Sadik v. Tice

SHAWN SADIK, Petitioner, v. SUPERINTENDENT ERIC TICE, et al., Respondents.

Civil Action No. 2:19-cv-139

United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania

January 28, 2022

Mark R. Hornak, Chief Judge

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

PATRICIA L. DODGE, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

I. RECOMMENDATION

Pending before the Court is the Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus (ECF 5) filed by state prisoner Shawn Sadik (“Petitioner”) under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. It is respectfully recommended that the Court deny each of Petitioner's claims and deny a certificate of appealability.

II. REPORT^[1]

A. Relevant Background

Very early in the morning on July 13, 1993, Petitioner and his co-defendant, Stevenson Rose, brutally beat Mary Mitchell (the “victim”) for around a half hour in a park in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Later that same day, Petitioner gave a statement to Detective Howard Parsons in which he to confessed his involvement in the assault of the victim.

The victim sustained major injuries during the assault, which are summarized below. She would spend the rest of her life in hospitals and then a nursing home. Although she did regain some level of consciousness, she remained incoherent and could not recognize her children. She was completely bedridden and could not care for herself in any way. (Trial Tr. at 226-30.)

Following a jury trial in February 1994, Petitioner was convicted of criminal attempt (homicide), aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and conspiracy. He was sentenced to a term of 10-20 years on the aggravated assault count, to be followed by a term of 5-10 years on the conspiracy count. He received no further penalties at the remaining counts. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed that judgment of sentence in Commonwealth v. Sadik, No. 630 PGH 1994, slip op. (Pa. Super. Ct. May 16, 1995) (“Sadik I”), Resp's Ex. 11 at 169-80.)

The victim died in September 2007. The Commonwealth then charged Petitioner and Rose with criminal homicide. Their cases were severed^[2] and Petitioner's five-day jury trial was held in October 2010. Petitioner retained Attorney Angela Carsia (“trial counsel”) to represent him.^[3]

The Superior Court summarized the evidence introduced at Petitioner's October 2010 trial as follows:

In the early morning hours of July 13, 1993, Pittsburgh police found the naked, bleeding body of [the victim] lying on a sidewalk near the entrance to a park. Her head was swollen, and she was gasping for air. She had a large wound on her neck that was bleeding profusely. It was later determined that a sharp object had been forced through her vagina, and into her intestine where it cut a blood vessel. After the attackers removed the object from her body, they placed it on the ground, where police later found it and identified it as a piece of aluminum window frame.

Based on leads they received from the two men who found the victim in the park, police arrested [Petitioner] and Stevenson Rose for the attack. When police arrested Rose they found a pair of blood spattered white shorts and a white tee shirt with blood on it in his room. When police arrested [Petitioner] at his residence they found a pair of blood-stained Timberland black combat-type boots in his room.

[Petitioner] agreed to be interviewed by police shortly after his arrest. He told them that he, Rose and a third man saw the victim walk past them toward the park. She was with some young men who were saying that they wanted her to perform oral sex on them. [Petitioner] said that twenty to thirty minutes later, Rose walked into the park and spoke with the young men. [Petitioner], who had been in a nearby alley, then went into the park where he saw Rose punch the victim, who was unclothed.

- - -

The victim spent several months in the hospital, and then was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. Although she regained some level of consciousness, she was unable to recognize her children and was incoherent. She was completely bedridden, and could only move one arm. The victim was transferred to a nursing home where she remained for fourteen years until her death on September 17, 2007.

- - -

The Commonwealth presented to the jury a tape recording of the July 13, 1993 interrogation of [Petitioner] by Detective Howard Parsons of the Pittsburgh Police Department, which included the following exchange:

Q. [Rose] said he was going to kill her?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. And she would never talk on him again?

A. Right.

Q. And he related that [he] was going to kill her two times?

A. Yes.

Q. Then what did he do?

A. Then-I kicked her like four times.

Q. You kicked her. What kind of shoes did you have on?

A. I had on some boots.

Q. Like-

A. Timberlands.

Q. Timberlands?

A. Uh-huh.

* * *

Q. Okay. You kicked her after he kicked her a few times?

A. He kicked her like three, and I kicked her like four after he did. And then-

Q. And when you kicked her, I mean you meant it that she would feel it, right?

A. Yeah, she did feel-

Q. I mean you're a big guy. You are over six feet tall; right?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. Her body moved when you kicked her?

A. The first time, yeah.

Q. Okay. And when you kicked her, did you kick her-did you stomp down on her face, or did you kick her like you were kicking a football?

A. I just kicked her, like-you could say like a football.

* * *

Q. Okay. How many times would you say [Rose] kicked her? A. At least about up to eighty times.

* * *

Q. And how long did this take?

A. Well, I could say at least close to a half hour.

* * *

Q. Did [Rose] ever fall on [the victim]?

A. He fell on her like eight times or something, eight, seven times.

Q. And what would happen when he would fall on her?

A. I'd pick him up.

[Trial Tr.] at 271-274.

The Commonwealth also introduced the testimony of Dorothy Menges, a forensic serologist who in 1993 performed tests on the blood-stained shorts and Timberland boots that [Petitioner] wore the night of the attack. She determined that the blood matched the victim[. Trial Tr.] at 122-128. Following he victim's death, due to scientific advances, Thomas Meyers of the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner was able to perform DNA testing on the items Ms. Menges had previously analyzed. He concluded that the genetic marks in the stain from the shorts matched the victim and [Petitioner], and that the genetic markers on the blood stains from [Petitioner's] Timberland boots matched the victim. Id. at 168-176.

Dr. Karl E. Williams, the medical examiner of Allegheny County, was also a Commonwealth witness. He performed the autopsy on the victim, and sent her brain to neuropathologists at the University of Pittsburgh for examination. Dr. Williams testified as follow:

Q. And what was your finding as to the manner of death, sir?

A. It was a homicide. If you can trace a direct consequence back to any particular act and it's uninterrupted, as this was, then you get back to the original cause of the trauma.

In this case the original insult to her was caused by a blunt force trauma to the head, to the neck, to the abdomen, vaginal vault. That's what begins the sequence of events that continued in an unbroken chain until the time of her death years later at Kane Hospital.

Q. And to the extent you've given us opinions, sir, are those opinions to a reasonable degree of medical certainty?

A. Yes. They are.

Id. at 198. Dr. Williams noted that the victim had an enlarged heart, inflamed lungs, and suffered from chronic urinary tract infections. Id. at 208. She also suffered from bedsores that were mostly healed, id. at 191, and flexion contractures. Id. at 194. He testified that she would not have suffered from these conditions had she not been assaulted several years before. Id. at 208-09. With regard to her general condition, Dr. Williams testified that “[s]he presented in remarkable good care for being in any hospital for that length of time.” Id. at 207.

(Commonwealth v. Sadik, No. 979 WDA 2011, slip op. (Pa. Super. Ct. Feb. 3, 2012) (“Sadik II”), Resp's Ex. 26 at 381-82, 387-90.)

In her closing statement, trial counsel argued that the jury should conclude that the Commonwealth failed to meet its burden of proving the requisite causal connection between the injuries the victim suffered as a result of Petitioner and Rose's 1993 attack on her and her 2007 death. (Trial Tr. at 357.) Trial counsel also argued that the Commonwealth failed to meets its burden of proving that Petitioner acted with the specific intent to kill the victim and that, at most, he was guilty of third degree murder because of his voluntary intoxication.^[4] (Trial Tr. at 348-561.) Petitioner's brother, Alfonso Sadik, testified in support of this voluntary intoxication defense. He stated that he was awake when Petitioner came home after the July 13, 1993 beating of the victim. (Id. at 333.) According to Alfonso, Petitioner “stumble[d] up the steps.” (Id. at 334.) Although Petitioner's speech was not slurred, Alfonso said that he could tell that Petitioner was drunk because he smelled of alcohol and was unsteady on his feet. (Id. at 334-35, 340.) Trial counsel also pointed out to the jury during her closing argument that in the statement Petitioner gave to Det. Parsons later in the day on July 13, 1993, Petitioner stated that he had been drinking vodka before the he and Rose beat the victim. (Id. at 267-68, 350-51.)

The trial court instructed the jury on the crimes of first and third-degree murder, and explained that to find Petitioner guilty of either degree of murder the jury must find beyond a reasonable doubt that his conduct was a direct cause of the victim's death. (Id. at 391-96.) The trial court also instructed the jury on the defense of voluntary intoxication, which the Commonwealth had the burden of disproving. (Id. at 396-97.)

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