Clutchette v. Rushen

770 F.2d 1469 (9th Cir. 1985)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Bob Bowles was murdered. The Sacramento police discovered the body the next day in a parking lot. Bowles had been shot twice in the head. Police uncovered an eyewitness, Dawn Poulson. Poulson said she had driven from Oakland to Sacramento with D and Bowles in D's 1976 Lincoln Continental. They stopped at a parking lot. The two men left the car for a short time and then returned. D sat in the back seat, and Bowles sat in the front passenger seat. There was a shot, and Bowles slumped over on the front seat. D then removed Bowles from the car and, according to Poulson, shot Bowles a second time. D and Poulson left the body in the parking lot and returned to Oakland. Upon arrival, D, helped by a friend, Worthington Alston, tried to wipe Bowles' blood from the car seats. Charged were dismissed from lack of evidence. Sometime later, D's wife contacted the police and informed them that she had served as an investigator for her D's defense counsel. The attorney had a conversation with D about receipts vital to the prosecution’s case and had sent D’s wife to retrieve them from an individual in Los Angeles. She believed that these receipts would serve as evidence in the case against her husband. She turned the receipts over to the police. The receipts were from an automobile upholstery shop where D had brought his car for reupholstering. The police retrieved the seat covers removed from D's 1976 The seat covers bore tiny but tell-tale bloodstains matching the victim's blood type. P refiled murder charges against D. D was convicted and eventually filed a petition for habeas corpus. It was denied. D contends that by accepting the receipts from his wife, the police invaded his confidential relationship with his attorney and thereby denied him the effective assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.