Fields v. Blades

Filing 367

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER denying 327 MOTION to Amend/Correct 271 Second Amended Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed by Zane Jack Fields. Within 60 days after entry of this Order, Respondent mayif he so choosesfile a motion to dismis s Claims 1, 6, 11, and 44 on any ground supported by the record. If Respondent chooses not to file such a motion, he shall immediately notify the Court and Petitioner, and the Court will enter an order governing the merits briefing of those claims. Signed by Judge B. Lynn Winmill. (caused to be mailed to non Registered Participants at the addresses listed on the Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) by (st)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO

ZANE JACK FIELDS,
Case No. 1:95-cv-00422-BLW
Petitioner,
CAPITAL CASE
v.
RANDY BLADES, Warden,

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND
ORDER

Respondent.

Petitioner Zane Jack Fields murdered Mary Catherine Vanderford in 1988 and
filed this habeas corpus action in 1995. Petitioner filed his initial Petition in 1997, his
First Amended Petition in 2001, and his Second Amended Petition in 2012. (Dkt. 65, 89,
271.)
Currently pending is Petitioner’s Motion to Amend and proposed Third Amended
Petition.1 (Dkt. 327.) Having carefully reviewed the record, including the state court

Also pending is Petitioner’s Motion to Reconsider the Court’s March 31, 2015 denial of
Petitioner’s request for an evidentiary hearing on whether Martinez v. Ryan, 132 S. Ct. 1309 (2012),
applies to excuse the procedural default of certain claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. (Dkt. 342.)
The Court will address that motion in a later ruling.
1

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record, the Court concludes that oral argument is unnecessary. D. Idaho Loc. Civ. R.
9.2(h)(5). Accordingly, the Court enters the following Order denying Petitioner’s Motion
to Amend.
1.

Standard of Law
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply to habeas corpus proceedings to the

extent that they are not inconsistent with established habeas practice and procedure. See
Rule 12 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases. By statute, an application for habeas
relief may be amended “as provided in the rules of procedure applicable to civil actions.”
28 U.S.C. § 2242.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 governs the amendment of civil pleadings.
Because Petitioner has previously amended his Petition and Respondent has not agreed to
further amendment, Petitioner may now amend only with leave of court. Fed. R. Civ. P.
15(a)(2). “The Court should freely give leave when justice so requires.” Id.
Although public policy favors amendment, a court retains the discretion to deny
leave to amend after considering factors such as previous amendment, undue delay, bad
faith, prejudice to the opposing party, and futility of amendment. Bonin v. Calderon, 59
F.3d 815, 845 (9th Cir. 1995). These factors need not be given equal weight. Id.
In a habeas case that has been initiated after the enactment of the Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), a request for leave to amend must also be
construed in light of the provisions and policies of AEDPA, which is designed to promote
finality, comity, and federalism. Williams (Michael) v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420, 436 (2000).

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2.

Discussion
For the following reasons, the Court concludes that the factors identified in Bonin

v. Calderon weigh against allowing Petitioner to proceed on yet another amendment.
First, Petitioner has already amended his petition twice. Therefore, this factor
weighs against allowing yet another amendment.
Second, this case has been rife with undue delay. A large part of this delay has
been caused by Petitioner, and the Court has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the
slow pace of this litigation. The Court recognizes that some of the delay has been caused
by the Court’s massive caseload, the fact that one judge is responsible for all of this
District’s capital habeas corpus cases, and the District’s lack of a full complement of
judges. The Court also recognizes that Idaho’s unique procedures in capital cases—
intended supposedly to streamline litigation of those cases by consolidating direct appeal
and initial post-conviction proceedings and by instituting short filing deadlines—only
encourage the filing of multiple state post-conviction proceedings, which inevitably delay
federal proceedings. Thus, the number of years this case has been pending and the
number of post-conviction petitions filed by Petitioner in state court do not, by
themselves, constitute undue delay.
However, the Court finds that Petitioner has been deliberately choosing to litigate
this case more slowly than necessary. For example, the Court finds that most, if not all, of
the additional allegations in the proposed amendment could have been discovered, in the
exercise of reasonable diligence, prior to the filing of Petitioner’s Second Amended
Petition in 2012. For example, Petitioner states that, in late 2013, “an off-hand comment
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in an inmate interview led to a significant break.” (Dkt. 327-2 at 8.) This “break” came in
the form of testimony from inmates and correctional officers regarding the layout and
structure of the cell blocks in which the inmate witnesses testified that Petitioner
confessed to them. However, the layout of the areas in which Petitioner was confined
prior to trial is not a “new” fact—it was obviously known by Petitioner long before 2013.
Third, the bad faith factor—closely related to the undue delay factor in this case—
weighs slightly against Petitioner, though this is not the worst case of gamesmanship the
Court has ever seen. In arguing that the state would not be prejudiced by further
amendment, Petitioner acknowledges that “the factual arguments raised in the proposed
amendments” were known, at the very latest, when Petitioner filed his reply brief in
support of his motion for an evidentiary hearing on procedural default—on February 6,
2014. (Dkt. 327-2 at 11; see also Dkt. 313.). Therefore, even if the Court were to accept
the proposition that Petitioner could not have discovered the additional facts included in
the proposed Third Amended Petition until February 2014—which, as explained above, it
does not—Petitioner still waited to file his Motion to Amend until nearly 22 months later,
on December 4, 2015.
Petitioner delayed filing his Motion to Amend and proposed Third Amended
Petition until he received an adverse ruling from this Court. Tellingly, it was not until
after the Court denied Petitioner’s motion for an evidentiary hearing that Petitioner filed
the Motion to Amend. The Court finds that this delay was intentional.

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Fourth, the Court concludes that the prejudice factor is neutral. The state—and the
efficient administration of justice—might indeed be prejudiced if litigation of this case
had to start all over again, nearly thirty years after the murder of Mrs. Vanderford.
However, it is of the utmost importance to ensure that Petitioner’s conviction and
sentence are constitutional, even if it takes many years to do so.
Finally, the futility of amendment factor weighs against Petitioner, in that the
proposed amendments are either futile or unnecessary to the resolution of claims. The
only entirely new claim in the proposed Third Amended Petition is Claim 45, which
asserts that the death penalty is, in all cases, unconstitutional. Claim 45 relies Justice
Breyer’s dissenting opinion in Glossip v. Gross, in which the Justice opined that “the
death penalty, in and of itself, now likely constitutes a legally prohibited ‘cruel and
unusual punishment.’” 135 S. Ct. 2726, 2756 (2015) (Breyer, J. dissenting) (quoting U.S.
Const., amend. VIII) (alteration omitted).
The Court finds Claim 45 to be without merit, and thus amendment of the Petition
to assert that claim would be futile. Justice Breyer’s dissent in Glossip was joined by only
one other Justice. There is absolutely no indication that a majority of the Supreme Court
would conclude—contrary to the text of the Constitution—that there is no constitutional
way that capital punishment can be imposed. The Due Process Clause provides that the
government may not deprive a person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law.” U.S. Const., amend. XIV, § 1 (emphasis added). A necessary implication of that

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clause is that the government may deprive a person of life so long as that deprivation
comports with due process. Therefore, amendment to add Claim 45 is futile.
Other amendments in the proposed Third Amended Petition are not strictly
necessary, even if Petitioner intends to refer to the additional factual allegations in later
briefing. The additional allegations are, for the most part, merely more specific than some
of the allegations in the Second Amended Petition. For example, Claims 1 and 4 of the
Second Amended Petition assert that unified post-conviction and direct appeal counsel
rendered ineffective assistance and operated under a conflict of interest, having
represented some of the trial witnesses against Petitioner. The proposed Third Amended
Petition simply adds more detail to explain counsel’s representation of those witnesses
and more specifically describes the actions that counsel allegedly should have taken when
investigating the case. (See Dkt. 327-1 at 32, Redline of proposed Third Am. Pet. at ¶¶
210-30, 396-424.) It does not, however, change the nature of the claims or otherwise
introduce a new substantive ground for relief.
Similarly, Claim 3(A) in the Second Amended Petition asserts that trial counsel
“failed to attack the credibility of Edson and Bianchi by adequately investigating them,
presenting impeachment witnesses and properly cross examining them,” while the Third
Amended Petition simply goes into more specific detail as to the these credibility,
impeachment, and cross-examination issues. (Id. at ¶¶ 261, 263-70, 272.) The same is
true with Petitioner’s claims of ineffective assistance with respect to witnesses Joe
Heistand and Jeff Acheson in Claims 3(A) and 3(F), as well as Petitioner’s claim that

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counsel failed to investigate witnesses that could rebut the inmate witnesses as set forth in
Claim 3(L). (Id. at ¶¶ 286-88, 292-96, 309-10, 345-83.) These are just a few of the
examples showing that the new, more specific allegations do not significantly add to
Petitioner’s claims.
Further, the more specific allegations in the proposed amendment—which merely
add detail to claims already asserted—would not alter the way in which the Court will
review Petitioner’s claims. To the extent the state court adjudicated Petitioner’s claims on
the merits and relied on reasonable factual findings, the new, more detailed allegations
cannot be supported by additional evidence that was not before the state court. See Cullen
v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011) (“[R]eview under § 2254(d)(1) is limited to the
record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits.”). And to
the extent the claims were not adjudicated on the merits in state court or are addressable
in this Court despite a merits adjudication (e.g., if the procedural default of a claim is
excused or if Petitioner satisfies the requirements of § 2254(d) as to a claim), the
evidence supporting the more specific allegations in the proposed amendment is already
in this Court’s record—Petitioner submitted that evidence in support of his motion for an
evidentiary hearing. (See Dkt. 275-2 to 275-22; Dkt. 313-1 to 313-16.)
For the foregoing reasons, the Court concludes, in the exercise of its discretion
after a careful review of the proposed Third Amended Petition, that the Bonin factors
weigh against allowing further amendment in this case. Therefore, the Court will deny
Petitioner’s Motion to Amend.

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ORDER
IT IS ORDERED:
1.

Petitioner’s Motion to Amend (Dkt. 327) is DENIED.

2.

Supplemental briefing on the merits of most of the non-defaulted claims in
the Second Amended Petition is now complete, and the Court will issue a
decision on those claims in due course. Because the procedural default
status of Claims 1, 6, 11, and 44 was less clear than that of other claims,
which are plainly not defaulted, the Court bifurcated briefing so that those
claims could be briefed separately. (See Dkt. 322.) The Court finds that the
procedural default status of those claims should be briefed while the Court
considers Petitioner’s pending Motion for Reconsideration and the merits
of Petitioner’s other non-defaulted claims.

3.

Therefore, within 60 days after entry of this Order, Respondent may—if he
so chooses—file a motion to dismiss Claims 1, 6, 11, and 44 on any ground
supported by the record. If Respondent chooses not to file such a motion,
he shall immediately notify the Court and Petitioner, and the Court will
enter an order governing the merits briefing of those claims.

4.

Petitioner’s response to any motion to dismiss Claims 1, 6, 11, or 44 shall
be filed no later than 60 days after service of Respondent’s motion.

5.

Respondent’s reply in support of any motion to dismiss Claims 1, 6, 11, and
44 shall be filed no later than 30 days after service of Petitioner’s response.

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6.

Because the Court has already determined that it will not address the actual
innocence exception to procedural default until after it has considered the
merits of Petitioner’s non-defaulted claim, the parties may incorporate their
previous arguments with respect to that exception.

7.

Because any motion to dismiss Claims 1, 6, 11, and 44—if Respondent
files one—will address only four claims, no motions to file overlength
briefs or motions for extensions of time will be entertained.

DATED: November 28, 2016

_________________________
B. Lynn Winmill
Chief Judge
United States District Court

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