Jimenez v. Stanford

560 F.Supp.3d 761

Rafael JIMENEZ, Petitioner,

v.Tina M. STANFORD, Respondent.

16-cv-8545 (AJN)

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

Signed September 15, 2021

Glenn Andrew Garber, Glenn A. Garber, P.C., Rebecca Freedman, The Exoneration Initiative, New York, NY, for Petitioner.

Matthew B. White, Bronx District Attorney's Office, Bronx, NY, for Respondent.

OPINION & ORDER

ALISON J. NATHAN, District Judge:

Rafael Jimenez, who is no longer incarcerated,¹ brings this petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging his state-court conviction for murder. He principally contends that a witness identified him as the shooter at trial only because a detective falsely told the witness that Jimenez was Dominican, and thus matched the witness's earlier description. The witness recanted nearly twenty years later after he learned that Jimenez was Puerto Rican, not Dominican. The Court found that Jimenez had made a strong enough showing of actual innocence to proceed to the merits of his otherwise time-barred claims, including a freestanding claim of actual innocence. The merits of those claims are now before it.

Statutory text and precedent require the Court to conclude that the limitations on the federal habeas authority under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), 110 Stat. 1214, apply to Jimenez's actual-innocence claim. AEDPA prohibits federal habeas relief for claims decided by a state court on the merits unless the state court's decision rested on an unreasonable determination of fact or law. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). A New York court adjudicated Jimenez's actual-innocence claim on the merits in a state habeas proceeding. Thus, AEDPA limits this Court's review to ensuring that the state court's decision was not unreasonable.

Jimenez's claims cannot succeed under this standard. This Court disagreed with the state court in its assessment of the reliability of Jimenez's new evidence, and thus held that he could proceed on the merits of his claims. But the Court cannot reach the conclusion that the state court acted unreasonably in finding that Jimenez's new evidence, even if credited, did not meet the high bar for a freestanding claim of actual innocence. The Court also cannot say that the state court unreasonably decided the facts or the law in concluding that Jimenez had not established a violation of Brady v. Maryland , 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Because the Court cannot conclude that the state court unreasonably decided Jimenez's habeas claims, AEDPA requires that the Court deny his petition.

I. Background

The factual background of this case is set forth in greater detail in Magistrate Judge Francis's report and recommendation that Jimenez be allowed to pass through the actual-innocence gateway and in this Court's opinion adopting that recommendation. See Jimenez v. Lilley (Jimenez Gateway Opinion) , No. 16-cv-8545 (AJN), 2018 WL 2768644 (S.D.N.Y. June 7, 2018) ; Jimenez v. Lilley (Jimenez Gateway R&R) , No. 16-cv-8545 (AJN) (JCF), 2017 WL 4535946 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 10, 2017). The Court recounts the factual background here only so far as necessary to explain its decision on the petition.

A. The Crime

Around noon on a summer day in 1992, a group of men began harassing Carmen Velazquez as she walked home from a supermarket in the Bronx with her young stepdaughter. Jimenez Gateway R&R , 2017 WL 4535946, at *1. She called her husband, Michael Brana, as soon as she got home. Brana rushed home from work and stood outside of their apartment building keeping watch for the men who harassed her. Velazquez and an acquaintance, Harry Ramos, stood with him. Id.

A group of men arrived not long after. Velazquez and Ramos remember the ensuing moments differently, but they agree that Brana exchanged heated words with one of the five-or-so men in the group. Id. at *2. They agree the man spoke in Spanish with a Dominican accent. After some words (and, in Ramos's telling, some blows), the man stepped aside and another man in the group shot Brana three or four times. According to Ramos, the shooter called Brana a vulgar term common in Dominican Spanish before he fired. Id. Ramos knew the shooter as a man called Monaguillo, whom he believed to be Dominican.

Velazquez and Ramos reviewed photograph arrays with police detectives shortly after the shooting. Id. at *2–3. Velazquez provided a description of the shooter, but did not see him among the photographs she reviewed. Detectives did not ask Ramos for a description of the shooter because he claimed to know him. He identified a photograph of Rafael Jimenez as the shooter out of several trays each containing several hundred photographs. Detective Kenneth Thompson then ordered a more recent photograph of Jimenez and presented it to Velazquez in another photograph lineup. She recognized him as the shooter immediately. Id. at *3.

Jimenez was arrested, and detectives brought Velazquez and Ramos to the precinct to view in-person lineups. Id. Ramos made no identification. Detective Thompson believed that Ramos's father, who accompanied him to the lineup, discouraged him from doing so. Velazquez identified Jimenez in the lineup. On her way there, she saw a wanted poster bearing the same photograph of Jimenez that she had picked out of the photograph lineup. However, she testified that she was able to identify him in the in-person lineup based on her memory of the shooting, not the photographs. Id. Prosecutors charged Jimenez with murder in the second degree.

B. The Trial

The State's case at trial rested primarily on the eye-witness testimony of Velasquez and Ramos. Velasquez testified that she had a close, unobstructed view of the shooter and that it was Jimenez. Id. at *4 ; Trial Tr., Dkt. Nos. 1-18–1-23, at 169–71, 175–76, 227–28. But her later testimony had inconsistencies, and she denied having gotten a good look at the man who harassed her as she walked home before the shooting despite making contrary statements to detectives. See id. at 213–15. Although she identified Jimenez as the shooter at trial, her description of the shooter did not match him precisely. She described the shooter as looking like he was in his early twenties; Jimenez was seventeen. Jimenez Gateway R&R , 2017 WL 4535946, at *14. She described the shooter as having a different hair style. Id. She also testified that she believed the men in the group were Dominican based on their accents; however, she acknowledged that she never heard the shooter speak. Id. ; Trial Tr. at 209–10.

Ramos equivocated in his identification of Jimenez at trial. He testified on direct that he did not recognize the shooter in court. Trial Tr. at 254. He also testified that he was sure the shooter was Dominican. Id. at 264–64A. However, on redirect he testified that he knew the shooter and did not want to look at him in the courtroom because the shooter might hurt him. Id. at 265. After the prosecutor assured Ramos that no one would hurt him and reminded him that he was under oath, Ramos identified Jimenez as the shooter. Id.

The jury requested a read-back of most of the trial testimony and requested a read-back of Ramos's testimony twice. Jimenez Gateway R&R , 2017 WL 4535946, at *4. The jurors reported being unable to reach a verdict after several hours, and the court admonished them to continue deliberations. After about two days, they returned a guilty verdict on October 4, 1994. Id.

Jimenez exhausted his direct appeals and filed a motion to vacate his conviction in state court under New York Criminal Procedure Law § 440.10. A New York Court denied the motion. Id.

C. The State Habeas Petition

In 2014, Jimenez filed a second § 440.10 motion seeking to vacate his conviction based on actual innocence and a Brady claim. Id. at *5 ; see People v. Jimenez (Jimenez State Habeas) , 9 N.Y.S.3d 594 (table), 2015 WL 770457 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2015). Jimenez's state petition rested on affidavits from Ramos and two alibi witnesses who did not testify at trial. Jimenez State Habeas , 2015 WL 770457, at *3.

Ramos stated in his affidavit dated April 11, 2013, that he learned around 2010 that Jimenez was Puerto Rican rather than Dominican after Ramos's wife struck up a conversation with Jimenez's sister, who lived in the same apartment building. Ramos Aff., Dkt. No. 1-12. He stated that the person who shot Brana was a Dominican man known as Monaguillo, and that Monaguillo had used a vulgar Dominican term to refer to Brana during their altercation, while a different slang term would be more common among Puerto Ricans. He was unsure whether Jimenez was the shooter when he testified and only believed him to be because a detective had told him that Jimenez was Dominican. Upon learning that Jimenez was Puerto Rican many years later, Ramos was "completely certain" that he was innocent. Id.

Jimenez also submitted affidavits from Amancio Delgado and Danny Hernandez dated January 21, 2014, and December 10, 2013. Dkt. Nos. 1-11, 1-15. Delgado and Hernandez stated in their affidavits that Jimenez was with them on the day of the murder celebrating Hernandez's birthday in front of a grocery store.

The state court was not persuaded by Jimenez's claims of actual innocence. It noted the inherent unreliability of witness recantations, particularly one that came nearly twenty years after the trial. Jimenez State Habeas , 2015 WL 770457, at *4–7. It also found the Ramos affidavit not to be credible in light of the trial record. For example, Ramos never suggested in his trial testimony that he identified the shooter as Dominican based on his accent or diction; instead, he said that he had known the shooter for a year or two before the shooting. Id. ; see also Trial Tr. at 263–65. The court concluded that it was more plausible that Ramos was a reluctant witness afraid of retaliation from the shooter than one mislead by a detective's characterization of the shooter's ethnicity. Jimenez State Habeas , 2015 WL 770457, at *7–8. Despite these misgivings, ...