Holmes, Bobby v. South Carolina (05/01/2006)

Question presented: Whether a state's rule governing admissibility of third-party guilt evidence violates a criminal defendant's constitutional right to present a complete defense grounded in due process, confrontation, and compulsory process clauses?

BY GABE ROTH & CIARAN MCEVOY, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Jimmy McCaw White began bragging to friends that he killed Mary Stewart shortly after she died in March 1990.

The police arrested Bobby Lee Holmes, though, hours after the crime occurred because Holmes' palm print was found at the scene. Since his murder conviction and sentence in 1995, Holmes has sat on death row in South Carolina. He claims that White did it.

The events that unfolded the morning of Dec. 31, 1989, link two men of similar height and build to the crime scene, the house of the 86-year-old Stewart. Stewart was beaten and raped, and she died from her injuries three months later.

Though he testified in court otherwise, White told numerous people that he committed the crime, according to statements given by a number of White's associates.

On the other hand, forensic evidence—such as a blood sample, DNA test and a palm print—points to Holmes, but that evidence, according to Holmes' lawyers, was contaminated by the police who framed Holmes.

Introducing evidence that White committed the crime presented a challenge for Holmes in court.

Following South Carolina law on third-party guilt, the trial court found the evidence against Holmes so compelling that naming White as the potential criminal in the case would have conflicted with 1941 and 2001 court precedents on third-party guilt issues.

In South Carolina an individual may imply the guilt of a third party during trial. However, he may not implicate a particular person unless there is specific evidence linking him or her to the crime.

Holmes claimed that the state's third-party guilt rule violated his due process rights, as York County trial court, state appellate court and the South Carolina Supreme Court all refused to admit evidence linking White to the crime.

By a vote of 4-1, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld Holmes' conviction in November 2004. Writing for the majority, Justice James Moore held that evidence impugning White specifically was not admissible.

"[E]vidence which can have no other effect than to cast a bare suspicion upon another, or to raise a conjectural inference as to the commission of the crime by another, is not admissible," Moore wrote.

In his dissent, Justice Costa Pleicones wrote that he would remand the case for a new trial due to differences between Holmes' case and the 1941 and 2001 third-party guilt precedents.

Pleicones found Holmes' claim that the police mishandled the evidence — coupled with White's confession — compelling enough to write that "the circuit court erred in refusing to allow appellant to introduce evidence of third-party guilt."

Donald Zelenka, the state's assistant deputy attorney general, who agrees with Moore's assessment, believes the evidence that Holmes wants to present is nothing more than a series of falsified testimony and exaggerated claims.

Such assertions, Zelenka said, are not enough to imply a third party in the crime.

Zelenka relies on the 1941 and 2001 South Carolina precedents to explain how state law has been narrowly construed to ensure that death row inmates do not implicate a third party haphazardly in order to introduce reasonable doubt.

In order to implicate White, Zelenka said, there would have to be "evidence that would exclude Holmes" from the crime scene due to some forensic finding.

"And there isn't," he added.

Zelenka points to a DNA test, which helped to convict Holmes in 1995: DNA found on Holmes' underwear was consistent with both that of Holmes and the victim.

Ann-Marie Luciano, who helped write an amicus brief for The Innocence Project in support of Holmes, believes that forensic evidence, instead of impeaching Holmes, should clear him.

For one, there were a number of problems with the way in which the police collected evidence, she said.

"The police didn't use gloves, they used a bag from the victim's house to collect evidence from the crime scene and they used the scraping method to collect fibers, which led to cross-contamination of the fibers," Luciano said.

Such evidence, which was not admitted at trial, would cast enough doubt that Holmes should be granted a new trial, Luciano argues, if it were not for the state's third-party guilt laws.

"Bobby Lee Holmes has a right to present his defense—that Jimmy White did it," Luciano said.

On Sept. 27, 2005, a few days before the start of its 2005-06 term, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for review, limited to the first question in Holmes' petition for certiorari.

Holmes v. South Carolina is one of five death penalty cases that the Supreme Court has granted review for this term. This case is the only one, however, whose core issue is third-party guilt.

During oral arguments on Feb. 22, 2006, Holmes's attorney John H. Blume said that South Carolina places too high a burden on defendants who wish to present evidence that another person committed the crime with which they are charged.

Prior South Carolina law said that so-called third-party evidence must raise "a reasonable inference or presumption" as to the defendant's innocence, Blume said. But the South Carolina Supreme Court's decision in the Holmes case requires that defendants wishing to present such evidence prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.

The "reasonable inference" standard is a lower threshold and allows juries to take the leading role in determining which facts are and which aren't, said Blume, a Cornell University law professor.

He added that the Court should not consider the strength of the evidence against the defendant in determining whether to admit evidence of third-party guilt. Judges should look at the defense's third-party evidence solely on its own merits, Blume said.

"Are you saying you cannot consider the strength of the prosecution's case at all in determining whether to allow third-party evidence?" asked Justice Antonin Scalia.

"Yes," Blume replied. "It's not necessary for a ruling in our favor in this case."

Blume argued that South Carolina went too far by ruling that the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution at Holmes's trial precluded any evidence that Jimmy McCaw White may have committed the crime.

"How can you tell whether it raises a reasonable inference in a vacuum without regard to the evidence on the other said?" inquired Chief Justice John Roberts.

Blume replied that it was up to juries, not judges to decide the credibility of such a defense.

Justice Samuel Alito said this case illustrates the difficulties between judges' gate-keeping powers and juries' fact-finding missions.

"Where is the line?" he asked.

South Carolina Assistant Deputy Attorney General Donald J. Zelenka disagreed with Blume's contention that judges cannot look at the strength of the prosecution's case in rendering their decision on third-party evidence.

How also said the South Carolina Supreme Court's decision fell in line with current state law.

But Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared to disagree.

"I would have to read this instruction of the South Carolina Supreme Court as saying I simply could not admit this evidence when there's forensic evidence," Kennedy said. "And that's a very strange proposition."

Justice Stephen Breyer said the problem may stem from the use of overbroad language by South Carolina's high court.

"The difficulty here is that the court went on to say something that couldn't possibly be true," Breyer said, "which is if you have a strong case against this guy, never admit this other thing."

Steffen N. Johnson, arguing amicus curiae on behalf of Kansas and in support of South Carolina, stressed that the trial court judge ruled there was nothing to corroborate White's confessions. But he admitted prosecutors could possibly get an indictment against White even if they couldn't necessarily get a conviction.

The bottom line, he said, was the evidence of White's confessions wasn't strong enough to meet the standard for a due process violation.

In rebuttal, Blume concluded by saying White's statements should have been admitted at trial to impeach his testimony as to his whereabouts the morning of Dec. 31, 1989.

A Holmes victory may open a Pandora's Box in which third-party evidence of shoddy police work will turn trials into circuses where, like the O.J. Simpson case, police will be put on trial, Justice Scalia said.

Blume's response that only South Carolina has this rule may indicate that the Court's decision could be limited to this jurisdiction only.

And on May 1, 2006, the Court issued its opinion, unanimously siding with Holmes. In Justice Samuel Alito's first opinion as a Supreme Court justice, he concluded that Holmes' constitutional rights were violated by South Carolina's evidence rule that prevented him from countering the prosecution's forensic evidence that, if believed, strongly supported a guilty verdict against him.

The critical inquiry, Alito wrote, concerns the strength of the prosecution's case: If the prosecution's case is strong enough, the evidence of third-party guilt is excluded even if that evidence, if viewed independently, would have great probative value and even if it would not pose an undue risk of harassment, prejudice, or confusion of the issues.

By evaluating the strength of only one party's evidence, Alito reasoned, no logical conclusion can be reached regarding the strength of contrary evidence offered by the defense to rebut or cast doubt. That defect, he wrote, renders the rule "arbitrary" and violative of a defendant's right to have "a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense."