Pillette v. Foltz

580 F. Supp. 1290, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19258
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Michigan
DecidedFebruary 22, 1984
DocketCiv. A. No. 82-72582
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 580 F. Supp. 1290 (Pillette v. Foltz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pillette v. Foltz, 580 F. Supp. 1290, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19258 (E.D. Mich. 1984).

Opinion

OPINION

GILMORE, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court upon Pillette’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner has exhausted all state remedies and is presently incarcerated for life in the State Prison of Southern Michigan on two convictions of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. For the reasons given in this opinion, the Court denies the petition for habeas corpus.

I

Petitioner and Scarlet Smith were both charged with one count of felony murder in the perpetration of rape, one count of first degree premeditated murder, and two counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct. The charges arose out of the alleged sexual assault and murder of defendant Smith’s three year old daughter, Josette Smith. Following a jury trial, petitioner was convicted of felony murder, and Smith of second degree murder as a lesser included offense under the felony murder count. Both petitioner and Smith were also found guilty of two counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, but were acquitted of first degree premeditated murder. Both were sentenced to three terms of life imprisonment. In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals of Michigan set aside Pillette’s conviction of felony murder, and reduced the conviction to that of manslaughter, but let stand the conviction on two counts of criminal sexual conduct (No. 77-2418) (1980). The Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal, 411 Mich. 875 (1981).

The facts surrounding the case are shocking, but need to be set forth. Petitioner and Smith acknowledged that they had beaten Josette for disciplinary reasons at petitioner’s house on October 4, 1976. Petitioner said, both at trial and in statements to police, that Josette had been disobedient and defiant on that date, that he wished to cure her of her bad habits, and that he had intermittently struck her with his hands, his leather belt, a switch, and a broomstick over a period of approximately six hours. He also stated that he and Smith had taped her to a kitchen chair for some time so he could strike her on the buttocks without her attempting to escape.

Smith admitted at trial and to the police that she had participated in striking Josette with a stick and the broomstick, although much less extensively and frequently than Pillette.

Pillette claims that after approximately six hours of the above-described disciplinary measures, he and Smith gave Josette a bath and noticed that she was becoming very limp and unresponsive. He testified they put her on a couch in the living room for about two hours, and then realized that she had stopped breathing. They left her on the couch for the night and began formulating plans to dispose of her body. After rejecting several schemes, they buckled petitioner’s belt around her body, encased the body in plastic garbage bags, and placed her in the cooler in petitioner’s garage.

At trial, a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Josette testified that the child died as a result of multiple injuries sustained during a beating inflicted shortly before her death. He further found pinpoint hemorrhages in her eyes, indicating death by asphyxiation. The pathologist further testified that the child’s external genitalia and hymen revealed signs of tearing and laceration, and that the injuries were the result of a sexual assault and not the result of a beating. He could not precisely identify the object used to inflict the injuries, and testified that, while the injuries were not inconsistent [1292]*1292with those caused by a human penis, he could only ascertain that they were inflicted with a blunt object. He found no sperm on or inside the child’s body.

Smith acknowledged that, as part of a preconceived mutual plan of coverup, she drove to a K-Mart store on the day following Josette’s death and telephoned the police to report her child missing, and possibly kidnapped, from her car in the parking lot. Next, according to their plan, Smith called petitioner, and he met her at the store. Both were escorted to the Sixteenth Police Precinct in Detroit for further questioning concerning the alleged kidnapping. After a few hours, the police became suspicious about inconsistencies between Smith’s and petitioner’s separate accounts of their whereabouts the previous night, and took petitioner to Detroit Police Headquarters at 1300 Beaubien Street in Detroit and booked him on suspicion of murder. Eventually both made statements to the police concerning their beating of Josette the previous day, and revealed the location of her body.1

Sometime in the early morning hours of the next day, petitioner was taken to the Taylor, Michigan, Police Department where he made a lengthy written confession. Both confessions were admitted into evidence at the trial. Defendant took the stand in his own defense and testified in a manner substantially similar to the statements he gave. During the confessions and during his testimony at trial, petitioner admitted the beatings, but consistently denied committing any sexual assault on the child.

II

Petitioner makes seven constitutional claims in his writ of habeas corpus. Only two of these claims have merit and require the attention of this Court. The first is [1293]*1293that petitioner was deprived of Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when his arrest was made without probable cause, and was deprived his Fifth Amendment due process rights when the trial court failed to suppress the confessions which resulted from an alleged illegal arrest. The other claim of substance is that petitioner was denied his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel when trial counsel failed to challenge the lack of probable cause for the arrest of the petitioner and allowed the fruits of that arrest, namely, the confessions, to be used against the petitioner.

Under normal circumstances, this Court would be precluded from reviewing the legality of petitioner’s arrest due to the contemporaneous objection rule, as no objection to the introduction of the fruits of the arrest was made at trial. Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1982); Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). Under Sykes, an adequate and independent state procedural ground — e.g. a state contemporaneous objection rule which would prevent direct review of an issue— will bar federal habeas relief absent a showing of “cause” and “prejudice.” In Sykes, the court said:

We therefore conclude that Florida procedure did, consistently with the United States Constitution, require that respondent’s confession be challenged at trial or not at all, and thus his failure to timely object to its admission amounted to an independent and adequate state procedural ground which would have prevented direct review here... We thus come to the crux of this case. Shall the rule of Francis v. Henderson, supra [425 U.S. 536, 96 S.Ct. 1708, 48 L.Ed.2d 149], barring federal habeas review absent a showing of “cause” and “prejudice” attendant to a state procedural waiver, be applied to a waived objection to the admission of a confession at trial? We answer that question in the affirmative.

Id. at 86-7, 97 S.Ct. at 2506.

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Bluebook (online)
580 F. Supp. 1290, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19258, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pillette-v-foltz-mied-1984.