Lambert v. Blackwell

387 F.3d 210

Lisa Michelle LAMBERT, Appellant v. Charlotte BLACKWELL (Administrator of the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women); The Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania.

No. 03-2282.

No. 03-2383.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued January 12, 2004.

October 12, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Anita B. Brody, J.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Peter S. Greenberg, (Argued), Nancy Winkelman, Jonathan S. Liss, Han Nguyen, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellant/Cross-Appellee.

Gerald J. Pappert, Attorney General, William H. Ryan, Jr., Executive Deputy Attorney General, Criminal Law Division, Amy Zapp (Argued), Senior Deputy Attorney General, Capital Litigation Unit, Jerome T. Foerster, Senior Deputy Attorney General, Appeals and Legal Services Section, Office of The Attorney General, Harrisburg, PA, for Appellee/Cross-Appellant.

Before ALITO, CHERTOFF, and BECKER, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

CHERTOFF, Circuit Judge.

                               TABLE OF CONTENTS
  I. BACKGROUND ....................................................... 218
     A. The Trial ..................................................... 219
        1. The Commonwealth's Case .................................... 220
        2. Lambert's Case ............................................. 223
     B. Procedural History ............................................ 227
 II. JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW .............................. 230
III. DISCUSSION ....................................................... 231
     A. Exhaustion .................................................... 231
     B. Deference ..................................................... 234
     C. The Merits .................................................... 241
        1. The Sweatpants ............................................. 242
           a. Knowing Use of Perjured Testimony ....................... 242
           b. "Switching" Evidence .................................... 245
        2. Evidence of Yunkin's Location During the Murder ............ 247
           a. Knowing Use of Perjured Testimony ....................... 249
           b. Suppression of Brady Material ........................... 252
        3. The "29 Questions" ......................................... 254
        4. The Crime Scene Photographs ................................ 256
        5. The Dying Declaration ...................................... 259
        6. The DA's Contact with Lambert's Trial Expert ............... 260
        7. The River Search ........................................... 264
           a. Brady Violation Concerning the Pink Bag and Sneaker ..... 264
           b. Knowing Use of Perjured Testimony ....................... 265
           c. Brady Violation Concerning the Rope ..................... 266
           d. Destruction of Evidence ................................. 267
 IV. CONCLUSION ....................................................... 267

Before us, after a lengthy journey up and down the state and federal justice systems, is the habeas petition of Lisa Michelle Lambert. Lambert is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first degree murder. Judge Lawrence Stengel of the Court of Common Pleas for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania imposed the sentence on Lambert after he found Lambert guilty at a bench trial held in July of 1992.

Lambert initially appealed her conviction in the Pennsylvania state courts which rejected her claims on direct appeal. She thereafter filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. After holding a hearing over the course of three weeks, Judge Stewart Dalzell of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania found Lambert "actually innocent" and granted her petition. He specifically barred any retrial.

Lambert was released into the custody of her attorneys on April 16, 1997, but her freedom was short-lived. Less than a year later, this Court vacated the District Court's judgment due to Lambert's failure to exhaust her available state court remedies, namely collateral review pursuant to the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act ("PCRA"). Lambert consequently returned to state court, where a PCRA Court (again Judge Stengel) held a six-week hearing and determined in a comprehensive opinion that relief under the PCRA was not warranted.

After the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the PCRA Court's decision, Lambert not surprisingly re-filed her federal habeas petition. Judge Dalzell held that the state courts' findings were null and void because they lacked jurisdiction to hear Lambert's PCRA petition. He then reinstated his findings from the 1997 habeas hearing and gave the parties a month to request additional testimony on topics that the Court had not addressed in 1997. In the meantime, the Commonwealth sought Judge Dalzell's recusal.

Judge Dalzell eventually acquiesced to the Commonwealth's efforts at recusal, and the case was assigned to Judge Anita Brody of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Judge Brody dismissed Lambert's habeas petition after determining, contrary to Judge Dalzell's ruling, that the PCRA Court's findings were not null and void and were entitled to deference under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). Lambert now appeals from that judgment.

This case presents a host of sensitive issues. At one level are the very serious allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that Lambert argues require her release. But important institutional concerns also infuse this case. A state court and a federal court reached diametrically opposed conclusions, and two federal courts took substantially different views of the state court proceedings. This unusual history highlights the need to respect the limits of federal habeas review, as well as the principle of comity that informs that review. Simply put, a habeas court reviews a state conviction to determine whether a state prisoner is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States; the federal court is not mandated to retry the case and substitute its own verdict.

We conclude that the PCRA Court decision here was indeed entitled to deference. After carefully reviewing the entire record and applying that deference de novo, we conclude that the PCRA Court's determinations were well-supported and require that we deny Lambert habeas relief. Put more simply: Lambert's trial was fair, amply supported, and not infected by material error or injustice. We will affirm the denial of the writ by Judge Brody.

I. BACKGROUND

At the center of this contentious case lies the brutal murder of Laurie Show. Show died from knife wounds-stabs to her back and slashes to her throat-inflicted on her by intruders in her home on the morning of December 20, 1991. She was fifteen years old at the time of her death.

The investigation of Show's murder quickly zeroed in on three individuals: Lisa Michelle Lambert, Tabitha Faith Buck, and Lawrence Yunkin. The police arrested Lambert and Yunkin on outstanding warrants on the day of Show's murder. Upon questioning, they both admitted their involvement in the attack on Show; and they both implicated Buck.

The Lancaster County District Attorney eventually charged Lambert and Buck with criminal homicide and Yunkin with hindering apprehension.¹ Lambert waived her right to a jury trial, and a week-long bench trial was held before Judge Lawrence Stengel of the Court of Common Pleas for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

A. The Trial

It hardly needs to be said that in our adversarial system of justice, the opposing parties-in a criminal case, the prosecution and defense-typically advance two radically different versions of events. This case is no exception.

To be sure, the government and defense agreed on broadly what happened: Yunkin and Lambert were romantically involved and lived together, but their relationship entered an eight-day hiatus over the summer of 1991. During those eight days, Yunkin dated Laurie Show.

Lambert and Yunkin eventually resumed their relationship, and there was real animosity between Lambert and Show. So, in July 1991, Lambert devised a plan to enlist the help of several other teenagers to humiliate Show by luring her out of her home, cutting off her hair, and tying her up to a pole within the City of Lancaster. The plan did not come to fruition because two of the girls involved eventually warned Show.

Months later, on December 19, 1991, someone called Laurie Show's mother, Hazel Show, claiming to be her daughter's guidance counselor. The caller scheduled a meeting with Hazel Show for 7 a.m. the following morning at the principal's office of Laurie Show's high school.

The next morning Yunkin, Lambert, and Buck drove to the condominium complex where Show's home was located. They brought with them a knife from Yunkin's and Lambert's home and rope and two black knit hats that Lambert had purchased the previous day at K-Mart. Sometime around 7 a.m., while Hazel Show was out to attend the "meeting" she thought she would have with her daughter's "guidance counselor," Laurie Show was home alone. Lambert and Buck entered the Show residence. A struggle ensued during which someone stabbed Show and slit her throat.

Lambert, Buck, and Yunkin (whose precise whereabouts during and involvement in the melee with Show, as we explain more fully below, was disputed at trial) drove away from the condominium complex together. The three of them devised an alibi, and Yunkin and Lambert dropped Buck off at school.

Lambert and Yunkin then proceeded to discard evidence from Show's murder. They washed clothes worn during the murder, put them in a bag, and threw them...