Opinion ID: 2317416
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Strickland's first prongdeficient performance

Text: Because DeRosa never presented his ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim to the OCCA, no state evidentiary hearing was held regarding the claim. Further, the federal district court in this case concluded that DeRosa could not satisfy Strickland's prejudice prong, and thus did not hold an evidentiary hearing. Lastly, as respondent correctly notes, DeRosa has not produced affidavits from his trial attorneys regarding their [sentencing phase] strategy. Aplee. Br. at 36. As a result, there is no evidence in the record on appeal detailing the sentencing phase strategy of DeRosa's trial counsel or any evidence indicating why they did not present the additional mitigating evidence that DeRosa now points to. After examining the mitigating evidence that was actually presented by DeRosa's trial counsel, it is apparent that trial counsel was well aware of most, if not all, of the significant mitigating events that occurred during DeRosa's life. In particular, DeRosa's trial counsel was privy to (a) the fact that most of the significant adults in DeRosa's life, including his mother, were dysfunctional to one degree or another, (b) the strained, antagonistic relationship between DeRosa's mother and maternal grandmother, (c) the series of abandonments that DeRosa was subjected to as a child, including by his mother and biological father, (d) the fact that DeRosa's mother essentially abandoned DeRosa and his brother by leaving them in a daycare facility for a month, and the fact that DeRosa's maternal grandmother retrieved the boys from the daycare center and took custody of them, (e) the fact that DeRosa was unclear, during the initial years of his life, who his mother was, (f) the fact that DeRosa's biological father was neglectful and possibly abusive towards DeRosa, (g) the allegations that DeRosa's father molested DeRosa's half-sister, (h) the fact that DeRosa's stepmother, Vicki, physically punished and abused him, (i) the fact that DeRosa displayed inappropriate behaviors as a teenager and, consequently, had to be returned to the United States from Germany and admitted for inpatient psychiatric treatment, (j) the likelihood that DeRosa did not receive adequate inpatient psychiatric treatment upon his return to the United States, and (k) the nature of DeRosa's psychological issues, including in particular his left frontal lobe deficiencies and the resulting impacts on his behavior. DeRosa's trial counsel, in turn, presented this information to the jury through the testimony of the witnesses listed above. In light of these uncontroverted facts, we are unable to conclude that the failure to present this additional mitigating evidence was an error so serious that counsel was not functioning as the `counsel' guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052. As we have outlined, the additional mitigating evidence is, in large part, duplicative of the evidence actually presented by DeRosa's trial counsel. And, to the extent the additional mitigating evidence is not duplicative, it is, in our view, of marginal value. Specifically, the additional, non-duplicative mitigating evidence bore no relevance to the jury's determination of whether either aggravating circumstance had been proved, Weeks v. Angelone, 528 U.S. 225, 241, 120 S.Ct. 727, 145 L.Ed.2d 727 (2000) (italics removed from original), nor was it particularly helpful in terms of provid[ing] a lawful justification for a life sentence, id.