it please the court counsel knew it was a virtual certainty that mr esposito would be convicted of the brutal murder of ninety year old little davis accordingly they had two goals for sentencing for getting evidence of mr esposito troubled childhood how counsel fall short of those goals and why that matters or topics i would like to focus on today suffice it to say however that counsel adequately investigated developed and presented their chosen defenses mr esposito jurors would have heard a dramatically different and dramatically more compelling mother son relationship were replicated and the dynamic and the dominant role that the more culpable codefendant ilesha would play in the case instead defense counsel failed to present readily available credible evidence to support their chosen defense strategy happy to get into the facts but i think there are some questions about dynevor review versus at the difference before i virtually no corroboration of mr esposito self reporting of abuse was presented at trial the prosecutor made clear on cross examination that her knowledge was limited both by the rarity of her visits with the family and the fact that she stopped visiting when mr esposito was still young defense presented no evidence to corroborate mistrust busied herself reports of physical sexual or verbal abuse they did not even obtain the hospital record that showed that at the age of nine he had gone to the emergency room in north carolina with a complaint of sexual abuse that's pretty rare evidence to have in these cases did not present testimony from elementary school teachers about mr esposito precocious sexual knowledge when he was a young boy or as reported being sexually abused they did not present evidence of mr esposito suffered horrifying physical and emotional abuse inflicted by his violent and erratic mother or that like the defendant in like the defendant's mother in wigan's she had sex in front of him and i understand the record and correct me if i'm wrong there was evidence of the physical and sexual abuse but it was you said it's not firsthand so explain to me the difference the distinction that you're making so the evidence that came in other than this is whole testimony was that mr esposito had reported to various mental health professionals that he had been sexually abused and physically abused and verbally abused in his youth but there was no corroboration of that testimony in the normal case i think that in front of this court the people that are talking about abuse whether fulsomely are or not are either people that have witnessed themselves such as a mother talking in the mother or mr holmes he's case who talks about being abused by his father when we got to state federal court the court concluded that the extra evidence although offered a lot more richness to that testimony was cumulative of that testimony in this case the testimony was coming from mistress that was coming from people who had talked to mr esposito who is being painted by the prosecutor as a con man and not worthy of belief credibility there was readily available evidence to show that mr esposito his life was a horror in fact the psychologist who was appointed by the court at the prosecution's request in his report which is not introduced at trial i thought that the aunt had testified about physical abuse that he had suffered as a child she did she testified about abuse that she witnessed coming from mr s mistress was he was father and his stepfather but she did not testify but your argument is that the that he was not effective because esposito was reporting to this person that those things that happened credit your argument here is reporting and he was deemed and he was cast as an unreliable reporter who was just using the system to manipulate manipulate the system to his own advantage as he was trying to do a trial they were readily available witnesses who could have probably did this just his testimony and a piece of paper from a hospital documenting that he was seen for sexual abuse when he was nine years old counsel ran out of time i believe in north carolina and the other was his investigation of mr as busy as childhood which he spent roughly two days in north carolina he was there for four days be ripe late at night and didn't do any work that day and he worked for two days and then the next day did a little bit in the morning and then drove back to georgia and critically counsel left their most important witness who they had flown down from new jersey to georgia in order to testify at the airport every night and made no efforts to secure testimony for trial the next day even though they knew she had  georgia and that she was trying to get to the courthouse let me let me ask you about your argument about presenting relative culpability evidence you argue that counsel made strategic decisions based on a mistaken belief about whether the nd confession could come in through opening the door but i didn't see where you identified witnesses you would have cooked that could have been called and what they would have said if not for that mistaken belief whether it's a twofold issue because counsel have investigated lisa woodward and done some more than just point out that she drove the car and handled the money in order to show that she was more culpable as like as the goes to defective performance what about prejudiced studies show prejudice  so what are the chances of a way to show prejudice is what didn't come in a trial which was and what specifically didn't come in because as i understand it mr esposito concedes about the polygraph but that shouldn't have come in or at least doesn't argue that and then there were two late witnesses who testified that they didn't think he would have done this so what was the other evidence that you're claiming would have come in so had counsel presented adequate evidence and done their job on this  area they would have presented testimony from people that knew elisa woodward and could testify to her dominant and violent and erratic character she was very much like mistress procedures mother heather bryan who is a former girlfriend of lisa woodward said she was extremely possessive violent and physically assaulted her of her wheelchair bound mother who suffered from m s and that she had attacked brian with a butcher knife jason graff her brother backed up some of the stuff robert noble was a former boyfriend he described as being forceful violent unstable and dangerous she tried to run him down with a car when he broke up with her and he had left he left his wallet at her house and he said he was not going back there because it was easier to get a new license than to deal with her  confession by showing that the the tree limb which weighed thirty pounds could not have been the actual murder weapon which was the state's position at the time and which is what mr esposito said in his confession that came in at trial there was no blood on tree and counsel didn't even show the g b i report that tested for blood and said that there was no blood so there isn't positive evidence that would have exculpated mr esposito but there is evidence that would have diminished the credibility of his confession and it would have shown that at least woodward was the more dominant person in this relationship and could have committed the crime profile presented to the jury and without cooperation conclusory evidence of abuse and especially sexual abuse can lead to bunk by the prosecutor this court has recognized sexual abuse as particularly mitigating and i think that daniel's versus commissioner the court recognize how damaging it is because of its long lasting effects and they're well straight and in this case where mr esposito remains troubled remains as as experts testified he suffers from from post traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as flashbacks which courtney of each could testify to witnessing  the mitigation case that defense counsel presented was handily defunct by the prosecutor as it was happening and that's what reflected in the closing argument the council gave us a trial which reflected i think the amount of time that he spent addressing the mitigation that he had tried to present was four sentences maybe it's five you heard the witnesses today and they were john's friends and family and psychiatrist and psychologist rather and there is no question that this young man has a lot of problems because that excuse what he did absolutely not absolutely not there's no one here saying that excuse he says what he did is a factor in mitigation absolutely that's the sum total of what counsel concluded they had to work with in large measure because they didn't allow court each to testify even though this young girl empty your bank account in order to take a taxi cab from atlanta to milledgeville an eighty mile journey and it doesn't even follow the notes the council had intended to utilize when in closing argument this is an aggravated case i recognize but there are numerous cases where with equally horrible facts in which mitigation has proved pivotal to a finding that counsel was ineffective in failing to present it in ways versus taylor for instance the dissent quoted the virginia supreme court discussion of the defendant who had killed it the victim with the matter in order i believe to steal just a small quantity of money and who had previously put an elderly woman into a vegetative state the murder of mr stone was just one act in a crime spree that lasted most of williams's life story in society and young man indeed the jury heard the evidence that in the months following the murder of mr stone william savagely beat an elderly woman stole two cars set fire to a home stabbed a man during a robbery set fire to the jail and confessed to having strong orders to choke other inmates and to break a fellow prisoners draw nonetheless mitigating evidence the jury didn't hear was so powerful that it warranted sentencing relief same thing holds for farrow versus hall which judge marcus i believe you wrote where a grandmother and a fifteen year old cousin were killed cooper  secretary were there and also three victims resulted in something really based on trial counsels failure to present evidence  i believe that this court has to engage in over review because there are numerous on reasonable findings of fact and law by the state court the court on recently found that abandoning beaches a witness was strategic when it was exactly the opposite it was a failure of strategy counsel just threw up their hands and said i guess we can't do anything but what they could have done was ask the judge for a brief continuance knowing that their witness was on her way from atlanta to milledgeville and that she had a lot of positive things to say that would have been helpful as we discussed they relied on the mistake of law in making strategy decisions and that mistake of law isn't replicated by the state court in finding that the failure to present evidence challenging the credit believe m confession and showing that elisa woodward was the more dominant and controlling and culpable party was reasonable in light of the fear of opening the door to evidence that simply wasn't admissible for those purposes the state his court also is tailor the court fail to assess the cumulative impact of the mitigating evidence that would have been presented this includes the evidence regarding lesser culpability in determining whether there is prejudice in any other witnesses he didn't look at many documents because they weren't provided to him and he had very little say as a result of the  judge's report in fact didn't find any mitigation that counsel was seeking to present the only mitigation that the court found was that there was no hit significant history of prior criminal activity and that mystery esposito was young at the time of the crime he was had just turned twenty dollars he didn't find that the mr esposito acted under the duress of any anybody or anything that was relevant to the mitigation that was the goal sentencing council had set for themselves but the court has no more questions i'm happy to address issues come up in rebuttal let me ask you a question about the deficient performance prong of your argument about the failure to investigate forensic evidence what is the best case that you think supports your arguments because as i look at the cases it looks like in cases that have found that a state court's decision denying relief was unreasonable as all those were only cases where there was no investigation that was performed and it looks to me like from this record some investigation was performed well in rumpy of hearses beard there was a lot of investigation that was conducted i don't think it matters what the subject of the investigation is whether it's forensic evidence or mitigation evidence a lot of ect a lot of investigation but they failed to look at one critical part of investigation which was looking at the code at the court documents relating to aggravating evidence that was coming in at sentencing and on the bases their failure to look at those documents they didn't find a number of red flags that would have pointed them in directions where to go next that's one example of a case where counsel to a fair amount without a meaning and meaning without it precluding a finding of ineffectiveness i think sears versus  whatever the warden's name was at the time also finds the same thing i realize that that was not an hippias but the but the legal issues the same good afternoon may it please the court my name is sabrina graham i am here on behalf of the warden asking the court affirmed the district court's denial of relief i'd like to address st of all some of the questions that the court asked for sin and go into other issues  regarding the murder weapon that was used in the lola davis murder there are actually two logs that were found there was a log that was draped over misstatements that was a very large log that mr winter referenced there was also another log that was found there as well and at trial it was testified to that the log the smaller log had sixty three dollars misstate mrs hairs on it and the other log had i think approximately five or six hairs on it  so i think that us miss witter what was the evidence that they how they investigated this particular issue that their trial records i mean their billing records show that any they looked at all the state's evidence they  interviewed all the states or as many of the state's witnesses as they could they hired a d n a expert and their theory at trial was to point out that the state had not actually tested this the two logs so there was a evidence before the jury showing who actually will get the logs and they feel like that was their better strategy there was no testimony from trial counsel in the state regarding whether or not they decided to hire a forensic expert like dr arden so the record is silent on that particular point going into trial counselor i should say the defense team's investigation of mr esposito background hector vara and his wife did a tremendous but i think mr harris note show that they interviewed at least two of the people that they brought out and state hey b s when when you're looking at all of the records that mr grover attained he obtained all of his mental health records from and cora hospital to underwood hospital to kennedy hospital the trysts program he got all of his high school records he got his elementary school records he went and talked to teacher after teacher he would go back to the schools and back to the schools and ask for to talk to the teachers he went to mental health hospitals and institutions that esposito was housed in and he sought out everybody that would talk to him and he would go i think in my opinion a way that mr  argument is the failure to part with all that material the failure to resent more mitigation more and different medication evidence so what's your response to that sure did for on that one having looked at all of the investigations that mr brewer did i think there  two main threads that you saw there and the st thread was that you had people who clearly felt bad for mr esposito and they thought he'd had a difficult life with his mother and his stepfather and they you know they said that he was this pass e person that he was he was a follower and that you know he was just ruined by his mother growing up and then the other thread of that investigation was the exact opposite that he was violent he was violent in school that he was a devil worshiper that he killed animals it was a very aggravating picture that half of the people had any mitigating picture that the other people had and i think that trial counsel did a tremendous job in picking the witnesses that they did because they stuck to that when they were out there even during that cross examination by the district attorney they were very clear you know who they thought esposito was they did not waver in that regarding i know you want to speak to the the physical abuse if you look in there you do have a person saying they saw him getting beaten they saw him have bruises on his body his aunt specifically testified to that so the jury knew that and every single one of those witnesses say that there's no  to sexual abuse she i don't believe she testified to the sexual abuse and to be honest i do not recall anywhere in this record that anybody in state hey b s testified to witnessing this sexual abuse firsthand i i only saw and i'll be honest i've only looked at this record for two weeks but i only saw that that came in through either him or people speculating that either the mother had an inappropriate relationship with him or and that the stepdad had sexually abused him regarding that medical record from when he was nine years old when he was nine he was late to school and he told the school that he had been abducted in the woods by a man who forced him to go to perform oral sex or may have performed oral sex on him and the school investigated i think that's where the medical report comes from because all it says on the medical corps is report sexual abuse there's nothing else on it and the school investigated it mr esposito finally said no i was playing with a puppy that's why i was late for school and then later on he told trial counsel that he actually just hadn't done his homework and he was late for school and he made up the story so i did not see anywhere in this record showing i witnessed cooperate of the sexual abuse but certainly the witnesses at trial testified that he they thought he was sexually abused that he had the symptoms of someone who had sexually abused and they stood by that even on cross examination and i understand the district attorney you know he he thoroughly cross examined all those witnesses but there's nothing that trial counsel could have done about that because in his all of his mental health records and his school records it had all of that information he could use he was diagnosed this with anti social personality disorder the mental health institutions noted that he was a liar he admitted to being a liar that he was manipulative they  they also had information there were guarding him i think it was hanging a cat because maybe a devil worshipper i don't know they also had information in the school records that he was violent he had been suspended he had he had a emotional problem in school the jury heard all that they heard that he was in all these institutions they heard that he had this terrible life all those witnesses testified to it except for the jailer that was the other witness she she didn't have any firsthand or any knowledge of that what's your response to her argument the prosecution very effectively made the case that he you know that he was liar he was a faker and so there should have been some more direct evidence of the abuse that he suffered well other than just what he had self reported i think that it was there such evidence that could have been presented st of all i think they had affidavits and state hey b s regarding the physical abuse from the mother that was more  where you have a story being told to the jury this was their theory this kid was he was he was abused and where you have put that for them you put the evidence before them and you bring along more evidence of it you can't show that counsel was ineffective you can't share prejudice with stuff that's largely cumulative of that that's that would be my response to that  going on to the relative culpability of alicia woodward there was no evidence presented in state hey b s that showed that she was more culpable for this crime than esposito there was no evidence showing that she would have the weapon there is no evidence that she had confessed to anyone that she was the one that picked up the weapon and killed misstatements or the snyders there was no physical evidence showing that she was the one that did anything the only thing they had were was testimony from people saying that she was violent and domineering but none of those people knew her relationship with esposito and her they did not see them together this was just about their relationship with her and i'd point out that in the g b i file they had actually gone and spoken to one of  friends jason heath coat and mr he said before they left as busy to told to woodward that he was involved with a secret group and they were after him and she was telling him he was telling police that to get her to leave town and go with him to out of town in this vacation and he also said that you know he said he knew he killed a lot of animals and that i don't know murphy said he was in devil worship so there is a very mixed bag here from not only mr investigation but also it's also from what the state had investigated regarding alicia esposito and i don't think looking at the record i just don't see anything in the state b s record that shows that she was more culpable than he was i mean you certainly have a record here of a person who is who was manipulative a lie or anti social personality disorder it seems like they were pretty even there i don't know how you could show that just because she was mean and domineering that she was the one who committed the crime and regarding trial counsel's investigation elise i'd like to point out that they did investigate her mr rybar spoke with her friends her some of her employers and that information that mr in state vs the state habeas trial court repeated really repeatedly rely on the fact that trial counsel was concerned that if they introduced evidence that esposito was not the killer that the nd confession might come in through opening the door but at the time supreme court made president make clear that the prosecutor wouldn't be able to impeach other witnesses with that information or through that through pinning the door how th is the state courts reasoning not unreasonable if i'm can i start off with what happened at trial there and sort of any way you want to they answer your question st i do not think the state in which it stated that you know they could not put in the nd confession because they were too confessions and they could not put in the video confession and the district attorney said to the judge yes but i can use it for impeachment and the trial judge said to him for the defendant and and he said yes for the defendant because under james the u s supreme court from the seventy's you could use if the defendant got up and testified obviously you could use the suppress statement and then the da said for rebuttal evidence an al he did but he also said the trial court also said that he would revisit that issue when it came up and it never came up and what trial counsel testified to in state b s they talked about the polygraph and they said we felt like the judge no matter what the law was was going to allow the videotape confession to come in if we tried to put the polygraph in now they also spoke to and i think they said something along the lines of well we also tried to keep our witnesses from saying anything about him not committing the crime but that's not accurate at all because in fact there are witnesses during the sentencing phase actually said we think that he didn't do it that esposito didn't do it at least he didn't do it and they didn't present anything and say hey he is showing what information regarding that that trial counsel didn't present their only evidence that they are saying that trial cancel didn't present was that she was violent and domineering and that but they didn't have any other evidence to show that trial counsel it presented at trial counsel didn't have that evidence to begin with regarding the state havey as court's order and whether or not is entitled to deference the only time that i notice where it's talking about that and i could be wrong was weren't when it said it when it's when the court was deciding about arden who was the forensic experts and he says that even if the court were to fire the con that was deficient which it doesn't it doesn't he doesn't find a reason probability of a different outcome especially since the admission of the testimony would have opened the door to the videotaped confession i don't think that takes that outside of the r right so there was a deficiency determination was wrong based on the state of the law at the time i don't think that the deficiency was i would disagree respectfully and i think that trial counsel was never specifically asked whether or not they thought that rebuttal evidence other than the polygraph could have been used i don't see that anywhere in their testimony the record is silent on that particular point so whether you know i just don't think that there were any supreme court case law out there answering the basic question about whether or not you could impeach  circuit case law out answering that precise question i mean i do not know that i know that the district court sided to some cases in which the courts have allowed them to put the suppressed evidence with rebuttal evidence but i don't know if that was polygraph but the reason you're not likely to find much on it is initially the political st generally are not permitted to testify in most places they could in the circuit or under certain circumstances but i was curious whether there was any supreme court case law or even suggestions of not holdings addressing the basic question of whether or not you can impeach  i administer these questions to this defendant here are the four questions i asked here are the four answers he gave and in my view he was being truthful or not and then turn around and then peach him with what otherwise would have been an indignant simple confession nothing out there on that i have i have not found anything on that at i'd also like to point out in georgia regarding the polygraph evidence the parties can stipulate to it and syncing phase they don't have to stipulate to it but the trial court still would have had to found that that was it miscible evidence that it was sufficiently reliable and in this particular case truck counsel testified that another reason why they did put up the polygraph evidence was because mr blackstone had something in his work history that was negative and also in the d a s files it showed they had consoled an expert in that expert said that the test w valid just so that i'm clear on the record did the trial judge ever rule one that the polygamy for his testimony is admissible or not of what the defendant had told him no marcus he did not make any specific ruling that it revisit that particular area he said well let's leave it open for another time or did he say no but you can come back and revisit it he said what the order said was that you c suppression evidence you could use impeachment or rebuttal evidence but he said in that's what the order said and then he said but we will come back and revisit this because truck counsel disagreed with him on that particular point so he impeach the polygamy for with the otherwise inadmissible statement badawi visit i don't want to i just want to be clear on what the state trial judge did and what he told defense counsel a share so the issue regarding the player for i believe was a separate order regarding the suppressed evidence in the order for that the suppressed i'm sorry the suppressed confession the court sa i'm not going to allow this in and less for impeachment are about all purposes and that's what the order says right but it would otherwise if the defendant had taken the stand there's no question that would have been admissible corundum harris but i'm asking have to go back to judge prior to answer your question about the ok i think you did i'd like to address the the closing argument here i understand the closing argument was  brief but i think we all know that trial is an art form and the district attorney had given a very impassioned long closing argument and child counsel part of their job is to read that room and to read those twelve jurors and they were not s regarding why the closing argument was so brief they could have looked at that jury and thought you know we've already told them we've presented all of our evidence the best evidence we had to show what kind of terrible life he had and you know this is a middle georgia jury perhaps as counsel said to them we're not using this as an excuse we're just showing that it's mitigating and maybe they thought that was the way to go to be brief and then to beg for his life these were very very aggravated crimes and in his confession that was presented in the senate saying regarding the snyders he told the f b i agent the one that wasn't can suppress that he beat mystified her to death and when he beat her her eyeball came out and that she was still breathing and that her other i was still open and he could have kicked dirt in it and she would not have moved those were his statements that's what the jury heard so al h information regarding his past is mitigating and perhaps if his crime had been against his stepfather or his mother the jury might have understood but instead he chose to be three elderly people to death for a little bit of money and some cars and i don't think no matter how much evidence you put up cooperating the fact that his mother may or may not have beaten him or whether or not he was sexually abused was he going to create a result probability of a different outcome in this particular trial given more questions like you thank is to say he never answered the specific question of whether or not the other was inadmissible confession or could come in to impeach the political refer if they chose to put the political for on instate a b s proceedings i believe mr kelly testifies that he thought that the judge had ruled that if he presented the polygraph evidence that this you know i understand that but my question is not what the state of mind of the lawyer was st but can we tell from the transcript of the trial and the orders that the judge issued because i thought when i looked at it the judge didn't answer that question all he did was basically recite the law generally the confessions inadmissible on the other hand if a defendant testifies then you might be able to confront him with an otherwise  inadmissible confession which is certainly clearly established supreme court law yes but that he never answered the additional question to it if the defendant put the police were for on whether or not you could judge said you know i think that is admissible for impeachment like if the defendant takes the stand and testifies contrary to the statement but it doesn't come in for a battle defense counsel didn't say you're on you're right they didn't say anything and did nothing to support the the trial judge is actually accurate recollection of the law the prosecutor have or persisted that paris versus new york stated clearly that such evidence would come in both for impeachment or a bottle and finally the judge said all right i i think that you're correct i haven't heard anything else from defense counsel so as we proceed if things come up we'll address it at that time it's true he left open the defense counsel but he never specifically answered the defense counsel noted stated in haiti is that the judge in fact said if you put the polygraph evidence in the the videotape come in i'm not sure that that's accurate and i assume that the september  hearing was pretty lengthy and i focused mostly on the actual ruling on the statement and didn't and i don't recollect at the moment whether that was a dress i didn't raise the polygraph issue in this case because i thought there was a much more reasonable argument to be made that a defendant testimony by proxy would also be impeachable with suppressed statement and in fact the cases that the district court cited were for the purpose of impeaching a mental health experts who had relied upon statements made by the defendant  does that answer your question thank you i'd like to start my part of it with closing argument my opponent suggested that trial is an art form but there is nothing artful about defense counsel's closing it was the closing of somebody who had given up and it's not true that they had presented their best evidence because they left their best evidence sitting at the airport overnight and then didn't take any steps to make sure that she could testify the next day courtney beach would have been a very very important witness this was recognized vera who interviewed her for more time than anybody else ten to twelve hours and he identified her as an important witness prior to trial counsel chose to have her fly from new jersey to georgia pacifically to testify and she have been the linchpin between the two different promise of defense counsel's chosen defense because she had witnessed abuse that mr esposito mother had inflicted had witnessed how mistrusted he was a mother left him a cowering child in her presence and and that evidence and going after him with a baseball bat when he was a full grown or almost full grown man he was eighteen at the time and she witnessed how his mother just screamed vicious insults to resign that left him cowering there are other things i want to get  so responded has argued that there were two potential murder victims because there are two logs one was this very large log which is clearly what fred bright designated as the murder weapon although it's hard to imagine it was a thirty pound log how could be wielded and there was a small broken off piece of wood that was probably rotting that had apparently several here hairs that hair analyst identified as being miss the idea that counsel could have done something that counsel adequately investigated and presented evidence regarding the lack of credibility to be attributed to the confession is kind of ridiculous a trial the d n a asks for test pacifically testified that she could not have lifted touch d n a from the logs and therefore cannot have tested the locks for d n a so arguing that they never tested the logs proved absolutely nothing  nothing at all about sexual abuse and the sexual abuse in this record from the hospital it's only a one page record identifying it because and i quote from the hospital clerk cannot locate the c r record i point this print out is proof in diagnosis will help that's the reason there's not documentation it's not because mr esposito didn't have a valid claim it's because the records were lost and perhaps they would have been available at the time of trial many years before we start to get them being manipulative doesn't mean that he didn't have serious mental health issues and it's very evident from the record that he did he was really completely incapable of functioning largely because of his mother the state has court fundamentally erred it was unreasonable for them to conclude that the fear of opening the door to the suppressed statement which is not admissible to challenge rd party testimony about other issues was a legitimate basis to to not to discount entirely the evidence that was presented in state regarding elisa woodward and that evidence was not simply that she was violent it was also the landlady testified about both of them and how testimony i believe that she was interviewed by a state investigator during the pretrial investigation by phone and she explains in her affidavit that was submitted in state habeas she's hard of hearing and she would never have said that she would be violent she couldn't hear the question and she the answer that was given was was misleading as a result if the court has no questions i would like to conclude  strickland recognizes that there may be many ways that counsel can provide constitutionally adequate representation but with the critical copy at the counsel's choices must be reasonably guided by their fundamental duty to advocate on their client's behalf  esposito case his attorneys merely went through the motions of representing him without actually investing the time thought and energy needed to present a credible and compelling defense this despite the ready availability of evidence needed to do so their failure amounted to a breakdown in