Opinion
No. 3:01cv0633 AS
February 22, 2002
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
On September 7, 2001, pro se petitioner, Valentin Ortiz, Jr., an inmate at the Indiana State Prison (ISP) in Michigan City, Indiana, filed a petition seeking relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The Return filed on behalf of the respondent by the Attorney General of Indiana on January 14, 2002, demonstrates the necessary compliance with Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100 (7th Cir. 1982). The petitioner filed a Memorandum in Opposition to the Return on February 1, 2002, and it is in very good legal form for which this Court is greatly appreciative. The state court record in five volumes has been filed here and examined pursuant to the mandates of Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293 (1963).
The petitioner is a convicted felon serving a sentence imposed by a court in the State of Indiana.
As a starting point, an opinion by the Supreme Court of Indiana published under Ortiz v. State, 741 N.E.2d 1203 (Ind. 2001) is well worth close attention. It is to be noted that all justices concurred except Justice Sullivan who concurred in all of the opinions except Part IV of it, and in that he concurred in the result without writing.
Certainly, the basic facts found by the highest court in the State of Indiana are entitled to a presumption of correctness under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). Certainly, constitutional issues are the focus here. Bell v. Duckworth, 861 F.2d 169 (7th Cir. 1988), cert. den., 489 U.S. 1088 (1989).
In this petition, Mr. Ortiz raises issues with regard to so-called prior bad acts evidence, as well as the admission of a police officer's testimony relating to one witness's account of her encounter with Mr. Ortiz, and finally finds fault with the Supreme Court of Indiana in its analysis of harmless error. In the Supreme Court of Indiana, this petitioner raised issues with regard to the failure to grant a motion for mistrial, and further claimed abuse of discretion in admitting evidence of the petitioner's drug use after the murder. He also complained about admitting inadmissible hearsay and evidence regarding a prior assault by this petitioner on his girlfriend. Those are primarily the issues that were addressed by the Supreme Court of Indiana, and when one examines that opinion, one is hard-pressed to find any violation of the Constitution of the United States, and particularly, the Fourteenth Amendment.
While there can be constitutional violations of the concepts that are embedded in Indiana Evidence Rule 404, nothing that was done in this trial with regard to so-called 404 evidence was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Even the concurring justice on the Supreme Court was not constrained to write in any explicit fashion, and certainly not constrained to write about any constitutional violations. Any reasoned examination of this record, and considering the issues that the petitioner has attempted to raise here, fall far short of the standards required under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), as recently explicated by the Supreme Court of the United States in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000).
For all of those reasons, the petition is now considered and DENIED. IT IS SO ORDERED.