The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has revived a civil rights claim filed by a convicted killer and "serial litigant"—and offered guidance on handling prison lawsuits.
Waseem Daker had been representing himself since he fired his court-appointed counsel and took over his own defense at the opening of his trial in 2012. The jury convicted him on all counts for the 1995 murder of flight attendant Karmen Smith and the stabbing of her 5-year-old son 18 times. Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Stalely called Daker a master manipulator and sentenced him to life, plus 47 years. "I hope you never get out," the judge told Daker. "I think you're dangerous, even in prison."
Daker has continued to represent himself in a series of prison lawsuits, none successful. But after the dismissal of his latest claim, which alleged the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections violated his civil rights by denying him use of a law library and time for Muslim religious practices, Daker accepted court-appointed counsel for the appeal.
A team of appellate lawyers from Jones Day took the case pro bono. They include: Walter Davis, Jason Burnette, Meredith Kincaid and Laura Bunten. Burnette spoke on Daker's behalf during oral arguments. Davis and Burnette said the team could not comment on the appeal or its potential effect on others.
With Jones Day's help, Daker won the right to proceed with his civil rights lawsuit. Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor wrote the May 4 opinion for a panel that included Judge R. Lanier Anderson and Second Circuit Judge Barrington Parker Jr. The judges ruled that the circuit court improperly dismissed Daker's case and abused its discretion in denying him indigent status. Daker is seeking to sue as an indigent to avoid the $450 filing fee. The panel made no finding on whether Daker is indigent—which the state has denied—but vacated the dismissal and remanded the case for further consideration.
The ruling clarified provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which denies indigent status to a prisoner who has filed three or more frivolous lawsuits in an effort to control the flow of minor complaints into the judicial system. Judge C. Ashley Roya of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia dismissed Daker's lawsuit, concluding that he had six strikes under the act.
Pryor wrote that Daker's lawsuits were dismissed for other reasons, not because they were frivolous and so could not fall under the "three strikes" rule.
"Although Daker is a serial litigant who has clogged the federal courts with frivolous litigation, we must follow the text of the Act, which does not classify his six prior dismissals for lack of jurisdiction and want of prosecution as strikes," Pryor wrote.
Daker has filed far more than three prison lawsuits. "Daker has submitted over a thousand pro se filings in over a hundred actions and appeals in at least nine different federal courts," Pryor wrote.
Daker's direct appeal of his murder conviction is pending before the Georgia Supreme Court. He had previously sought a new trial in Cobb County. At the hearing on his motion for new trial, he called in the star witness against him, Lottie Blatz, to recount her testimony.
Staley denied Daker's motion for a new trial, siding with prosecutors, who said Daker had manipulated Blatz. The state presented letters Daker wrote to Blatz from prison.
Blatz was renting a room in Smith's home at the time of the murder in 1995. Daker's murder trial came 17 years after Smith's death. In between, he served nearly 10 years for stalking Blatz, whom he had met because they participated on a recreational paintball team together.
The stalking trial featured charges that included hundreds of phone calls, plus burglaries and theft of personal items. Eventually, advances in DNA science allowed prosecutors to charge Daker with the murder using a hair found on Smith's body.
The prosecution's theory was that Daker became enraged because Blatz wasn't taking his calls. When he called Smith's phone line, she told him to stop calling.
The state alleged that, when Daker broke into their home that day, Blatz was at work, but Smith had the day off between flights. Both women had young children at school. The boy was attacked after the children came home. His life was saved by the boyfriend of a teenaged babysitter, who found him bleeding nearly to death, scooped him up and ran for help with the unconscious child in his arms.
Daker has maintained he did not kill Smith or stab her son. He suggested in his trial that the DNA evidence had been mishandled and that other evidence—including a book on how to commit a murder and photos on his laptop of dead women bound, strangled and posed identically to Smith—did not prove his guilt.