Fry v. Pliler

John Fry (defendant) was accused of the 1992 murders of James and Cynthia Bell. The sole eyewitness was a disinterested truck driver who described the perpetrator as about five feet, eight inches tall, about 140 pounds, and having a full head of hair. Fry was six feet, two inches tall, 300 pounds, and bald. Fry’s defense hinged upon showing that other people, particularly Anthony Hurtz, murdered the Bells. Fry produced seven witnesses that linked Hurtz to the murder, but each of those witnesses was either biased against Hurtz or in favor of Fry. The trial court excluded testimony from Pamela Maples, who would have testified that she was Hurtz’s cousin and overheard Hurtz claim that he committed a double homicide very similar to the Bell murders. Fry’s first two trials ended in mistrials because the juries deadlocked. At Fry’s third trial, the jury deliberated for 11 days before announcing a deadlock; after 23 more days of deliberations, the jury convicted Fry. Fry appealed, arguing that the exclusion of Maples’s testimony violated Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284 (1973). A Chambers error occurs if inappropriate evidentiary exclusions rise to the level of a due-process violation. The California Court of Appeal did not find whether a Chambers error occurred or explain which harmless-error standard it applied, but it found that Maples’s testimony was merely cumulative and that its exclusion did not prejudice Fry. Fry filed a federal habeas petition. The federal district court determined that the trial court committed a Chambers error but that the exclusion of Maples’s testimony was harmless error. A divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.