Walls v. Wakefield

1

DENNIS LEE WALLS, Petitioner v. CHAD WAKEFIELD, Respondent

CIVIL No. 3:19-cv-1288

United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania

October 4, 2022

MEMORANDUM

Robert D. Mariani United States District Judge

I. Background

Petitioner Dennis Lee Walls (“Walls") files the instant petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C § 2254, challenging a 2015 conviction and sentence imposed in the Court of Common Pleas of Adams County in criminal case CP-01 -CR-0000288-2015. (Doc. 1).

For the reasons set forth below, the petition for writ of habeas corpus, which is governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub.L.No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 April 24,1996 (“AEDPA”), will be denied.

II. State Court Factual and Procedural Background

The relevant facts and procedural history are extracted from the Superior Court of Pennsylvania's December 28, 2018 decision affirming the denial of Walls' petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546, and are as follows:

In December of 2015, Appellant was tried before a jury for various offenses, including rape. The testimony of the victim in this case, J.D., can be summarized as follows. J.D. testified that she was in a relationship with Appellant for approximately two years, but they had broken up on March 2, 2015. N.T. Trial, 12/8/15, at 36,37. Nevertheless, Appellant was still living with J.D. on March 7th of that year. Id. at 37. That day, J.D. went to work and when she got home, she lay in bed with Appellant, who was watching a movie. Id. at 38, 39. J.D. testified that Appellant began rubbing her stomach and she told him to stop. Id. at 39. At that point, Appellant got up and walked out of the room, and J.D. went to sleep. Id.

J.D. claimed that she awoke a short time later and saw Appellant “sitting ... oddly” on the bed like he was “lost.” Id. at 40. J.D. asked Appellant what he was doing, and Appellant “got angry. He leaned down and came up with a gun[,]” which he “put... to the side of [J.D.'s] head." Id. Appellant cocked the gun and repeatedly said, “didn't I tell you not to fuck with me[?]” Id. at 42. J.D. testified that she was terrified for her life. Id. Appellant then “told [J.D.] that [she] had a choice to be with him or to be dead[,j” at which point she “started to cry, but [she] told him that [she] would be with him.” Id. at 43.

Appellant then “put the gun in his own mouth and said that he was going to kill himself.” Id. J.D. tried to calm Appellant down, but she “started crying bad.” Id. at 44. Appellant put the gun on his lap and tried to comfort J.D. Id. J.D. claimed that Appellant eventually put the gun on the floor, hugged her, and told her that “his boys” - whom J.D. believed meant members of a gang to which Appellant belonged - “knew who [J.D.] was, where [she] lived, who [her] son was, where [her] parents lived, and that if [she] told someone, that they'd come after [her], that they were going to be calling and checking in on him and if he didn't answer his phone, then they would know [J.D.] called the cops and they'd come after [her].” Id. at 45.

J.D. testified that Appellant then moved the gun underneath the nightstand about three to four feet away from her and told her “that he wanted to have sex.” Id. at 48. J.D. told Appellant that she did not want to have sex, but he continued his advances by “trying to take her pants off.” Id. at 49. J.D. then “told [Appellant] to just get it over with.” Id. J.D. testified that she relented because she “was scared,” based on Appellant's having put a gun to her head, and she was “not going to fight him.” Id. at 50. Appellant and J.D. had intercourse, during which J.D. “had [her] hands over [her] eyes crying.” Id. at 51. J.D. claimed that she did not consent to the sexual encounter with Appellant. Id. at 52. After intercourse, J.D. testified that Appellant received “two phone calls” that “[h]e said ... were from his boys.” Id. at 54. Appellant told J.D. that he was “going to meet one of them to give the gun back” at a Sheetz gas station. Id. at 54, 55. Appellant “got the gun and put it in a plastic bag,” after which he took J.D.'s phone “so [she] wouldn't try anything stupid like calling the police.” Id. at 55.

The next day at work, J.D. told a coworker, Brittany Eline, about the incident, and the coworker called the police. Id. at 61. Littlestown Police Officer Gary Gearhart responded to the report. Id. J.D. gave Officer Gearhart consent to search a truck that was owned by both J.D. and Appellant, and in the truck, the officer “found the gun in the plastic bag under the driver's seat....” Id. at 64,85. J.D. testified that it was the same gun that Appellant had pointed at her head. Id. Upon further inspection of the gun, Officer Gearhart determined that it “was more of a toy gun” that would “shoot little white BBs out.” Id. at 86. However, the officer testified that the gun looked like a real handgun. Id.

Additionally, on March 9, 2015, J.D. reported to police that she was “clearing out possessions in [her] apartment and in the nightstand drawer in a common used bedroom she had discovered a small cloth bag that she thought may have contained drug paraphernalia and some controlled substance.” Id. at 95. J.D. informed police that the drawer where she discovered the contraband was exclusively used by Appellant. Id. at 96. Police ultimately retrieved the bag from J.D., and later testing of several “clear capsules” discovered in the bag revealed that they “contained Fentanyl, a Schedule II controlled substance...." Id. at 97, 104. Based on these facts, Appellant was arrested and charged with various offenses.

On December 8, 2015, Appellant's jury trial was conducted. At the close thereof, Appellant was convicted of rape by forcible compulsion, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3121(a)(1); sexual assault, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3124.1; intimidation of a witness, 18 Pa.C.S. § 4952(a)(1); terroristic threats, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2706(a)(1); indecent assault, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3126(a)(1); and simple assault, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2701(a)(3)^[1]Appellant was sentenced on April 18, 2016, to an aggregate term of 16 to 34 years' incarceration.

Appellant did not file a direct appeal. Instead, on April 13, 2017, he filed a timely, counseled PCRA petition raising various claims of ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC).^[2] On October 23, 2017, the PCRA court conducted an evidentiary hearing. On April 4, 2018, the court issued an order and opinion denying Appellant's petition. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal, however he failed to timely comply with the PCRA court's subsequent order to file a Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) statement. Accordingly, on May 30, 2018, the PCRA court issued a Rule 1925(a) opinion concluding that Appellant's issues were waived but noting that its reasons for denying his petition were fully set forth in its April 4, 2018 opinion. See Trial Court Opinion, 5/30/18, at 1.

On June 7, 2018, Appellant filed a “nunc pro tunc" Rule 1925(b) statement. Therein, he claimed that he never received the order directing him to file a concise statement. He then reiterated the same IAC claims raised in his PCRA petition, and which were addressed by the court in its April 4, 2018 opinion. Given this record, we decline to remand under Rule 1925(c)(3); instead, we will address the merits of Appellant's claims. See Commonwealth v. Burton, 973 A.2d 428, 433 (Pa. Super. 2009) (holding that, “if there has been an untimely filing, this Court may decide the appeal on the merits if the trial court had adequate opportunity to prepare an opinion addressing the issues being raised on appeal”).

Herein, while Appellant sets forth one IAC issue in his Statement of the Questions,^[3] in his Argument section, he divides that issue into fourteen subclaims of trial counsel's ineffectiveness. Initially, “we note that it has been held that when an appellant raises an extraordinary number of issues on appeal, as in this case, a presumption arises that there is no merit to any of them.” Estate of Lakatosh, 656 A.2d 1378,1380 n.1 (Pa. Super. 1995). “Appellate advocacy is measured by effectiveness, not loquaciousness." Id.

(Doc. 23-4 at 142, Commonwealth v. Walls, 766 MDA 2018 at 1-6 (Pa. Super. Dec. 28, 2018) (unpublished memorandum). On December 28, 2018, the Superior Court, adopting the PCRA court's decision as their own, affirmed the denial of Walls' PCRA petition. Id. On January 24, 2019 Walls filed a timely petition for allowance of appeal (Doc. 23-4 at 99) to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which was denied on July 8, 2019. (Doc. 23-4 at 171, Commonwealth v. Walls, 44 MAL 2019 (Pa. 2019).

Thereafter, on July 24,2019, Walls filed the instant timely petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In his petition, Walls raises the following four ineffective assistance of counsel claims for relief: (1) ineffective assistance of trial counsel for failure to present several witnesses at his trial regarding an alleged motivation for the victim to falsify testimony, (2) ineffective assistance of trial counsel for failure to present several character witnesses at trial concerning his reputation for non-violence and concerning the victim's character for truthfulness, (3) ineffective assistance of trial counsel for failure to move for dismissal due an insufficiency of the evidence, and (4) ineffective assistance of trial counsel for failure to argue to the jury or request an instruction regarding an adverse inference to be drawn against the victim's testimony due an alleged delay in reporting the rape. (Doc. 1).

III. Legal Standards of Review

A habeas corpus petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 is the proper mechanism for a prisoner to challenge the “fact or duration” of his confinement. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S....