William L. Gray v. Joseph Klauser, Warden

282 F.3d 633 William L. GRAY, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Joseph KLAUSER, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. No. 00-35732. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted May 7, 2001. Filed February 27, 2002. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED Maynard D. Grant, Grant & Newcomb, Seattle, WA, for the petitioner-appellant. Kenneth M. Robins, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, ID, for the respondent-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, B. Lynn Winmill, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-98-00387-BLW. Before: LAY, * TROTT, and BERZON, Circuit Judges. BERZON, Circuit Judge: 1 Idaho state prisoner William Gray was convicted of killing his wife, Betty Gray, and her friend, Reeda Roundy. Gray unsuccessfully sought relief in the Idaho state court system before filing a habeas petition in federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 . The district court denied the petition but granted a certificate of appealability for each of Gray's claims. Because we find that the Idaho trial court's ("trial court") rulings regarding the admission of hearsay evidence violated Gray's constitutional rights and that the…

Idaho state prisoner William Gray was convicted of killing his wife, Betty Gray, and her friend, Reeda Roundy. Gray unsuccessfully sought relief in the Idaho state court system before filing a habeas petition in federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 . The district court denied the petition but granted a certificate of appealability for each of Gray’s claims. Because we find that the Idaho trial court’s (“trial court”) rulings regarding the admission of hearsay evidence violated Gray’s constitutional rights and that the requisite harmless error standard was met, we reverse.

I. Facts

On July 24,1989, LeRoy Leavitt went to the Idaho Falls, Idaho home of Reeda Roundy. There, he found Roundy and Betty Gray, Roundy’s best friend and Leavitt’s lover, dead from gunshot wounds to the head. After more than two years of investigation of four suspects, the government indicted Betty Gray’s husband of 29 years, William Gray, for the murders and a related burglary count.

A. The State’s Theory

According to the state, after learning that Betty Gray was having an affair with Leavitt and that she wanted a divorce, Gray hatched a plan to Ml his wife and took steps to ensure that he would not…

(Concurring in part, dissenting in part):

In this case, my colleagues order a new trial for a man convicted of murdering his former wife and a friend. In my judgment, their ground for this errant order is nothing more than that he was not allowed to introduce in his defense stale, pointless, and untrustworthy hearsay evidence excluded by the trial court and Idaho’s Court of Appeals as inadmissable, irrelevant, and immaterial. Thus, although I agree with much of my colleagues’ otherwise excellent opinion, I respectfully dissent on the dis-positive issue.

I

Hearsay

My colleagues conclude that the trial judge and Idaho’s appellate courts were guilty of the asymmetrical application of state law evidentiary standards with respect to “parallel evidence.” I respectfully disagree.

1.

Betty Gray’s Statements

The trial court’s decision to allow some of victim Betty Gray’s out-of-court statements under Idaho’s residual hearsay exception did not violate William Gray’s Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses. See U.S. Const, amend. VI; Idaho R. Evid. 803(24). In this respect, I agree with my colleagues. When a declar-ant is unavailable to testify, the Confrontation Clause…