Lee v. Kemna

534 U.S. 362 (2002)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

On August 27, 1992, Reginald Rhodes shot and killed Steven Shelby on a public street in Kansas City. He then jumped into the passenger side of a waiting truck, which sped away. Rhodes pleaded guilty, and P, the alleged getaway driver, was tried for first-degree murder and armed criminal action. P was convicted of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. His only defense was an alibi. P claimed he was in California, staying with his family when the Kansas City crimes for which he was indicted occurred. P's mother, stepfather, and sister voluntarily came to Missouri to testify on his behalf. They were sequestered in the courthouse at the start of the trial's third day. For some unknown reason, they were not in the courthouse later in the day when P sought to present their testimony. The alibi defense figured prominently in P's opening statements and the prosecutor, at the close of her statement, said she expected an alibi defense from P and would present testimony to disprove it. P moved for a continuance until the next morning so that he could endeavor to locate them and bring them back to court. The judge denied the motion because it looked like they had 'in effect abandoned P.' The judge also commented that his personal schedule would not accommodate the motion and that he had another trial to start the next weekday. The trial resumed and D was convicted. During the prosecution case, two eyewitnesses to the shooting identified P as the driver. The first, Reginald Williams, admitted during cross-examination that he had told P's first defense counsel in a taped interview that Rhodes, not P, was the driver. Williams said he had given that response because he misunderstood the question and did not want to be 'bothered' by the interviewer. The second eyewitness, William Sanders, was unable to pick P out of a photographic array on the day of the shooting; Sanders identified P as the driver for the first time 18 months after the murder. Neither the trial judge nor the prosecutor identified any procedural flaw in the presentation or content of P's motion for a continuance. The Court of Appeals held the denial proper because P's counsel had failed to comply with Missouri Supreme Court Rules not relied upon or even mentioned in the trial court: Rule 24.09, which requires that continuance motions be in written form, accompanied by an affidavit; and Rule 24.10, which sets out the showings a movant must make to gain a continuance grounded on the absence of witnesses. It noted that P's continuance motion was oral and the application 'was made without the factual showing both of which were required. P filed a pro se application for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court. P asserts that a Missouri court deprived him of due process when the court refused to grant an overnight continuance of his trial. P appended affidavits from the three witnesses, each of whom swore to Lee's alibi; sister, mother, and stepfather alike stated that they had left the courthouse while the trial was underway because a court officer told them their testimony would not be needed that day. P maintained that D had engineered the witnesses' departure; accordingly, he asserted that prosecutorial misconduct, not anything over which he had control, prompted the need for a continuance. The District Court denied the writ. It held that the witnesses' affidavits were not cognizable in federal habeas proceedings because P could have offered them to the state courts but failed to do so. It found the Missouri Court of Appeal’s invocation of Rule 24.10 an adequate and independent state-law ground barring further review. The court of appeals affirmed the denial of P's habeas petition. The state court's rejection of the claim ''rested . . . on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment,' regardless of 'whether the state law ground is substantive or procedural.'' P's claim did not comply with [Rules] 24.09 and 24.10.' The Supreme Court granted certiorari.