Gordon v. State

2016 UT App 190, 382 P.3d 1063, 820 Utah Adv. Rep. 19, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 191, 2016 WL 4578933
CourtCourt of Appeals of Utah
DecidedSeptember 1, 2016
Docket20140518-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 2016 UT App 190 (Gordon v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Utah primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gordon v. State, 2016 UT App 190, 382 P.3d 1063, 820 Utah Adv. Rep. 19, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 191, 2016 WL 4578933 (Utah Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

Opinion

TOOMEY, Judge:

¶1 Adrian Gordon appeals the district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the State and dismissing his petition for post-conviction relief with prejudice. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 Lee Lundskog 2 was found dead outside a convenience store in Salt Lake County in the early morning of September 29, 2001. The State’s chief medical examiner (Medical Examiner) conducted an autopsy and determined that the manner of death was homicide, caused by numerous blows to Lunds-kog’s head. An eyewitness, Gustavo Diaz-Hemandez, reported that he saw someone repeatedly kicking and stomping Lundskog’s head. According to Diaz-Hemandez, Lunds-kog’s attacker was a muscular black male with short hair wearing a light-colored shirt, baggy shorts, and white tennis shoes. Gordon fit this description and was filmed by the store’s surveillance video camera around the time Lundskog was killed. Diaz-Hemandez later identified Gordon as the assailant. Another witness, Robert Mellen, saw Gordon wave Lundskog toward him shortly before Diaz-Hernandez witnessed someone stomping on Lundskog’s head. The surveillance video corroborated the timeline of events testified to by Diaz-Hemandez and Mellen, but did not capture the murder itself.

¶3 Gordon was arrested for Lundskog’s homieidé and was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder after a bench trial. Gordon appealed, arguing the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, concluding that “[ajmple evidence supports Gordon’s conviction.” State v. Gordon, 2004 UT 2, ¶¶ 1, 14, 84 P.3d 1167.

¶4 Thereafter, Gordon arranged for new counsel, who began collecting documents related to his case. On October 13, 2008, the police department provided Gordon’s attorneys with a CD containing documents related to its investigation. Upon reviewing the CD, Gordon’s attorneys discovered images of some handwritten notes (the Notes) made by a detective (Detective) that were never disclosed to Gordon’s trial counsel. Detective wrote the Notes during the autopsy of Lundskog’s body, and they contain Detective’s own observations and memorialize statements made by Medical Examiner. The Notes appear to say “Not characteristic of ‘Baseball Bat’ ” “Instrument” “More rough & uneven Edges & surface.” In addition, according to Gordon, he learned for the first time on October 23, 2009, that a blood-spattered cement fence panel found lying next to Lundskog’s body was not preserved as physical evidence.

¶5 On October 28, 2009, Gordon filed a petition for relief pursuant to the Post-Con *1066 viction Remedies Act (PCRA), claiming that his constitutional rights to due process and to the effective assistance of counsel were violated. The petition raised three grounds for relief. First, Gordon alleged that his right to due process was violated when the State withheld the exculpatory evidence contained in the Notes. Second, Gordon alleged that his right to due process was violated when the police failed to collect or preserve the cement panel that was “critical physical evidence from the crime scene.” Third, Gordon alleged that if the court determined that the Notes or the cement panel were available to him at trial or could have been discovered through reasonable diligence, his trial counsel was constitutionally deficient for failing to discover or present the Notes or the cement panel at trial and for failing to present expert testimony to refute the State’s evidence as to the manner of Lundskog’s death.

¶6 The parties filed cross-motions for partial summary judgment on Gordon’s first ground for relief. 3 Gordon argued that his due process rights had been violated by the State’s failure to disclose the Notes before trial, whereas the State contended that Gordon suffered no prejudice from the suppression of the Notes. The district court agreed with the State. The court first explained' that the parties agreed the State suppressed the Notes and that, for purposes of summary judgment, a reasonable inference existed that the Notes were favorable to Gordon. The only remaining issue, as the court further explained, was whether Gordon was prejudiced by the State’s failure to disclose the Notes. The resolution of this question turned on whether the Notes were material, that is, whether their suppression undermined confidence in the outcome of Gordon’s trial.

¶7 The district court explained that although the precise implication of the Notes was unclear, it accepted Gordon’s interpretation: the words “Not Characteristic of ‘Baseball Bat,’” “Instrument,” “More rough & uneven Edges and surface” referred to the instrument involved in the attack. Put another way, the Notes suggested that the instrument involved in Lundskog’s murder had more rough and uneven edges and surface than a baseball bat. 4 The court concluded that the Notes were not material and Gordon was not prejudiced by the State’s failure to disclose them before trial. It reasoned that the State’s theory at trial was that Lundskog was stomped to death by a person wearing sneakers with a “waffle type pattern” on the bottom. 5 The court further reasoned, “A shoe with a ‘waffle pattern’ unquestionably has *1067 ... more rough and uneven edges and surface than a baseball bat (which is completely smooth and has no edges), especially when the shoe is being used to stomp with the heel.” Thus, in the district court’s view, the Notes were not inconsistent -with the State’s evidence at trial or its theory regarding the manner of death. It further concluded that although Gordon could have “used the Notes to question [Medical Examiner] and Detective ... and maybe find some measure of disagreement,” they “cannot ‘reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict or sentence.’ ” (Quoting Tillman v. State, 2005 UT 56, ¶ 31, 128 P.3d 1123.) Because the court believed Gordon received a fair trial with a ‘“verdict worthy of confidence,’ ” it determined that his due process rights were not violated by the State’s failure to disclose the Notes before trial. (Quoting id. ¶ 30.) Accordingly, the court denied Gordon’s motion for summary judgment and granted the State’s motion on Gordon’s first ground for relief.

¶8 Later, the State filed another motion for summary judgment, this time arguing that Gordon’s remaining grounds for relief were procedurally barred and failed on their merits. The district court granted this motion. In its ruling, the court determined that Gordon’s second and third grounds for relief were both procedurally barred and meritless.

¶9 The court based its rulings on a provision of the PCRA providing that a person is not eligible for relief on any ground that could have been but was not raised at trial or on appeal. Utah Code Ann. § 78B-9-106(l)(c) (LexisNexis 2012).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2016 UT App 190, 382 P.3d 1063, 820 Utah Adv. Rep. 19, 2016 Utah App. LEXIS 191, 2016 WL 4578933, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gordon-v-state-utahctapp-2016.