Varner v. Stovall

500 F.3d 491 (6th Cir. 2007)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P attempted to murder her abusive boyfriend, Alvin Knight, by hiring a third party to kill him. Knight arrived at P's mother's home that morning to pick up his young son. P's mother told him to go to the garage, where a man came up from behind Knight and 'started shooting at him.' Knight wrestled the gun away from the man and turned it over to the police. Knight could not identify the shooter. Two-and-a-half years later, someone shot and killed Knight outside of his apartment complex. Police searched Knight's apartment for clues and uncovered P's journals linking her to the 1995 shooting. The journals identified the gunman of the 1995 shooting and disclosed P's responsibility for arranging the attempted murder. The journals also revealed that Knight had raped, choked, and abused her in the past and noted that two days prior to the shooting, 'he raped me and tied me up for three hours.' The entries often were addressed 'Dear God,' and sometimes contained prayers of supplication and thanks. In many places in the journal, P expressed her disillusionment with organized religion and church services. D was convicted of assault with intent to commit murder. The court admitted into evidence excerpts from her journals but denied her proffer of expert testimony on Battered Women's Syndrome to support her theories of self-defense and provocation and denied a mitigation instruction on provocation, reasoning that theories of self-defense and provocation are not available in cases involving 'hired' third-party shootings. P received a sentence of 13 to 20 years' imprisonment for her conviction. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed her conviction and the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal. After denying her federal habeas petition, the district court granted her a certificate of appealability on two issues: (1) whether her rights under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment were violated when the state court admitted her private journal entries and (2) whether her due-process right 'to present a defense based upon provocation and self-defense was curtailed improperly.'