Lindsey v. Warden, Chillicothe Corr. Inst.

CARL LINDSEY, Petitioner, v. WARDEN, Chillicothe Correctional Institution Respondent.

Case No. 1:03-cv-702

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO EASTERN DIVISION

December 30, 2020

Judge Sarah D. Morrison

Magistrate Judge Elizabeth P. Deavers

OPINION AND ORDER

Petitioner, a prisoner sentenced to death by the State of Ohio, has pending before this Court a habeas corpus action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. This matter is before the Court upon the habeas Petition (ECF No. 9), the Amended Petition (ECF No. 38), the Return of Writ (ECF No. 12), the Traverse (ECF No. 20), and the Third Amended Petition, setting forth lethal injection claims. This matter is also before the Court on Petitioner's Notice of Withdrawal of Grounds for Relief (ECF No. 63), Petitioner's Final Merit Brief (ECF No. 75), Respondent's Merit Brief (ECF No. 80), and Petitioner's Reply (ECF No. 81). This Court has thoroughly reviewed all the remaining claims in this habeas action, and upon said review, finds Petitioner's claims lack merit. Habeas relief is DENIED and this action is DISMISSED.

I. Factual Background and Procedural History

After a trial by jury in Brown County, Ohio, Petitioner Carl Lindsey was convicted of Aggravated Murder and sentenced to death for the February 10, 1997, murder of Donald Ray "Whitey" Hoop. On direct review, the Ohio Supreme Court set forth the facts and procedural history of this case:

In the early morning hours of February 10, 1997, appellant, Carl Lindsey, was at Slammers Bar near Mt. Orab along with Kathy Kerr, Kenny Swinford, A.J. Cox, and Joy Hoop, one of the bar owners. According to the testimony at trial, Joy had wanted her husband, Donald Ray "Whitey" Hoop, dead, and that night appellant told her "he would do him in." Joy then handed a small gun to appellant, and appellant left the bar. Kathy Kerr also decided to leave the bar at that point, but heard a banging noise. As she left she saw Whitey lying on the ground, covered with blood, and appellant standing by the door. According to investigators, Whitey had been shot once in the face while seated inside his vehicle. He apparently then left his vehicle and remained in the parking lot where he was shot again in the forehead. Upon seeing Whitey on the ground, Kerr immediately left for her home, which was only a few hundred feet away. Appellant followed her in his pickup truck, and she allowed him into her trailer to take a shower.

At approximately the same time that these events were occurring, Brown County Deputy Sheriff Buddy Moore was on patrol and passed Slammers Bar. He noticed and was suspicious of a pickup truck in the parking lot and followed it from the bar south to the Kerr residence. A couple minutes later, he received a police dispatch that a shooting had been reported at Slammers and headed back toward the bar. On the way, Moore noticed a car pass him at a high speed going south. When he arrived at Slammers, he found Whitey Hoop's body lying in the parking lot. When backup arrived, Moore instructed a state trooper to go to Kerr's trailer, look for the pickup, and make sure that no one left the premises. Moore also left for Kerr's trailer.

When Moore arrived at the Kerr residence, he found appellant in the bathroom, soaking his clothes in a tub full of red-tinted water. He also found a box of .22 caliber ammunition on the sink. At that point, Moore took appellant into custody. Upon a search of the premises, police seized from the Kerr trailer appellant's wallet, the ammunition, the clothing in the tub, and a .22 caliber Jennings semiautomatic pistol, which they discovered behind the bathroom door. They also found and seized Whitey's wallet, which was in a wastebasket in the bathroom. When discovered, Whitey's wallet was empty, although an acquaintance of Whitey's testified that Whitey habitually carried about $1,000 with him. Police also found $1,257 in appellant's wallet, although he had been laid off in late December 1996.

The crime laboratory tested the bloodstains on the items seized by police and found the stains on appellant's jacket, jeans, boot, truck console, steering-wheel cover, driver's seat, driver's-side door, and door handle all to be consistent with Whitey's blood. One of the stains on the Jennings .22 pistol was also consistent with Whitey's blood.

Appellant was indicted on two counts of aggravated murder, one under R.C. 2903.01(A) (prior calculation and design) and one under R.C. 2903.01(B) (felony-murder), each count carrying a death specification for felony-murder (R.C. 2929.04(A)(7)) and the first count also carrying a specification for murder for hire (R.C. 2929.03(A)(2)). He was also indicted on one theft count and two aggravated robbery counts. At the close of the evidence, the trial court granted appellant's Crim.R. 29 motion for judgment of acquittal on the murder-for-hire specification. A jury then found appellant guilty on all counts and all remaining specifications and, after a penalty hearing, recommended death. The trial judge merged the two aggravated murder counts and imposed the death sentence.

State v. Lindsey, 87 Ohio St.3d 479, 721 N.E.2d 995 (2000). Joy Hoop, who was tried in a separate and subsequent proceeding, was convicted of two counts of complicity in the commission of the aggravated murder, and was sentenced to a term of life in prison with parole eligibility after serving twenty-five years. State v. Hoop, No. CA2000-11-034, 2001 WL 877296, *1 (Ohio App. 12th Dist. Aug. 6, 2011).

After the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed Petitioner's convictions and sentence on direct review, the United States Supreme Court denied Petitioner's Petition for a Writ of Certiorari. Lindsey v. Ohio, 531 U.S. 838 (2000). Petitioner filed his original petition for post-conviction relief on September 21, 1998, and an amended petition on April 3, 1999. The trial court denied the post-conviction petition on January 15, 2002, without a hearing. (Appx., ECF No. 152-10, at PAGEID # 8674-8690.) The Twelfth District Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the trial court and denied post-conviction relief. State v. Lindsey, No. CA2002-02-002, 2003 WL 433941 (Ohio App. 12th Dist. Feb. 24, 2003).

On April 30, 1999, Petitioner filed a motion for a new trial in the state trial court, based on a new witness who testified at Joy Hoop's trial that Hoop confessed to firing the second and fatal shot that killed Whitey Hoop. The trial court denied the motion for a new trial on July 15, 2003, and the Twelfth District Court of Appeals affirmed. State v. Lindsey, No. CA2003-07-010, 2004 WL 1877734 (Ohio App. 12th Dist. Aug. 23, 2004).

On October 10, 2003, after exhausting his state court remedies, Petitioner filed the instant Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, raising ten claims for relief. (Petition, ECF No. 9.) On January 13, 2005, Petitioner filed an Amended Petition, removing all references to actual innocence, and abandoning all but sub-part (C) of his First Claim for Relief. (Am. Petition, ECF No. 38.) Additionally, on September 7, 2006, Petitioner filed a Notice of Withdrawal of Grounds for Relief from Habeas Petition, voluntarily withdrawing the claims of ineffective assistance of counsel set forth in his Fifth and Eighth Claims for Relief. (ECF No. 63.) Accordingly, eight claims for relief remain pending before the Court; subpart (C) of Petitioner's First Claim for Relief, and Claims Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Nine and Ten remain before the Court for a decision on the merits.

As an additional matter, the Court notes that Petitioner has made several attempts to amend his petition to add claims for relief challenging Ohio's lethal injection protocol. Those proposed claims have been the subject of years of litigation in this Court and will be addressed in the final section of this Opinion and Order.

II. Standards of Review

Because this is a habeas corpus case, provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA") that became effective prior to the filing of the instant petition, apply to this case. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 336 (1997). The AEDPA limits the circumstances under which a federal court may grant a writ of habeas corpus with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in a state court proceeding. Specifically, the AEDPA directs this Court not to grant a writ unless the state court adjudication "resulted in a decisionthat was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), or "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding," 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). Section 2254(d)(1) circumscribes a federal court's review of claimed legal errors, while § 2254(d)(2) places restrictions on a federal court's review of claimed factual errors.

Under § 2254(d)(1), "[a] state court's adjudication of a claim is 'contrary to' clearly established federal law 'if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law, or if the state court decides a case differently than the Supreme Court on a set of materially indistinguishable facts.'" Stojetz v. Ishee, 892 F.3d 175, 192-93 (6th Cir. 2018) (quoting Van Tran v. Colson, 764 F.3d 594, 604 (6th Cir. 2014)). A state court decision involves an "unreasonable application" of Supreme Court precedent if the state court identifies the correct legal principle from the decisions of the Supreme Court but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the petitioner's case. Id. (citing Henley v. Bell, 487 F.3d 379, 384 (6th Cir. 2007)). A federal habeas court may not find a state adjudication to be "unreasonable" simply because the court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Williams v. Coyle, 260 F.3d...