The Akron Legal News

Court cites statute of limitations in reversing death penalty appeal

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: December 13, 2016

A sharply divided panel of judges in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed habeas corpus relief for Genesis Hill RECENTLY with a majority ruling that recognized evidence that was suppressed at trial, but that cited a statute of limitations for so-called "Brady" claims.

Hill was sentenced to death in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas for the 1991 kidnapping and murder of his daughter, 6-month-old Dominika Dudley.

The state's main witness against Hill was the baby's mother and Hill's then-girlfriend, Teresa Dudley.

Evidence presented at trial established that the two had been witnessed arguing about child support, that the child's body was found in a box and wrapped in trash bags with a shirt similar to what Hill would wear wrapped around Dominika's fractured skull, and that a barrette similar to what the baby was wearing when she went to sleep the night of her murder was found in Hill's garage.

After finding little relief in various state court appeals, Hill filed a habeas petition in the United Stated District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in June 1998 raising numerous arguments including a claim under Brady v. Maryland alleging that the prosecution had suppressed favorable evidence during his trial, though he did not cite what exactly that evidence was.

In 2005, Hill filed a second amended petition, again citing Brady violations on the part of the state without specifics.

Those claims were dismissed by the district court for their "utter lack of substance."

In 2007, Hill discovered that suppressed evidence: a police report from the night that Dominika went missing that allegedly indicated that Teresa had been a suspect in the murder investigation.

In March 2011, Hill moved the district court to reconsider his habeas petition and the Brady claims contained therein in the face of actual evidence that had been suppressed.

The district court granted the motion to reconsider and examined the new evidence as well as added materials in the form of Teresa's grand jury testimony, which was disclosed in 2010 and which Hill claimed showed inconsistencies in her story.

Based on that evidence, the district court granted habeas relief in March 2013.

The case made its way to the 6th Circuit Court for review upon a state appeal concerning the Brady claim and a cross appeal from Hill.

The majority of the circuit court's three-judge appellate panel, in an opinion authored by Judge David McKeague, held that Hill's Brady claim was time-barred and that the district court abused its discretion when it granted habeas relief on reconsideration.

Citing Hill's original petition, in which he only claimed a suspicion that there may have been suppressed evidence, the majority held that under the relation-back doctrine, a catch-all Brady claim could not be used to circumvent statues of limitations.

"We understand the rationale behind the district court's decision, which was largely based on equitable principles and the fact that the state did suppress evidence," McKeague wrote. "The district court's point is well-taken; we agree that Hill had a colorable basis to suspect the state had suppressed evidence and we agree that the state is hardly in a position to invoke equitable principles."

The majority even noted a worrisome trend in the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office of suppressing evidence.

Still, it held that its disapproval of the state's actions did not explain Hill's delay in presenting the police report for over three years after he discovered it.

McKeague wrote that, under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the majority could not "simply ignore" a "congressionally mandated requirement" and the one-year statute of limitations.

"We therefore hold that the district court abused its discretion in bypassing AEDPA's statute of limitations to grant Hill's motion to amend or reconsider his Brady claim," McKeague concluded. "Because the claim is time-barred, the district court's award of conditional relief ... must be reversed."

In his dissent, Judge R. Guy Cole wrote of "today's grim game" in federal courts of "prosecutor may hide, defendant must seek."

"Genesis Hill was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Hamilton County, Ohio," Cole wrote. "At nearly every chance since, in both state and federal postconviction proceedings, Hill has maintained that the state withheld favorable evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland.

"His claims proved prophetic: Sixteen years after Hill's conviction, a private investigator learned that the Cincinnati Police Department, through its infamous practice of creating 'homicide books,' suppressed a report which pointed to a key prosecution witness as a suspect in the murder investigation."

Cole noted that Hill was convicted largely based on circumstantial evidence and though the suppressed evidence may not exonerate him, it could help him substantially build his defense.

"The majority's true concern, it seems, is that any given prisoner could include a 'catch-all Brady claim' in his original habeas petition and, if suppressed evidence 'eventually turns up,' then wait 'five, 10, or even 20 years to present' it to the district court," Cole wrote. "One struggles to imagine a scenario where this parade of horribles would come to pass."

Cole also criticized the majority's "mere disapproval" of the "state's decades-long deception" and Hamilton County's consistent history of suppressing evidence.

"The willingness of federal judges to turn a blind eye will likewise incentivize prosecutors to avert their gaze from exculpatory evidence, secure in the belief that, if it turns up after the defendant has been convicted, judges will dismiss the Brady violations as immaterial, or worse, on procedural grounds," Cole concluded. "Because the state's dishonest conduct and unwarranted concealment should attract no judicial approbation, I respectfully dissent."

Judge Alice Batchelder concurred with McKeague to form the majority and reverse the district court's decision to grant Hill habeas corpus relief.

The case is cited Hill v. Mitchell, Case Nos. 13-3412/3492.

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