House, Paul Gregory v. Bell, Ricky (warden) (06/12/2006)

Questions presented: (1) Did the majority below err in applying the Supreme Court's decision in Schlup v. Delo to hold that petitioner's compelling new evidence, though presenting at the very least a colorable claim of actual innocence, was as a matter of law insufficient to excuse his failure to present that evidence before the state courts - merely because he had failed to negate each and every item of circumstantial evidence that had been offered against him at the original trial? (2) What constitutes a "truly persuasive showing of actual innocence" pursuant to Herrera v. Collins sufficient to warrant freestanding habeas relief?

BY DAVID MURPHY, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Paul House has evidence, evidence everywhere, but the courts refuse to hear a drop.

Or rather, House can't present his alleged proof of innocence in the one court that matters, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. It's in this court where House's habeas corpus petition lies – one of his final chances to avoid the death penalty, following his conviction in the 1985 murder of Carolyn Muncey.

A resident of Muncey's Union County, Tenn., neighborhood, House allegedly attempted to sexually assault Muncey in the late evening hours of July 13, 1985. Following the rape-gone-wrong, prosecutors at House's 1986 murder trial alleged that House killed Muncey and dumped her violently battered body at the bank of a nearby creek.

Two witnesses saw House emerge from the same creek the afternoon following Muncey's death. After talking to the defendant, the pair became suspicious and investigated the area after House left, finding Muncey's body. Prosecutors would later reinforce that House not only failed to mention anything about a body at the time, but was seen wiping his hands off on a dark material as he exited the creek – allegedly part of the clothing he wore on the murder night.

In talking to police, House maintained that he had nothing to do with Muncey's death, nor did he leave his own residence that entire Saturday evening. But House's girlfriend at the time, Donna Turner, testified that House not only took a walk around 10:45 that night, but arrived back home about an hour later, panting and exhausted. He was also minus the shirt and shoes he wore when he left.

The jeans House wore that night – which he claimed to have worn that Sunday as well – were found stuffed in the bottom of a laundry hamper. Bloodstains on the pants shared similar, scientific characteristics with the victim's, and the fibers of the pants themselves matched fibers found on Muncey's clothing. While House's semen wasn't technically found on Muncey's nightgown, House nevertheless matched the same, general type of secretor as the fluids' owner.

While the evidence against House was predominantly circumstantial, it was enough for the trial jury to convict House of the first-degree murder and sentence him to death.

Following his initial sentencing, House petitioned the trial court for post-conviction relief. On paper, he argued that counsel in his murder case was ineffective, but no such argument was allegedly spoken or testified to. The trial court subsequently denied House's pro se petition.

His claims of innocence unwavering, House decided to find new attorneys.

"During the course of their representation of Mr. House, they began to discover that there was evidence for Mr. House's innocence out there," said Stephen Kissinger, an assistant federal community defender.

House filed a second petition for post-conviction relief in December 1990. But rather than hear his new evidence, the trial court ruled the point was moot – House already had an opportunity to present his additional appeals, and had essentially waived his ability to do so by not presenting the evidence in his first post-conviction proceeding.

Seeking further relief, House turned to the federal system. He filed a habeas corpus petition in U.S. District Court on Sept. 30, 1996, seeking to present his original claims of ineffective assistance of counsel during the murder trial.

"In federal District Court, Mr. House contended that his ineffective assistance of counsel – the fault of counsel to fully investigate his claims that he didn't commit the offense – actually resulted in the conviction of an innocent person," Smith said. "So he was traveling under a ‘miscarriage of justice' theory, and asserting his innocence of the offense as a gateway through which he could reach his defaulted claim."

House presented a large amount of additional evidence to the District Court in an attempt to establish his actual innocence of the crime. The state's own medical examiner, Dr. Cleland Blake, testified that the blood samples retrieved from Muncey's autopsy leaked while in transit to the DCI Laboratory. After analyzing the enzymes of the blood in the tubes and on House's jeans, he testified that the blood on the jeans likely came from the spilled test tubes, as opposed to Muncey during the course of her killing.

Blake also testified that injuries seen on House's hands the day after the murder were inconsistent with trial prosecutors' beliefs that House's received the injuries during the struggle with Muncey. Instead, the injuries appeared to be anywhere from two to seven days old.

New DNA evidence also concluded that the semen found on Muncey's nightgown belonged to her husband, Hubert Muncey. House argued that this invalidated the allegation that he tried to rape Carolyn Muncey. Rape was the prosecution's sole motive for the killing, as well as an aggravating factor that weighed into the death penalty sentence.

At the District Court proceedings, House even brought forth additional testimony to suggest a different killer: Hubert Muncey himself. His friends, Kathy Parker and Penny Letner, testified that Muncey confessed to killing his wife at separate times after the murder. Parker attempted to report the confession to local authorities, but Letner was allegedly too frightened to come forth.

One of Muncey's neighbors, Artie Lawson, also testified that the husband had come to her the day after the murder, asking if she would help fashion a story about his whereabouts the night before. He wanted her to say that she had seen him at a dance the night of the murder; she refused. Testifying before the court, Muncey nevertheless alleged that he had been at the dance the entire evening.

The District Court ruled against House's habeas petition, stating that the additional evidence was inefficient to demonstrate his innocence of the crime. The court also found that the testimony of House himself, as well as the testimony of the two witnesses against Muncey, was not credible.

"Just as a point of law, it‘s not even possible to obtain a conviction against someone on the basis of an uncorroborated confession," Smith said. "And the fact of the matter is, not only is there no evidence to support what [House] says happened, there is evidence that is completely to the contrary."

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court's finding, ruling in a 7-6 en banc decision that House's new claims were insufficient to establish his actual innocence. The 1995 case of Schlup v. Delo was used as the litmus test for House's additional evidence.

According to Kissinger, Schlup forces a court to look at the totality of evidence presented, including that seen in the original trial and any new evidence presented. A court will then assess the evidence from the standpoint of a juror to determine whether a "miscarriage of justice" is being performed through the conviction of an innocent person.

"Schlup requires a demonstration that, more likely than not, no reasonable juror would convict in light of the evidence," Smith said. "And one of the problems that we see in our view with Mr. House's case … while he may have presented some contradictory evidence and while he may have raised some questions and some things that could have been brought out in cross-examination, there is nothing he presented that completely undermines any of the essential elements of the offense."

However, in dissent, Judge Gilbert Merritt wrote that House is one of the few cases that qualifies as a "rare or extraordinary case" in terms of an innocent man being convicted. Not only does House's additional evidence easily fall within the standards required by Schlup, Merritt argued, but it also qualifies for the more difficult-to-obtain standard set forth in 1993 in Herrera v. Collins.

Unlike Schlup, which requires House to attach a constitutional error to his claims of innocence, the Herrera standard is not based on any faults of due process. Rather, Herrera is a free-standing claim of innocence, independent of any issues related to rights of due process.

"By free-standing, I mean it assumes that a state court trial is perfectly fair: that he had effective counsel, that the court didn't violate his rights, that the prosecution didn't violate his rights. It just came out with an incorrect result, and we can show that on the basis of new evidence," Kissinger said.

The U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for review on June 28, 2005. The nine justices are tasked with deciding whether House's new evidence warrants a revisiting of his District Court habeas claim under Schlup, Herrera, or neither.

According to Kissinger, the Supreme Court should reason that the District Court failed in its application of Schlup to House's case. Rather than considering the new evidence in conjunction with the prosecution's trial evidence, Kissinger said that the District Court only considered whether each, individual piece would, in itself, nullify the prosecution's case. To the defense, this is a misapplication of the standard.

Kissinger is also asking the Supreme Court to define the bar a defendant is required to reach in order to claim actual innocence under the Herrera standard. According to Kissinger, a claim under Herrera should exist independent of any other relief claims, as the 8th Amendment prevents the incarceration or execution of an innocent person. The court should be held to the notion that no rational juror could convict, Kissinger said. This would be a higher threshold than the Schlup requirement, which requires that a hypothetical juror would not likely convict a defendant when presented with the additional evidence.

Should Kissinger be defeated at the high court, it will signal the end of House's 20-year procession through the legal system. Barring any extraordinary appeals or executive clemencies, House's fate is locked.

"Unless he is successful in the Supreme Court, he has no other remedy," said Smith, who's arguing the state's case before the Court. "Upon conclusion of federal habeas, the state is then free under Tennessee state law to pursue an execution date at that point."

On June 28, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted review in the case and allowed House to proceed without costs.

On June 12, 2006, the Court sided with House, concluding that because he made a convincing showing of actual innocence, his habeas petition would be heard.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the Court's majority opinion, in which he said that although House's showing satisfies the standard under Schlup that casts enough doubt of his guilt to trigger review in federal court, it does not meet the Herrera standard of freestanding innocence which would render his imprisonment and execution unconstitutional.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas concurred in the judgment but dissented in part. Justice Samuel Alito took no part in the case.