Opinion ID: 1697053
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Failing to Present Mitigation Evidence

Text: In this issue, Evans argues that the trial court erred in denying his claim that counsel failed to present expert testimony concerning his mental and emotional deficiencies, interview witnesses other than his parents regarding his childhood, or have additional tests conducted to ascertain whether he suffered from organic brain damage. The trial court denied this claim, finding that counsel was not deficient because he made informed decisions after conducting a thorough evaluation and strategically decided to present testimony through lay witnesses. Because Evans cannot demonstrate that counsel's failure to present additional mitigation evidence resulted in prejudice, we affirm the trial court's denial. At the evidentiary hearing, Evans presented additional lay witnesses and two experts to support this ineffective assistance claim. Two of Evans' aunts testified about his poor childhood, his ADHD, and the drugs he was taking for his hyperactive behavior. However, such evidence would have been cumulative to the testimony of his parents, who testified at the penalty phase about these issues. [24] See Barnhill v. State, 971 So.2d 106, 116 (Fla. 2007) (concluding that counsel cannot be ineffective for failing to present cumulative evidence). Evans also presented the testimony of two mental health experts. [25] Dr. Silverman testified that Evans had unusual thought processes, which were consistent with a thinking or personality disorder as opposed to a conduct or behavioral disorder. Dr. Silverman acknowledged that Evans was diagnosed on numerous occasions with conduct disorder and that his impulse behaviors were consistent with that diagnosis, but believed the conduct was merely a symptom of the underlying problemunusual thought processes. He stated that Evans had an abnormal EEG test, which is consistent with frontal lobe problems and the possibility of brain damage. Dr. Silverman diagnosed Evans, albeit just two days before the evidentiary hearing, with schizoid-type personality disorder. Dr. Harvey also testified at the evidentiary hearing and diagnosed Evans with a significant profile of current cognitive impairments... consistent with a profile that's seen in children who have failure to thrive, a disorder that was briefly discussed in some of his records. Dr. Harvey testified that Evans' striking deficit between his verbal and performance IQ scores and his abnormal EEG are consistent with infants who suffer from failure to thrive, which often causes neurological impairments and abnormal brain development. On cross-examination, Dr. Harvey admitted that his diagnosis may be somewhat inconsistent, both with the fact that Evans lived for almost eight years after the murder without being arrested and the testimony of Waddell and Thomas that Evans was the mastermind behind the plan to murder Pfeiffer. However, Dr. Harvey noted that Evans was on social security disability for psychological issues at the time of the murder and that he was skeptical about testimony that Evans planned the murder because it came from two codefendants. Despite the fact that Evans has now found more favorable experts to testify to additional mitigation, our confidence in the outcome is not undermined because the testimony adduced at the evidentiary hearing may not have supported any of the statutory mitigators. Neither expert testified at the evidentiary hearing that Evans was in fact suffering from extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the crime. Although one expert testified that Evans' cognitive impairments were detectable at a young age and are very likely to have been operative at the point in time of his crime, this does not appear to contain the specificity that is required to support statutory mitigation. See Jones v. State, 949 So.2d 1021, 1030 (Fla.2006) (rejecting claim of ineffective assistance of penaltyphase counsel where defendant failed to present expert evidence that he was suffering from any cognitive impairment at the time of the crime that would have supported any statutory mental health mitigation, other than expert testimony that he thought both of the statutory mental health mitigators applied). Further, the trial court gave moderate weight to nonstatutory mitigation based on Evans' cognitive impairments, including a difficult childhood (little weight), that Evans suffered great trauma during childhood (moderate weight), and that he suffered from hyperactivity and a history of hospitalization for mental illness (moderate weight), notwithstanding the fact that expert testimony was limited on that issue at the penalty phase. Thus, although Evans asserts that the testimony of Dr. Harvey and Dr. Silverman would have supported additional nonstatutory mitigation, the trial court had already given moderate weight to his cognitive impairments as nonstatutory mitigation without this expert testimony and found it insufficient to outweigh two weighty aggravators, pecuniary gain and CCP, which were assigned great weight by the trial court. We therefore deny relief on this claim.