Campbell v. Dretke

117 F. App'x 946
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedDecember 9, 2004
Docket04-70005
StatusUnpublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 117 F. App'x 946 (Campbell v. Dretke) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Campbell v. Dretke, 117 F. App'x 946 (5th Cir. 2004).

Opinion

DENNIS, Circuit Judge: *

In 1991, Robert James Campbell was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the murder of Alexandra Rendon. On June 14,1995, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Campbell’s conviction and sentence on direct review. Campbell v. State, 910 S.W.2d 475 (Tex. Crim.App.1995), 1 cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1140, 116 S.Ct. 1430, 134 L.Ed.2d 552 (1996). Campbell, through counsel ap *949 pointed by the Court of Criminal Appeals, filed a state habeas application raising two grounds for relief. 2 The Texas habeas court denied habeas relief as to each of Campbell’s claims, and on March 8, 2000, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the lower court’s denial. In late 2000, Campbell filed a timely petition for writ of habeas in federal district court raising seven grounds for relief. The district court denied Campbell’s petition in its entirety and refused to grant a certificate of appealability (“COA”). Campbell v. Dretke, H-00-3844 (S.D.Tex. March 20, 2003) [hereinafter Ct. Op.]

Campbell now seeks a COA on six grounds: (1) denial of his constitutional entitlement to a lesser-included offense instruction; (2) constitutional error in instructing the jury on the conspiracy law of parties during the liability phase of his trial; (3) procedural default does not bar his claims that his trial and appellate counsel provided ineffective assistance; (4) ineffective assistance of trial counsel; (5) ineffective assistance of appellate counsel; and (6) the federal district court’s denial of authorization for intellectual functioning testing. We DENY Campbell’s application for a COA on all of his claims.

BACKGROUND

On January 3, 1991, Alexandra Rendon left her job at Bank One between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. She was wearing a white leather skirt, a cream-colored dress coat with snake skin patches on the shoulders, a high school graduation ring, an engagement ring, and a watch. At 10:53 p.m. Ms. Rendon purchased gasoline at a Chevron station located near her place of employment. The next day, Ms. Rendon’s mother realized that her daughter was missing, and on January 5, she contacted the police about her daughter’s disappearance.

On January 14, 1991, the police picked up Lawrence Thomas, Campbell’s friend of three years, for questioning. Thomas told the police that Campbell had told him that he and his friend Lewis had gotten a car from a lady at a gas station, driven her to a field, and shot and killed her. On January 15, Thomas led the police to the field where Campbell had told him that Ms. Rendon’s body was located. On January 16, the police arrested Campbell for Ms. Rendon’s murder.

At trial, the State presented several witnesses whose testimony tied Campbell to the commission of Ms. Rendon’s murder. Campbell’s friends Thomas, Carey Pennamon, and Jesse Criff all testified that Campbell told them that he had shot and killed a woman whose car he’d taken at a gas station. Campbell also mentioned to two friends watching a news story about Ms. Rendon’s murder, Otha Norton and Sheila Robeson, that Ms. Rendon looked like the woman he’d shot and killed.

Additionally, Campbell told Thomas, Criff, and Pennamon that he’d shot at Ms. Rendon twice, hitting her the second time. He told Pennamon that he told her to “run, bitch run” before shooting at her and told Thomas that he’d told her to walk away from the car before shooting at her. He showed Thomas the field where he’d left Ms. Rendon’s body, and described the location to Criff. That field was where the police later recovered Ms. Rendon’s body.

The police also recovered many of Ms. Rendon’s belongings from Campbell’s friends and family. They recovered the *950 coat Ms. Rendon had been wearing from Campbell’s mother Wilda, the class ring and watch she had been wearing from Campbell’s girlfriend Demetrius Brown, 3 and the gun used to kill Ms. Rendon from Campbell’s friend Pennamon. Pennamon testified that Campbell had asked him to hold onto the gun. Campbell offered Ms. Rendon’s white leather skirt, which Thomas had seen earlier in the car Campbell was driving, to his friends Robeson and Norton. Robeson declined the skirt because it was dirty and Norton later threw it away. Campbell told Pennamon that he had taken the personal belongings of the woman he had killed. Campbell also drove numerous friends, including Thomas, Norton, and Robeson around in a car identical to Ms. Rendon’s.

The police recovered semen of two men from Ms. Rendon’s body. Campbell told Criff that he had sex with his victim and told Thomas that Leroy Lewis, who was with Campbell that night, had also had sex with her. DNA testing further determined that 85.3% of African-American males could be excluded from contributing the semen attributed to Campbell, 4 and only four percent of African-American males could have contributed the semen attributed to Lewis.

Although the draft jury charge contained instructions on felony murder, murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated murder, the State objected to the inclusion of any lesser-included offense instruction. The instructions given only allowed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty or guilty of capital murder. The jury found Campbell guilty of capital murder.

Punishment Phase

During the punishment phase, the State offered evidence of other crimes Campbell had committed. Aside from judgments of conviction against Campbell for two robberies, the State presented evidence of two other carjacking crimes he committed about the time of Ms. Rendon’s disappearance. In both instances Campbell confronted persons getting into their cars, abducted them, took them to a remote location, and stole their personal possessions. In one instance, Campbell ordered the victim to walk away from the vehicle and shot at him twice, missing both times. In the other, Campbell’s accomplice talked him out of his plan to shoot the female victim and drown her son in a nearby lake.

The defense called three family members and a friend to testify on Campbell’s behalf. They testified that Campbell was remorseful, needed rehabilitation, was loved by his family, and would not be a future danger to society. On May 21, 1991, the jury answered Texas’ special issues in a manner requiring the imposition of a death sentence.

DISCUSSION

Campbell’s § 2254 habeas petition is subject to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) because he filed his petition after its enactment. See Pub.L. No. 104-132, 100 Stat. 1214; Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782, 792, 121 S.Ct. 1910, 150 L.Ed.2d 9 (2001). Under AEDPA, Campbell may not appeal the district court’s denial of habeas relief until he has obtained a COA. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1) (2000); Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 478, 120 S.Ct. 1595, 146 L.Ed.2d 542 (2000).

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117 F. App'x 946, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/campbell-v-dretke-ca5-2004.