Proudie v. State

644 S.W.3d 41

Dyanthany Y. PROUDIE, Appellant,

v.STATE of Missouri, Respondent.

No. ED 109543

Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, DIVISION ONE.

FILED: April 19, 2022

For Appellant: Maleaner R. Harvey, 1010 Market St., Ste. 1100, St. Louis, MO 63101.

For Respondent: Gregory L. Barnes, P.O. Box 899, Jefferson City, MO 65102.

KURT S. ODENWALD, Presiding Judge

Introduction

Dyanthany Y. Proudie ("Proudie") appeals the denial of his Rule 29.15¹ motion to set aside his convictions and sentence for murder in the first degree and armed criminal action. Proudie raises six points on appeal. Proudie alleges in Point One that Bradford Kessler ("Kessler"), Nicholas Williams, Michael Hufty ("Hufty"), and Thomas Peterson ("Peterson") (collectively "Trial Counsel")² were ineffective for failing to strike a juror who had prior knowledge of the victim and expressed personal feelings about the case. Proudie claims in Points Two, Three, and Four that Trial Counsel were ineffective for failing to subpoena and call Monica Bush ("Girlfriend"), Marcellus Gillespie ("Gillespie"), and Patricia West ("West"), respectively, because each witness would have provided a viable defense. Proudie's Point Five contends Trial Counsel were ineffective for not attempting to impeach witness testimony from Ahmad Williams ("Williams"). Finally, in Point Six, Proudie claims that Trial Counsel were ineffective for failing to seek admission of hearsay testimony from Chad Jones ("Jones") as a prior inconsistent statement.

Trial Counsel exercised their judgment when choosing their peremptory strikes of jurors. Trial Counsel believed it was advantageous to use their limited number of peremptory strikes on other jurors and deemed Anthony Blalock ("Blalock") to be otherwise qualified as a juror. The decision not to strike Blalock was a reasonable trial strategy. Point One is denied. Because the testimonies of Girlfriend, Gillespie, and West failed to provide Proudie a viable defense, the decision not to call Girlfriend and Gillespie was not unreasonable. The decision not to call West did not prejudice Proudie. Points Two, Three, and Four are denied. Because Trial Counsel's decision not to attempt to impeach Williams's credibility regarding the potential recovery of reward money was reasonable trial strategy, Point Five is denied. Finally, because Proudie was not prejudiced by Trial Counsel's decision not to seek admission of Jones's testimony as a prior inconsistent statement, Point Six is denied. Accordingly, we affirm the motion court's judgment.

Factual and Procedural History

In the incident underlying this post-conviction appeal, Ebony Jackson ("Victim") arrived at Proudie's apartment in St. Louis with her three-year old son on January 2, 2013. Before arriving, Victim had exchanged nine phone calls with Proudie, whom she had previously dated. Proudie had invited Victim and her son to stay at his apartment along with Proudie's nephews, Williams and Gillespie. Williams was staying with Proudie while on winter break from college and Gillespie was fourteen or fifteen years old at the time. Maurice Holtzclaw ("Holtzclaw") and his wife also resided in the apartment.

When Victim arrived at Proudie's apartment, she wanted to take a bath and began cleaning out the bathtub. Holtzclaw saw Proudie walking towards the bathroom with a .38-caliber revolver in his hand. Williams saw Proudie place the revolver on top of the refrigerator. Proudie motioned for Williams, Gillespie, and Holtzclaw to go into the front room. Williams heard the bathroom door close and then heard the sound of a single gunshot. Proudie shot Victim behind the ear at close range, killing her.

Proudie called Holtzclaw into the bathroom, where Holtzclaw saw Victim "lying on the floor bleeding, motionless" and a "lot of blood on the floor." Proudie moved Victim's body in front of the refrigerator, just outside the bathroom door, and started to clean the bathroom. Williams saw the body outside the bathroom and noticed "blood everywhere." Proudie told Holtzclaw and Williams he killed Victim because she had given him a sexually transmitted disease ("STD"), which he had passed on to Girlfriend. Proudie ordered his nephews and Holtzclaw to help clean up the murder scene. Proudie remodeled the entire bathroom over several days, replacing the floors, changing the fixtures, and painting. Proudie also directed Gillespie and Williams to scrub the basement floor after finding blood had seeped through the bathroom floor into the basement. Proudie discarded furniture from the basement that had blood stains.

Proudie directed Holtzclaw to help place Victim's body in the trunk of her car and drive it while Proudie followed in his truck. Proudie and Holtzclaw left Victim's car in a "derelict" neighborhood. Both men returned to Proudie's apartment. Proudie then instructed Holtzclaw and his nephews to say nothing if questioned by police.

Proudie abandoned Victim's son in a hallway of an apartment building approximately fifty feet from the apartment occupied by Proudie's estranged wife. Victim's son was found later and his father was contacted. The father told police that Victim had traveled to St. Louis several days earlier and that he had been unable to contact her.

The police investigated Victim's disappearance. Several days after her murder, police located her car using its GPS and discovered her body in the trunk. Police obtained Victim's cell phone records and found her phone was used within approximately one-tenth of a mile of Proudie's apartment for all communications between 8:00 p.m. and 10:41 p.m. on the night of her murder. Additionally, Proudie's phone number—matched to Proudie's address through Crime Matrix—was the only number Victim called before departing for St. Louis that did not belong to family or friends. Despite Proudie's remodeling of the bathroom, police recovered evidence of Victim's DNA from a swab taken from Proudie's bathroom vanity.

During the investigation, Proudie and his family members took actions to intimidate both Holtzclaw and Williams. Holtzclaw had reached out to police and initially tried to protect Proudie. Eventually Holtzclaw told police "the complete truth." After learning that Holtzclaw had spoken to police, Proudie told Holtzclaw that it didn't matter what he said to the police as long as he didn't testify because Holtzclaw knows what happens "to people who testify." Detectives also interviewed Williams, who had returned to college in Arkansas and was reluctant to speak with police. Williams's statements matched Holtzclaw's account of the murder. Proudie's family members went to Arkansas to get Williams and bring him back to St. Louis. Williams was told he was going to be prosecuted and needed a lawyer. When Williams arrived at his grandmother's house in St. Louis, he saw that his face had been cut out of all the family pictures.

Prior to trial, Proudie attempted to introduce hearsay testimony from Jones, an acquaintance of Holtzclaw's who was incarcerated with Proudie. Holtzclaw testified he "probably" told Jones that when disposing of Victim's body, he drove Victim's car with her body in the trunk, but he denied telling Jones or anyone that he murdered Victim. Proudie wanted Jones to testify because he believed Jones would say that Holtzclaw committed the murder and not Proudie. Proudie sought a late endorsement for Jones to testify, although one of his Trial Counsel, Kessler, found Jones not credible and believed Jones would perjure himself. Proudie made an offer of proof in which Jones testified that he overheard Holtzclaw say he intended to rob Victim and "it went bad and [Holtzclaw] ended up shooting her." Jones further testified that Holtzclaw said he "took her body out of there and moved it." Following the offer of proof, the trial court permitted Jones's late endorsement but ultimately ruled that Jones's testimony was inadmissible under the authority offered. Specifically, Proudie sought to introduce Jones's testimony through the hearsay exception involving statements against interest as set forth in Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973).

During voir dire, juror Blalock revealed that he had previously worked with two people who knew Victim. Blalock did not personally know Victim and assured the trial court that this information would not influence his decision-making or impartiality if selected for the jury. Blalock stated that the case was "disturbing to him" because a woman and a baby (Victim's young son) were involved, but "[t]hose facts alone will not cause" him "to be more bias[ed] against the defense[.]" When questioned further, Blalock responded that he would not "just shut down and stop listening" and that if he was chosen, he "would do it to the best of [his] ability."

The trial proceeded. The State called various witnesses to testify about the incident and police investigation, including Holtzclaw and Williams. In their case-in-chief, the State adduced evidence from various witnesses and police concerning the incident and the investigation. The State suggested Proudie's motive for murdering Victim was that she had given him an STD. The jury convicted Proudie on murder in the first degree and armed criminal action. The trial court sentenced Proudie as a persistent felony offender to life imprisonment without the possibility of probation or parole on the count for murder and thirty years in prison for armed criminal action, with the sentences to run concurrently. Proudie directly appealed from his convictions, and this Court affirmed the judgment in State v. Proudie, 493 S.W.3d 6 (Mo. App. E.D. 2016).

In that direct appeal, Proudie argued the trial court should have admitted Jones's hearsay testimony under either the Chambers exception or as an inconsistent statement. We held that although the testimony could possibly have been admitted as an inconsistent statement, Proudie had only sought its admission under the Chambers e...