Reynolds v. Payne

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CASEY REYNOLDS PETITIONER v. DEXTER PAYNE, DIRECTOR, Arkansas Division of Correction (“ADC”) RESPONDENT

No. 4:24-CV-00010 JM/PSH

United States District Court, E.D. Arkansas, Central Division

June 6, 2024

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATION

INSTRUCTIONS

The following recommended disposition has been sent to United States District Judge James Moody, Jr. You may file written objections to all or part of this Recommendation. If you do so, those objections must: (1) specifically explain the factual and/or legal basis for your objection; and (2) be received by the Clerk of this Court within fourteen (14) days of this Recommendation. By not objecting, you may waive the right to appeal questions of fact.

DISPOSITION

Petitioner Casey Reynolds (“Reynolds”) seeks a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Reynolds is in ADC custody following his 2018 convictions in White County for two counts of kidnapping, aggravated assault on a family or household member, and third-degree domestic battery. He received a total term of 46 years' imprisonment. Reynolds began the process of direct appeal but then filed a motion to dismiss the appeal. That motion was granted in November 2018.

He then sought postconviction relief pursuant to Ark. R. Crim. P 37.1, alleging four instances of ineffective assistance of trial counsel: (1) failure to effectively communicate a plea offer and unreasonably recommending that Reynolds reject the offer; (2) failure to investigate and present evidence impeaching the credibility of the victims; (3) failure to investigate and present evidence about the contents of Reynolds' lost cell phone; and (4) failure to adequately cross-examine the victims.

The trial court conducted an evidentiary hearing and subsequently denied Rule 37 relief. Reynolds appealed, and the Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court in a March 1, 2023 opinion. Reynolds v. State, 2023 Ark.App. 106.

Reynolds now seeks federal habeas corpus relief advancing the four claims of ineffective assistance raised in his Rule 37 proceeding. Respondent Dexter Payne (“Payne”) has responded, contending the petition should be dismissed with prejudice. Doc. No. 6. The Court agrees, and recommends dismissal and denial of relief.

Analysis

When the state court has ruled on the merits of a petitioner's claims, as with all four claims advanced by Reynolds, a writ of habeas corpus may not be granted unless the state court's decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law as determined by the Supreme Court” or the state court's decision “was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), (2). The United States Supreme Court offers guidance in interpreting the statute:

A state court decision will be “contrary to” our clearly established precedent if the state court either “applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in our cases,” or “confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from our precedent.” A state court decision will be an “unreasonable application of” our clearly established precedent if it “correctly identifies the governing legal rule but applies it unreasonably to the facts of a particular prisoner's case.”

. . . Distinguishing between an unreasonable and an incorrect application of federal law, we clarified that even if the federal habeas court concludes that the state court decision applied clearly established federal law incorrectly, relief is appropriate only if that application is also objectively unreasonable.

Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782, 792-93 (citations omitted).

The Arkansas Court of Appeals ably summarized the trial and the Rule 37 proceedings, cited the legal standard to be met, and addressed Reynolds' arguments:

I. Reynolds's Trial

Reynolds was charged with committing two counts of kidnapping, one count of aggravated assault on a household or family member, and one count of third-degree domestic battery against two victims, DS and BB, both former girlfriends.

At Reynolds's trial, BB, who is 5'1” and in June 2017 weighed 120 pounds, offered the following testimony. [in a footnote the opinion cited Reynolds' trial testimony that he was a bodybuilder at the time of his arrest]. In June 2017, she lived with Reynolds but was planning to leave him because he was cheating on her and physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing her. Reynolds controlled her by taking her phone and car keys, removing the battery from her car, not allowing her to have any other relationships, and never allowing her to be alone-even showering with her and remaining in the bathroom when she was using the toilet. On June 14, her friend, Jennifer Long picked her up from Reynolds's house and took her to another friend's house, which made Reynolds very angry. Reynolds spoke with BB on the phone and convinced her to come home to pack her things. He picked her up from the friend's house, but as soon as she went inside Reynolds's home, he locked the door and told BB to go to the back room and get undressed. She was afraid he would beat her as he had done before, so she did as she was told. He locked her in the room and returned with a bag of zip ties wire clippers, and a knife. He zip tied her wrists and ankles and threatened to cut her ear to ear across her face. He put the wire cutters in her nose and applied pressure and told her he was going to “wreck her face.” At that point, Reynolds had a seizure and lost consciousness, which he had done before when he was “emotionally stressed.” BB eventually made it to the bathroom to get nail clippers to cut the zip ties (she was afraid she would wake him if she took the wire clippers out of his hand.) She clipped the zip ties found Reynolds's phone in the kitchen, and called 911. Reynolds recovered from his seizure and entered the kitchen. BB told Reynolds she was calling an ambulance for him, which angered him again, and he had another seizure. He recovered from the second seizure, and slammed BB against the ground and the wall. He put a gun in her mouth and told her that he was going to kill her and himself. Before the police arrived, he punched himself to make it look like she had hit him. When the police arrived a few minutes later and knocked on the door, she ran from the home. Reynolds was arrested, and BB reentered the home and gathered her things to leave. Reynolds had hidden her keys and phone, but eventually she found them and left. A police officer told her to take Reynolds's phone “to look through” it to try to find evidence against him. BB could not use the phone, and she gave it to “a friend of a friend” to fix it so she could view the contents of the phone. She never saw the phone again.

On cross-examination, trial counsel pointed out the following inconsistencies in BB's testimony. In her statement to police, she did not mention that Reynolds told her take off her clothes or that he put a gun in her mouth (she said he put it to her head) or that he threatened to kill himself as well. BB did not tell officers that Reynolds hit himself to make it look like she had hit him, and she did not contradict him when he told the police she had hit him. When she filled out a form to request an order of protection the next day, BB did not state that Reynolds told her to take off her clothes. BB's recollection of clipping the zip ties with nail clippers was spotty, and she did not know if Reynolds had ever been treated for any kind of mental illness.

DS, also a former girlfriend, testified at the trial, and the following evidence was adduced from her testimony. DS moved in with Reynolds in January 2017, and he was controlling from the beginning. Reynolds made her send photos of herself when she left the house to prove where she was. When she took a lunch break at work and was able to look at her phone, there would be “ten texts, ten phone calls, you know, and I'm like crap, he's mad.” Reynolds monitored her phone, would not allow her to have social media accounts, and eventually he took her phone away from her and broke it. Reynolds followed her in his car and drove past her work. He took her keys from her when she arrived home after work and accused her of cheating on him if she was late. He forbade her from talking to her family and from having friends. During sex he was rough with her and left bruises on her body, even when she asked him to stop. Reynolds began physically abusing her, hitting her in the mouth and slapping her at first, then escalating to punching her. Once, he slammed her head into the kitchen floor, causing a large knot to form on her head. Reynolds told DS that he was going to “drain the blood off” with the needle he used to inject steroids and then put ice on her facial wounds. He would not allow DS to be alone in the bathroom, and on March 22, 2017, when she locked the bathroom door, he broke the door down. She burned his arm with a hot curling iron, and he took the curling iron from her and burned her arm with it. He threatened to insert the hot curling iron into her vagina. When she told him she was going to the police, he went into the garage to retrieve a bag of black zip ties and zip tied her arms and legs to a kitchen chair. He secured a zip tie across her mouth, and began pinching her thighs hard enough to cause bruises. To convince Reynolds to let her go, she told him that she loved him, accepted him as he was, they were both crazy, and “we could be crazy together.” He released her from the chair, and she went to work. After speaking to her supervisor, DS went to the police station and filed a report against him, ending

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