Federal Habeas Granted for Exculpatory Evidence Error

In 1979, Lynne Knight was murdered in Los Angeles at about 3:00 a.m.  Police investigated the murder, which was by use of a garrote, but could not solve it and Knight’s murder eventually became a “cold case.”

In 2014, however, prosecutors from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office filed a complaint against Douglas Bradford, who was identified by several ex-boyfriends of Ms. Knight as a jealous former boyfriend who was mad that Ms. Knight had other boyfriends.  Such ex-boyfriends described Mr. Bradford as jealous and having called her a “slut.”

Police contacted Mr. Bradford after the murder and he told police that at the time of the murder, he was sailing a boat at the time of the murder.  When asked by a detective to show him the boat, Mr. Bradford refused.  Mr. Bradford had dated Ms. Knight for several months and on the night of the murder, had returned several personal items to Ms. Knight at her home, but left because she had another man there at the house with her.  A neighbor also reported that he saw Mr. Bradford walking on the sidewalk in front of Ms. Knight’s home about a month before her death.  Lastly, 28 years after the death, police found piano wire in the home of Mr. Bradford’s mom, wire that was similar to the wire found in the garrote at the scene of Ms. Knight’s death.

On this thin evidence, the jury convicted Mr. Bradford of first degree murder and he was sentenced to 26 years to life in state prison. 

There was no eyewitness identification, no fingerprints, no DNA evidence, no video surveillance evidence and no confession.

The California Court of Appeal affirmed Bradford’s conviction.  On appeal, the issue was whether the trial court (Judge John A. Kronstadt) abused its discretion in excluding evidence relating to a man named Gerardo Juarez, who fit the description of a man Ms. Knight’s neighbor saw on the evening of the murder, but that the neighbor later recanted.  The court of appeal affirmed the trial court’s exclusion of such evidence under Evidence Code § 352 (judge’s discretion to exclude evidence that would confuse the issues) because it was found not sufficient to constitute third-party exculpatory evidence.  Judge Kronstadt minimized the evidentiary value of Mr. Juarez, commenting that his presence at the murder scene meant, “at most, he had the opportunity to commit the murder and his fitting the description of the man leaving the murder scene was later recanted.

The court of appeal also affirmed the trial court’s exclusion under § 352 of third-party culpability evidence about a man that had dinner with Ms. Knight at her home earlier in the evening of her death and who had previously punched Ms. Knight.  Judge Kronstadt minimized the evidentiary value of this man, saying “at most he had the opportunity to kill the victim, but opportunity is not enough.” 

 

The court of appeal ruled that exclusion of these two items of evidence did not constitute a constitutional violation.

The California Supreme Court then summarily denied Mr. Bradford’s petition for review.

Mr. Bradford then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court, which was denied as well.

Mr. Bradford then appealed this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which reversed and remanded the case in Bradford v. Paramo, remarking “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.”

To understand this ruling as it may apply to one’s own case, one must start with knowing that under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), at 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a federal court may grant habeas corpus relief when the state court’s ruling was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as set forth in Supreme Court cases.

Here, the clearly established federal law concerned third-party culpability evidence.  In Holmes v. South Carolina (2006) 547 U.S. 319, the Supreme Court rejected a South Carolina rule that allowed admissibility of third-party exculpatory evidence to hinge on the strength of the prosecution’s case, rather than the probative value or the potential adverse effects of admitting the defense evidence of third-party guilt. 

Here, the court of appeal did not acknowledge that under Holmes, the application of a state evidentiary rule to exclude defense evidence may violate the federal Constitution. Instead, it misunderstood the constitutional rule, holding that “because the exclusion was consistent with the rules of evidence, there was no constitutional violation.”  Further, the Court of Appeal provided reasons for discounting the evidence of the man who had dinner with Ms. Knight the evening of her death, but never weighed its probative value against any “risk of harassment, prejudice of confusion of the issues” as is required under Holmes.

Deeming the error prejudicial, the court reversed and remanded with instructions to grant the petition for a conditional writ of habeas corpus, ordering Ms. Bradford’s release unless the state of California notifies the district court within thirty days of the issuance of the Ninth Circuit’s mandate that it intends to retry Mr. Bradford without excluding the evidence pertaining to the man who had dinner with Ms. Knight the evening of her death and commences Mr. Bradford’s retrial within seventy days of the Ninth Circuit’s order.