Opinion ID: 2317416
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Mitigating evidence presented at trial:

Text: At the sentencing phase of trial, DeRosa's appointed counsel presented testimony from the following five witnesses: Jason DeRosa Jason is DeRosa's older half-brother (they have the same mother, but different fathers). Jason testified at length about DeRosa's unstable and painful childhood, including the fact that, when DeRosa was approximately three years old, their mother Cassie, in order to facilitate her own military training, left them in a full-time daycare center for a lengthy period of time, at the end of which their maternal grandmother retrieved them and took them to Dallas to live with her for approximately three years. From there, Jason testified, DeRosa was taken in by his biological father, James Money, Sr. (Money), and DeRosa lived with Money and his new family for approximately five years. At the approximate age of eleven, DeRosa moved to Indianapolis to live with his mother, her new husband, James DeRosa Sr. (DeRosa Sr.), and Jason. In 1992, DeRosa Sr. died while on active duty in the military. Jason testified that [t]here was no structure to [DeRosa's] life, through the ... whole childhood and up until he was an adult, Tr. at 602, and that DeRosa felt like he didn't belong a lot of times, id. at 603. Jason further testified that he loved DeRosa and he asked the jury to spare DeRosa's life. Cassie DeRosa Cassie, DeRosa's mother, testified that DeRosa was born on March 17, 1977, in Irving, Texas, and that at the time of his birth their family included herself, her then-husband, Money, and her son Jason. A few weeks after DeRosa was born, she testified, Money stole approximately $1,500 from his employer and fled to San Francisco. Money returned to Irving approximately four months later. Shortly thereafter, Cassie testified, she came home one day to find Money on the couch with a male lover. She testified that she responded by moving out of the family's house with her two sons, and proceeded to try to raise them by herself. According to Cassie, her mother did not help her with raising the two boys. She testified: My mother doesn'tmy mother never cared for me. A few years ago, she finally gave me an answer when I asked why, and she said, well, you were defective. So she never liked me much. She neverwhen she wanted something or needed me, or needed help or wanted something, then I was her daughter, and other than that, I wasn't her daughter and she didn't care for Jimmy, Jr. [i.e., DeRosa.] Jimmy, Jr. looked like me, from the day he was born he was defective, and so it's like sheshe loved Jason, and loved him above everything, but the other two-thirds, you know, didn't count. Id. at 610. Cassie testified that on the morning of November 28, 1978, she enlisted in the military, and later that afternoon filed for divorce from Money. She testified that she did so in that particular order because she would not have been allowed to enlist if she was a single mother. According to Cassie, she left for basic training in late December 1978, and her mother agreed to take care of Jason, but she didn't keep [DeRosa]. Id. at 612. DeRosa was apparently left to be cared for by a roommate of Cassie's. Later on, Cassie testified, she was selected to attend a drill sergeant academy in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Her mother, she testified, refused to take her boys because of the expense, and instead located this daycare center at Lawton[, Oklahoma, that was] specifically tailor-made to military people with children that get called out. Id. Cassie testified that she proceeded to place her sons in the daycare center and left for training. When she returned approximately two-and-a-half weeks later, she testified, her mother had been there earlier that day and had taken [her] kids on grounds of abandonment. [2] Id. at 614. Cassie testified that she had given the director of the daycare center a letter forbidding them from allowing her mother to take custody of the boys, but she testified that her mother forged a document in order to obtain their custody. Cassie also testified that her mother obtained restraining orders prohibiting Cassie from having contact with her boys, and that when she (Cassie) actually attempted to visit her boys on one occasion, her mother threatened to kill her and chased her away at high speed in an automobile. Cassie testified that approximately two months after her mother took the boys from the daycare center, her mother sent DeRosa to Boston to live with Money. According to Cassie, when she remarried DeRosa Sr. in 1985, her mother told her she deserved her children and could have them back. She testified that Jason returned to live with her in 1987, and that DeRosa returned to live with them in April 1988. Cassie testified that she soon realized, however, that DeRosa was a handful and had problems with authority and discipline. Id. at 618. In August 1988, Cassie testified, she, DeRosa Sr., and the two boys moved to Germany. In Germany, DeRosa engaged in inappropriate behaviors and eventually had to be sent back to Arkansas to be admitted temporarily to a hospital psychiatric unit for treatment for concentration hyperactivity disorder and severe depression. According to Cassie, DeRosa was depressed about the physical and mental abuse he had suffered, and she testified that they suspected he had been sexually molested at some point by Money. Cassie testified that DeRosa, even at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old would just stand in the middle of the room and scream, and that she would hold him in a rocking chair and he would say, `Make the pain go away, mom. Make the pain go away.' Id. at 623. Cassie opined that she likewise suffered from depression and concentration hyperactivity disorder, and she testified that after her mother took her boys, she ended up becoming a functioning alcoholic for quite sometime until [she] went and got... psychological treatment. Id. at 625. After DeRosa was discharged from psychiatric treatment, he attended high school in Oklahoma. Cassie testified that DeRosa was smart, but was bored with school and had problems with his grades. And she testified that he would intentionally fail or make bad grades in order to prevent good things from happening. It was almost like he didn't want anything good to happen to him, she testified. Id. at 629. Following graduation from high school in 1995, Cassie testified, DeRosa joined the Army. He received a bad-conduct discharge, however, for stealing a car, and was sentenced to ten months in the military correctional facility at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After completing that sentence, Cassie testified, DeRosa returned to Poteau, Oklahoma, and lived with her for some time while working a series of low-paying restaurant and retail jobs. In April 1999, Cassie testified, she began working for the Plummers, helping to maintain all of the houses, lawns, and equipment on their rural property. Cassie testified that from mid-August to mid-September of 1999, she had to leave Poteau to attend a thirty-day annual training session with the Army reserves, and during that time the Plummers agreed to allow DeRosa to fill in for her. Ultimately, Cassie testified that, although she did not condone DeRosa's actions in robbing and murdering the Plummers, she still loved him, and she asked the jury to spare his life. In doing so, she stated: He didn't deserve the life that he has had to live. There's no fault of his own. He's lived a life that I didn't choose for him, I didn't want for him, and I couldn't change what happened to him. Id. at 635. She also told the jury, My son's a good boyhe is a good boy. His thought patterns don't work well sometimes and he doesn't see beyond a certain thing. Id. at 636. Marlene Sharp Marlene is DeRosa's half-sister; she and DeRosa have the same biological father (Money), but different mothers. [3] Marlene, who is approximately eleven years older than DeRosa, testified that she first had contact with DeRosa when he was one year old and living in Irving, Texas, with Cassie, Money, and Jason. Approximately three years later (when DeRosa was four years old), she testified, the two of them lived together with their father for several months (as noted, DeRosa was removed from the daycare center by his maternal grandmother and then sent to Boston to live with Money; Marlene was spending the summer with Money). During that summer, she testified, their father was never around, so she and DeRosa were always together. At some point, she testified, he began calling her mom, and she tried to explain to him that she wasn't his mother. Id. at 639. Marlene ultimately left Boston, she testified, because she woke up one night to find her father sexually abusing her. Marlene testified that she had no contact with DeRosa from that point until he and their father moved back to Texas. There, she testified, she began seeing DeRosa at least once a month. She testified that DeRosa was worried all the time and depressed. Marlene testified that she moved back in with her father and DeRosa in an attempt to rebuild her relationship with her father. While she lived at their father's house, she testified, DeRosa would get beat for wetting the bed, would have plates and dishes thrown at him, and would take the spankings for the misconduct of Timothy, their father's new son. Id. at 641. Marlene testified that she ended up leaving her father's house after six weeks because she couldn't take things anymore. At some point after she moved out, Marlene testified, her father informed her that he was going on the road to be a truckdriver. She testified that she was scared for DeRosa, who was approximately nine or ten at the time, to stay alone with Vicki, her father's new wife, because Vicki was the one who had been abusing DeRosa. Consequently, she testified, she asked her father not to leave DeRosa alone with Vicki. Her father, in response, told her that Cassie had asked to have custody of DeRosa, and Marlene begged her father to allow DeRosa to move in with Cassie. Although her father agreed, she testified that, up until that point in time, DeRosa did not know that Cassie was his mother. Marlene testified that DeRosa's childhood was [h]ard and that he [a]lways got in trouble for stuff that he didn't do. Id. at 642. She testified that she loved DeRosa and wanted to continue to have a relationship with him even if he was in jail. Ultimately, she stated to the jury: I don't want to lose him again. It's hard. It's hard to be taken away from people that you loved, and just one day they're there and one day they're not, and it happened to him all his life. He had me, then I was gone. Cassie, that he didn't even remember. You know, my dad abandoned him, and everything. It'sI'm begging y'all not to take him from me again. Id. at 643. Wanda Draper Draper, who has a Ph.D. in human development with a specialization in education, is a professor emeritus from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. At defense counsel's request, she analyzed the factors that impacted DeRosa's development. In doing so, she testified, she interviewed DeRosa on two occasions, interviewed a number of his family members, and studied the available medical records. Draper testified that what she found was a child who started out with a very difficult traumatic troubled kind of life because of the early problems going on in the family into which he was born, and so he never really had a particular family with whom he lived or grew up with. He moved back and forth and among various family members and sometimes was left without any of those anchor people, so he really never had an attachmentnever had an attachment to his mother because she left very early in his life, leaving him to be cared for by others: One was her own mother or his maternal grandmother. Id. at 650-51. Draper testified that she interviewed Connie Carroll, DeRosa's maternal grandmother, as well as Cassie DeRosa, DeRosa's mother. Draper testified that there was ongoing animosity between these two women, and they each indicate[d] that they fe[lt] very strongly about the antagonism that they fe[lt] and the anger they fe[lt] toward one another. Id. at 651. This animosity, Draper testified, negatively impacted DeRosa's development. According to Draper, she found a pattern of abandonment in DeRosa's life. She testified: I specifically counted about seven times that he was abandoned. I think there are actually more than that, but seven particular times that he was abandoned by a significant person or someone he certainly considered to be significant in his life. Id. at 652. [A]bout the third time that a child has to change the significant attachment figures in his life, Draper testified, a child will begin to resist or back off from that attachment. Id. And, she testified, for a child to even ask who's my mother means that child has no attachment. Id. at 653. Draper testified that Connie, DeRosa's grandmother, disciplined him as a young child for starting fires. Connie told Draper that DeRosa had been playing with matches and set a couple of fires in the house, and so she said [she] wanted to teach him a lesson and so . . . she put him in one end of the bathtub, and in the other end she wadded up newspapers and she set the newspapers on fire and let them burn closer and closer to him, and she told him this is what happens if you set fires. You could easily get burned and people could get burned with this, and so he was screaming, of course, and crying. Id. at 655-56. Draper opined that DeRosa probably didn't hear or understand what the message was. Id. at 656. Draper testified that when DeRosa was living with Connie, Connie was working two jobs and had very little extra time. Consequently, Draper testified, DeRosa went to a children's center each morning, and then would accompany his older brother Jason to elementary school and would sit in the back of Jason's classroom all afternoon. This practice, Draper testified, continued until Jason was in the fourth grade. Draper testified that DeRosa experienced bedwetting problems for many years, and that when he was living with Money and his wife Vicki, Vicki would whip [DeRosa] because he wet the bed. Id. at 658. According to Draper, the one thing that DeRosa could count on was that he would be punished if he misbehaved. As a result, she testified, misbehaving provided a form of stability because DeRosa knew what was going to happen to him. Relatedly, Draper explained that DeRosa had assumed disability, which she testified occurs where a child can't seem to succeed in any way that is appropriate, so they succeed as a failure. Id. at 660. Draper testified that although DeRosa Sr. was, by all accounts, a pretty decent human being, id. at 661, DeRosa could not form an attachment with him because DeRosa did not know if he would be abandoned again. Further, Draper testified, DeRosa didn't trust his mother enough to make an attachment with her either. [I]f [Connie] the grandmother had taken [DeRosa] in and nurtured him and really cared about him, Draper testified, DeRosa might have made it with that, but Connie did not do so. Id. at 663. In short, she testified, [he] had no single consistent person in his life. Id. at 664. Draper opined that DeRosa had a serious disorganized attachment disorder that developmentally hinder[ed] him. Id. at 666. And in light of this disorder, she testified, she was not surprised that he had these problems, id., and grew up to be a very troubled person, id. at 669. Michael Gelbort Gelbort, a clinical neuropsychologist, testified that he was hired by defense counsel to run a battery of tests and evaluate DeRosa. According to Gelbort, DeRosa was in the high average to superior range in terms of his nonverbal ability, [b]ut in dramatic, or really marked contrast, his left hemisphere, the verbal, logical side of [his] brain [wa]s it[was] as if [it was] from a different person. Id. at 684. More specifically, Gelbort testified that there was a difference of nearly two standard deviations between DeRosa's nonverbal ability and his verbal/logical ability, and he explained that this doesn't happen by chance. Id. Gelbort opined that it meant that something happened to the left side of [DeRosa's] brain and that DeRosa was demonstrating left frontal deficits. Id. Gelbort proceeded to explain in more detail the purpose of the left frontal lobe of the human brain. It's the most evolved part of the human brain, he testified, and what causes human beings to be able to be very sophisticated in their thinking, problem solving, [and] reasoning. Id. at 684-85. He testified that when you start doing damage to the frontal lobes, what you see is behavior that is not in our control. Id. at 685. According to Gelbort, [p]eople with frontal lobe problems tend to come of two types: One type you don't see, their [sic] the couch potatoes; they don't have any initiative; they don't do much. Id. The second type, he testified, are those who have defective inhibition due to frontal lobe deficits. In other words, they act on their impulses rather than saying, no, that's a bad idea, and they get into trouble. Id. He testified that these problems typically present when a person is in their early teens, just as they did with DeRosa. And of these people, he testified, those who do not receive treatment in their teens, you see that they have trouble getting along in life. Fortunately, it's not typically criminal activity, but you see people who have trouble in their jobs, people who have trouble in their marriages, trouble in their interpersonal relationships because they're impulsive, they act without thinking, they do things that are poorly modulated. Id. at 686-87. Gelbort testified that [t]hese are not things that, at this point in medical science, we know how to fix. We do have the ability to tone them down using things like anti-seizure medication. Id. at 688. Finally, Gelbort testified, I think it's a real shame that he [DeRosa] didn't get the treatment [when he was a teenager] such that none of us would be here today. Id. at 691. On cross-examination, Gelbort testified that DeRosa was suffering from what he described as an acquired brain injury resulting from a lack of development. Id. at 694. Gelbort also explained that emotionally charged situations tend to exacerbate or make the condition worse, particularly when things are happening fast. He stated, I don't see, in these cases with defective frontal lobes, that these people are necessarily making choices. It's more like the impulseeverybody has impulses going through them all the time. Id. at 698.