Opinion ID: 1842460
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Family History of Abuse

Text: Most of Arbelaez's immediate family lives in Medellin, Colombia. Arbelaez argues that counsel was ineffective in failing to call Arbelaez's family members as witnesses during the penalty phase and also in his investigation of Arbelaez's troubled background in Colombia. Aside from Dr. Lopez's general references to Arbelaez's lifelong struggles with epilepsy, counsel did not present any evidence of Arbelaez's background in Colombia. Nevertheless, the trial court concluded that counsel conducted a reasonable investigation into Arbelaez's history of abuse in Colombia. The court also concluded that, having discussed [with Arbelaez] the pros and cons of having his family members testify, counsel had a reasonable basis for not calling the family members as penalty phase witnesses. Two of Arbelaez's family members from Colombia testified at the evidentiary hearing. One of his sisters, Amparo Arbelaez Alvarez, described his childhood in Colombia. She testified to the troubled relationship between their mother and father and to her father's abuse of the children. She testified that her brother was beaten on a daily basis because he was stupid... [and] was doing really badly in studies. She testified that Arbelaez wanted to kill himself and drank poison on several occasions. After one of his attempted suicides, she said, Arbelaez was sent to a mental hospital far away. Amparo recalled speaking with counsel after trial about obtaining some of her brother's medical records, but she testified that they never spoke about the possibility of her testifying at trial. She claimed that she would have testified if asked. Another one of Arbelaez's sisters, Luz Marina Arbelaez Alvarez, testified to generally the same facts. She, too, recalled that her brother attempted to poison himself and was sent to a mental hospital. She recalled their father beating Arbelaez, and Arbelaez at times trembl[ing] from hunger. She did not recall speaking with counsel at any point before the trial, but testified that she would have helped with the mitigation effort if asked. Counsel gave three reasonable strategic rationales for deciding not to call any of Arbelaez's family members to testify at the penalty phase. First, counsel testified that Arbelaez did not want the family members here. He and Arbelaez agreed, after discussing the issue at length, that it would be too suspicious and therefore too dangerous for his family members to leave Colombia during a politically turbulent period. When a defendant informs his attorney that he does not want his family members to testify on his behalf, the attorney is generally not found to be ineffective in failing to call the family members as witnesses. See Rutherford, 727 So.2d at 220; State v. Riechmann, 777 So.2d 342, 350 (Fla.2000). Second, counsel feared that Arbelaez's family members would either contradict Arbelaez's guilt phase testimony or commit perjury, thereby creating a credibility problem. Arbelaez testified at the guilt phase  against counsel's wishes  that the boy's death was an accident, which directly contradicted the story that Arbelaez had told his family. Counsel concluded that, no matter how the family members testified, their testimony likely would weaken the defense. We generally have found that strategic decisions of this sort do not constitute deficient conduct if alternative courses of action have been considered and rejected. Valle, 778 So.2d at 965. Third, counsel testified that he feared, based on his personal experience with several of these cases where children are the victims, that testimony about Arbelaez's rough childhood in Colombia would be very tricky and might be counterproductive because the murder victim in this case was a five-year-old child. Counsel concluded that it would do a disservice to Arbelaez to present such evidence at the penalty phase. Instead, counsel presented testimony that Arbelaez was a hard worker and a good roommate. Counsel was not oblivious to Arbelaez's background in Colombia. He testified that he knew from his correspondence with the family that Arbelaez was poor, lacked an adequate education, struggled with acne problems, attempted to kill himself, and was sent to a Colombian mental hospital. Dr. Castiello's competency and sanity evaluation also recounted some of these facts. Counsel's decision not to present this testimony was a strategic one in which alternative courses [were] considered and rejected. Gamble v. State, 877 So.2d 706, 714 (2004). Counsel testified that he thought [his] way through and had planned the best approach to the jury, after receiving input from [his] client. We have generally denied relief where the attorney's chosen strategy was to humanize the defendant rather than to portray him as psychologically troubled. See, e.g., Henry v. State, 862 So.2d 679, 685-86 (Fla.2003); Rutherford, 727 So.2d at 223; Haliburton, 691 So.2d at 471; Bryan v. Dugger, 641 So.2d 61, 64 (Fla.1994). The combination of these three strategies, if not each alone, provides competent, substantial evidence to support the trial court's ruling that counsel did not perform deficiently in declining to call Arbelaez's family members during the penalty phase. See Hamilton v. State, 875 So.2d 586, 592 (Fla.2004) (Trial counsel was well prepared and well informed with respect to Hamilton's family, and simply made a reasonable, tactical decision not to present certain family members during the penalty phase ...). There is also competent, substantial evidence to support the trial court's ruling that counsel reasonably investigated Arbelaez's background in Colombia. Counsel communicated multiple times with Arbelaez's family members about Arbelaez's background, searching for what he said you could consider ... potential mitigation. Counsel asked the family members to attempt to obtain documentation of Arbelaez's mental health problems. A message that Arbelaez's family members left with counsel's assistant shortly before the trial confirmed that the family was attempting to locate hospital records. However, in a letter sent to counsel shortly before the penalty phase, Arbelaez's mother wrote that she tried to get [Arbelaez's] medical records from the hospital [but] was not able to obtain them. Counsel also obtained a letter from the Colombian government, dated April 1988, stating that none of Arbelaez's medical records could be found in the historical archives but that the social services department would continue its search. Counsel reasonably relied on these representations from the people and institutions best positioned to obtain mitigation evidence in Colombia. In hindsight, perhaps counsel could have been more aggressive in his investigation. But [t]here is a strong presumption that counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance. Asay v. State, 769 So.2d 974, 984 (Fla.2000) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052). As this Court stated in Marshall v. State, 854 So.2d 1235 (Fla.2003), A fair assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight,... and to evaluate the conduct from counsel's perspective at the time. Id. at 1247 (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052). Arbelaez suggests that counsel should have hired an investigator to travel to Colombia or should have gone to Colombia himself to obtain mitigation evidence. At the evidentiary hearing, Arbelaez introduced three documents from Colombia that his postconviction counsel obtained through investigators: an affidavit from Arbelaez's sixth-grade teacher, who described Arbelaez as a poor student with mental problems; a letter from Dr. Luis Alfonso Arango Tobon, an emergency doctor with Colombian social services, who had treated [Arbelaez] for a suicidal attempt and depression in 1976; and a letter from Dr. Ernesto Botero Ramirez, a psychiatrist who had treated Arbelaez in Colombia with electroshock while Arbelaez was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. Even if Arbelaez had managed to prove deficient performance, these three documents would not suffice to show prejudice. Although the documents do contain some new information  most notably, that Arbelaez was treated with electroshock after one of his suicide attempts  they largely confirm facts counsel already knew from Arbelaez or his family. In particular, counsel knew at the time of the penalty phase that Arbelaez had been poor, had struggled with depression, had attempted suicide, had spent time in a Colombian mental hospital, and had received an inadequate education. Counsel considered asking Arbelaez's family members to testify to these facts. Ultimately, however, he decided not to present testimony about Arbelaez's childhood because he feared it would be counterproductive given that Arbelaez himself had cut short the childhood of his five-year-old murder victim. Arbelaez has essentially presented cumulative evidence to argue against counsel's reasonable strategic choice. A comparison with the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003), confirms that counsel's investigation of Arbelaez's background satisfied the constitutional requirements. In Wiggins, counsel abandoned their investigation of [the defendant's] background after having acquired only a rudimentary knowledge of his history from a narrow set of sources. Id. at 524, 123 S.Ct. 2527. In contrast, counsel in this case acquired more than a rudimentary knowledge of his client's background. He testified that, in preparation for trial, he knew most of the major facts about Arbelaez's troubled background. Whereas counsel in Wiggins abandon[ed] their investigation at an unreasonable juncture, id. at 527, 123 S.Ct. 2527, counsel here never truly abandoned his investigation. Rather, he waited for either Arbelaez's family members or the Colombian government to send him any available documentation of Arbelaez's mental health history as they assured him they would. Counsel's performance was not unreasonable under prevailing professional norms. Valle, 778 So.2d at 965. The trial court was justified in concluding that counsel did not perform at a constitutionally deficient level in investigating Arbelaez's background in Colombia.