Forte v. Medeiros

239 F. Supp. 3d 310, 2017 WL 937713, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33852
District Court, D. Massachusetts·Decided March 9, 2017·No. Civil Action No. 14-40173-TSH·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

HILLMAN, D.J.

Background

Michael Forte (“Forte” or “Petitioner”) has filed a Petition Under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 For Writ Of Habeas Corpus By A Person In State Custody (Docket No. 6)(“Petition”) against Sean Medeiros, Superintendent, MCI-Norfolk, Norfolk, MA (“Respondent”). Petitioner was convicted in Massachusetts' Superior Court of murder in the first degree on the theory of extreme atrocity or cruelty and sentenced to life in prison. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC”) affirmed his conviction on January 10, 2014. On December 8, 2014, he filed his Petition in which he asserts the following three grounds for relief: , •

Ground One: The trial court deprived of his Sixth Amendment Right to compulsory process by refusing to allow him to recall the two percipient witnesses in his case-in-chief.
Ground Two: The trial court deprived him of his Fourteenth Amendment Right; to present a complete defense by delaying access to review of a surveillance .yideo, by refusing to .allow the defense to examine two identification witnesses, and because there was no direct physical evidence he had committed the murder.
Ground Three: The trial court deprived him of his Fourteenth Amendment Right to a fair trial by allowing the admission of tainted material evidence.

Forte has exhausted state-court remedies with respect to all of the grounds for relief asserted in his Petition. For the following reasons, the Petition is denied,

Facts1

The Underlying Crime

At approximately 3 a.m. oh July 27, 2008, Ivette Torres (“Torres”) and her [314]*314cousin, Jariely Vazquez (“Vazquez”), who were both eighteen years of age at the time, left Torres’s house on Howard Street in Springfield, Massachusetts in order to get something to eat. They walked to Main Street, and turned left onto Main Street to head toward the Crown Fried Chicken restaurant, located on the northwest corner of State and Main Streets. As they walked along the west side of Main Street, they passed the victim, Steven Donoghue, a local homeless man who was resting in the alcove of Chapin’s Furniture Store at the intersection of Main and Bliss Streets. The women exchanged greetings with the victim, whom they had seen before in the neighborhood, and continued onward. Shortly thereafter, the women noticed a man coming toward them from in front of the restaurant. As the man approached, he shouted at the women angrily, calling them “bitches and sluts.” The women had almost reached the corner of State and Main Streets when they decided to cross Main Street because they were afraid of the approaching man. They observed that the man continued to' walk south along the west side of Main Street, toward where they had seen the victim.

When the women reached the United Bank on the northeast corner of State and Main Streets, they looked across the intersection and saw that the restaurant was closed. They turned back to return to Howard Street and noticed the man who had been shouting at them washing his hands in a puddle “next” to where they had seen the victim. When they heard an automobile horn, the women turned away, and when they looked back the man was gone. The women walked south on Main Street, back in the direction from which they came, and crossed Main Street near Bliss Street. When they approached the alcove where they had seen the victim resting, they saw that his throat had been slit and he was covered in blood. Torres attempted to dial 911 from her cellular telephone but the battery had died, and the women continued south on Main Street until they were able to stop a passing motor vehicle and contact the police. From the time they left Torres’s apartment to the time they sought assistance in calling the police, the women did not see anyone else on Main Street other than the victim and the man who had shouted at them.

The women initially described the man they had seen to the police as “a white male ... wearing a black T-shirt [and] tan pants,” in his forties, “with a pot belly but not really fat or built.” They described his hair as “bushy, blond, possibly whitish” or gray, and “scruffy.” Both women observed that the man had white lettering on the front and back of his shirt and that he was walking strangely. An officer broadcast a description of the perpetrator as approximately forty to fifty years of age, with “kind of bushy, shoulder-length, blondish-gray hair, wearing a black T-shirt and tan pants.” The women went to the police station and were shown many photographs of men from the police data base who were between forty and fifty years old; they did not recognize any of them. At around 6 a.m., a police detective was returning to the station from the scene when he saw the Forte leaving a small park wearing a black T-shirt and tan pants. The officer observed that Forte’s clothing was wet and his shirt was inside out, and that he fit the general description of the potential perpetrator. The detective stopped, asked to speak to Forte, and conducted a pat-down to ensure he had no weapons. The detec[315]*315tive then informed the police dispatch that he had found an individual who fit the description of the perpetrator.

Shortly thereafter, another detective brought Torres and Vazquez to the area. The detective instructed only Torres to step out of the police cruiser and look at the man. She understood that she was being asked to determine whether it was the man she had seen three hours prior. She later reported that she did not feel rushed. Torres told the detective and Vazquez that, although the man had similar clothing, he was not the man she had seen.2 Afterward, the women returned to the station to look at more photographs, but could not identify anyone as the perpetrator. On July 28, the police acquired footage from the surveillance videotapes at MassMutual Center (“MassMutual”), located at the northeast corner of State and Main Streets, and from the restaurant. The MassMutual footage from around the time of the murder shows a silhouette walking south on the west side of Main Street, crossing in front of the restaurant, wearing a dark top and lighter pants. The restaurant videotape, which provides a clearer image, depicts an individual, walking south on Main Street, who the police determined fit the description provided by the two women. Two officers familiar with Forte, who had each seen him within the last two days, recognized him as the man in the restaurant videotape. Later that day, the two women returned to the police station, where each woman was shown the restaurant videotape separately and asked if she saw anybody that she did or did not recognize. Both confirmed that the man in the videotape was the man they had seen that night. Torres also indicated that it was the same man she had seen at the show-up the day before, but that she had not recognized him then because his hair had been darker and wet and his shirt was inside out, hiding the white lettering.3 Immediately after watching the videotape, each woman was shown a photographic array containing eight individual color photographs of men between the ages of forty-eight and fifty-two with other characteristics matching those of Forte. The women were told that the man they had seen may or may not be among the photographs. Each selected Forte as the man she had seen that night and in the videotape.

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Forte v. Medeiros, 239 F. Supp. 3d 310, 2017 WL 937713, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33852 (D. Mass. 2017).

239 F. Supp. 3d 310 (Forte v. Medeiros) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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