Opinion ID: 853470
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Counsel's Awareness of Potential Mental Health Issues

Text: Vowels had previously served as second chair in the defense of Timothy Anderson, who was charged with murder and tried in Judge Young's court. After Anderson was convicted on a plea of guilty but mentally ill, the jury recommended death. Judge Young instead imposed a term of sixty years, stating that the jury's verdict of guilty but mentally ill is inconsistent with the death sentence. Based on this experience, Vowels formulated a strategy to rely on Judge Young's presumed reluctance to sentence a mentally ill person to death. In the Anderson case, Judge Young stated that he was persuaded by compelling evidence, including the testimony of a number of psychiatrists who relied on their own evaluations and a detailed background report, that the defendant had long suffered from a severe mental illness. [7] At Prowell's sentencing, Judge Young denied any parallels to the Anderson case: I rejected the death penalty recommendation from the Jury on that case because I personally do not believe that we should execute mentally ill individuals. That case and the case of Mr. Prowell do not have any similarities other than death of a victim. Prowell first claims that his trial counsel were ineffective because they failed to conduct a reasonable mitigation investigation. Specifically, he argues that despite their suspicions that Prowell suffered from mental illness, Vowels and Danks failed to investigate adequately his mental health with the goal of a defense of insanity or a plea of guilty but mentally ill. Both Vowels and Danks testified at the postconviction relief hearing that from the outset of their representation, they believed Prowell to be mentally unsound or mentally ill. For example, Vowels testified that his first impression of Prowell was that [s]omebody's home, but the lights aren't on. He also described the experience of attempting a conversation with Prowell as pulling teeth. You may ask Mr. Prowell, How are you today? and his visual . . . I mean, what you take in, I say, How are you today? and the look he gives you is that you have just asked him to reveal Einstein's Formula of Relativity. I mean, it's like it's a very complex thing for him to respond to you. Similarly, Danks testified that Prowell was withdrawn and distant, didn't appear to understand the gravity of the situation, and didn't under[stand] reality in a normal sense. Although Vowels believed Prowell to be mentally ill, he did not consider recommending pleading guilty but mentally ill, which is one of the three pleas appropriate in Indiana criminal proceedings. Ind.Code § 35-35-2-1(a)(3) (1998); Miller v. State, 720 N.E.2d 696, 702 (Ind. 1999). Despite his experience with the Anderson case and his belief that Prowell was mentally ill, Vowels did not take similar steps to investigate Prowell's background and family history to supply his expert with the necessary information to form a proper diagnosis. A lawyer experienced in capital representation, the mitigation investigator, and two psychiatrists all testified at the postconviction hearing that the information gathered by Prowell's trial counsel and provided to Dill before the sentencing hearing was inadequate and below prevailing norms in capital cases. It is clear from the record that Dill's conclusion that Prowell suffered from paranoid personality disorder, described by both psychiatrists as a far less serious mental illness than schizophrenia, was an inevitable result of the scanty information supplied to him and the fact that he was retained just eighteen days before Prowell's sentencing hearing. Essentially, Vowels allowed Prowell simply to fall on the mercy of the trial court without developing the evidence necessary to support a diagnosis of serious mental illness. This step is certainly not necessary to effective counsel in every case. Here, however, there were obvious indications that Prowell's case did present substantial issues turning on the development of this evidence.