Case
The jurist remarked that in the present case, the “clearly established federal law concerns third-party culpability.” She looked to the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Holmes v. South Carolina as providing the guiding principles in such cases.
There, the South Carolina Supreme Court had found no error in the exclusion of third-party culpability evidence where there was strong evidence of the defendant’s guilt.
In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the high court noted that “well-established rules of evidence permit trial judges to exclude evidence if its probative value is outweighed by certain other factors such as unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or potential to mislead the jury,” adding:
“Such rules are widely accepted and are not challenged here.”
But, in rejecting the South Carolina standard as violative of the federal Constitution, Alito explained that third-party culpability evidence need not be sufficient to sustain a guilty verdict against the third-party in order to be admissible, but need only have the potential—when considered along with all other evidence—to raise a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant.
Court of Appeal
Turning to the Court of Appeal opinion, authored by Justice Brian M. Hoffstadt of this district’s Div. Two, affirming the conviction and finding no error in the exclusion of the Giarrusso evidence, Rawlinson remarked:
“In light of Holmes, the decision of the California Court of Appeal was both contrary to and an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law. The court also unreasonably determined the facts.”
Rawlinson pointed out that Hoffstadt did not analyze the exclusion of the Giarrusso evidence through the lens of the U.S. Constitution said only that “[b]ecause the exclusion was consistent with the rules of evidence, there was no constitutional violation.”
She also found problematic that, while the appellate court provided reasons for discounting the Giarrusso evidence, it “never weighed its probative value against any ‘risk of harassment, prejudice, or confusion of the issues,’ as is required under Holmes,” adding:
“Rather than allowing the jury to weigh the evidence, the Court of Appeal determined for itself that these facts did not constitute sufficient direct or circumstantial evidence linking Giarrusso to the ‘actual perpetration of the crime.’….This approach adjudged the strength of the evidence against Giarrusso under the wrong standard which, again, is not whether Giarrusso should be found guilty were he on trial, but whether the evidence was probative—that is whether the jury could regard the evidence against Giarrusso, added to the other grounds for reasonable doubt, as a sufficient basis to find Bradford not guilty.”
Rawlinson challenged the acceptance of the trial court’s findings by the appellate court, saying:
“[T]he California Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the trial court properly considered that Giarrusso ‘did not in any way’ match Rolleri’s physical description of the suspect was an unreasonable determination of the facts, and one that affected the California Court of Appeal’s ability to access the relevance and probative value of the Giarrusso evidence. Although Rolleri gave varying descriptions of the person he saw running away from the murder scene, Giarrusso matched one consistent aspect of Rolleri’s initial description of the suspect….dark curly hair.”
Actual Prejudice
The judge found that the exclusion amounted to actual prejudice. She opined:
“In this case, the trial court’s rejection of the proffered third-party culpability evidence…amounted to the total exclusion of any mention during trial of Giarrusso as an alternate suspect, and, despite the relative weakness of the case against Bradford, left Bradford as the only viable suspect.”
She added that Rappe’s error in excluding evidence of another suspect was compounded his allowing Lewin to tell the jury that Knight was alone on the night she was killed.”
“That, contrary to what the jury was told, there was a plausible perpetrator seen at Knight’s home the night of the murder constituted powerful evidence for the defense that the jury never heard,” she wrote.
Antoon’s View
Antoon agreed with the majority that the trial court improperly precluded Bradford from introducing evidence regarding Giarrusso in violation of his constitutional right to present a defense.
However, after a lengthy discussion of the evidence against Bradford presented at trial, Antoon concluded that the error was harmless. He said:
“As the majority notes, the state’s case against Bradford was circumstantial. But this does not mean that the evidence of guilt was unconvincing.”
The case is Bradford v. Paramo, 21-55038.
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