Opinion ID: 2686798
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: mendoza’s penalty phase evidence

Text: One part of Mendoza’s attorneys’ mitigation strategy in the penalty phase was to show that Mendoza was not more culpable than his co-defendants—the Cuellar brothers—who received non-capital sentences. To this end, they called Humberto Cuellar, who testified that the three defendants had plotted to rob Calderon with guns, but that none of them ever intended to kill him. They did not know that Calderon was armed until Calderon drew his gun and shot Humberto. Trial counsel Wax had the contents of the judgments in co-defendants Humberto’s and Lazaro’s cases read to the jury. Trial counsel also pursued a mitigation strategy of showing that Mendoza had mental health problems and had experienced a traumatic childhood. We recount the extensive evidence about Mendoza’s mental health, childhood, and substance abuse. 11 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 12 of 58
Mendoza’s mother, Nilia Mendoza, testified at length about Mendoza’s tumultuous and tragic childhood. Ms. Mendoza testified that her son was born in 1966 in Havana, Cuba. 7 As a newborn, Mendoza “would always get sick” and received surgery at age one for water in the testicles. He received the same surgery a second time and developed asthma and vomiting problems. Mendoza also suffered “attacks,” during which he would “lose consciousness” and would have to be taken to a psychologist for treatment. As he grew older, Mendoza became “[v]ery restless, very dominant.” Mendoza would get in fights with other children at school in Cuba. When Mendoza was approximately three-years-old, his mother took him to see a psychologist at a Cuban hospital. Mendoza received psychological treatment at this hospital for approximately two years, from ages three to five. He was treated at a different hospital in Cuba from ages six to twelve. These subsequent doctors told Ms. Mendoza that her son suffered from “aggressive conduct . . . like schizophrenia.” In 1980, Ms. Mendoza, with her husband and her son, attempted to leave Cuba by seeking refuge at the Peruvian embassy in Havana. Ms. Mendoza explained, “We jumped the fence and we got into the embassy.” At that time, 7 Mendoza was his parents’ only child. 12 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 13 of 58 “[t]here were ten thousand people inside the Peruvian embassy.” Because there were so many people, the Mendoza family left the embassy after obtaining a permit go to the United States. The Mendozas returned to their home in Havana. For the next week, the police came “every once in a while to get [the family] out [and] take [them] to the airport and then . . . let [them] go somewhere in Cuba so that the police would hit [them] and then [they] would go back home.” Ms. Mendoza affirmed that all three family members were beaten during this period. Mendoza was about 14-years-old at the time. Eventually, the police allowed the Mendozas to leave Cuba, telling them that they could go to the United States. However, the family went to Costa Rica for a day, and then to Peru. They stayed in Peru for two years and three months, during which time they lived in tents in a city park. Approximately 800 other Cuban refugees lived with the Mendozas in this tent village, with each tent housing between 16 and 18 people. Ms. Mendoza testified that the family did not have access to medical care. Her son suffered a nervous crisis and developed typhoid, and Mendoza’s father lost his hearing and had a nervous breakdown. The Mendozas filed applications for asylum in the United States, which were not granted. Eventually, the family left Peru, traveled to Mexico, and entered the United States by crossing the Mexican-American border. In August 1982, the 13 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 14 of 58 Mendozas settled in Miami, where Mr. Mendoza found work in construction. Her son was around 16-years-old at the time. 8 Ms. Mendoza testified that, when the family first arrived in Miami, they registered their son at Miami High School. Initially, “he was doing all right, but then he had trouble.” Mendoza dropped out of high school and took night classes. Ms. Mendoza never arranged for her son to receive mental health treatment in the United States because “he never wanted to.” As to when she suspected Mendoza was using drugs, Ms. Mendoza answered: “Well, really in the beginning, I didn’t realize because I didn’t know much about it. But afterwards, I did.” Ms. Mendoza occasionally found marijuana cigarette butts in her son’s bedroom, and he “was always asking for money.” Mendoza started to steal his mother’s jewelry. On cross-examination, Ms. Mendoza acknowledged that she never observed Mendoza using other illegal drugs or alcohol, but stated that she “kn[e]w little about drugs.” She did once have to go and pick Mendoza up from a bar and observed him drunk. Mendoza obtained his general equivalency degree (“GED”) and performed various part-time jobs. He worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, for a construction company, and then for a plumber. 8 While Ms. Mendoza, at one point, said that Mendoza was 14-years-old when he arrived in the United States, she also testified that Mendoza was born in 1966 and came to the United States in 1982, which made him approximately 16 at that time. 14 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 15 of 58 Ms. Mendoza testified that her son later married a woman whom he had met in the refugee camp in Peru. They married in the United States and had two children. Mendoza’s daughter, who was five at the time of the trial, was born with birth defects. According to Ms. Mendoza, her son “had a nervous attack” when he learned of his daughter’s birth defects. Mendoza’s marriage did not last. By the time of Mendoza’s 1992 offenses, he was divorced, no longer living with his children, and his former wife would not let him see the children.
Trial counsel did not rely exclusively on Ms. Mendoza’s testimony to show Mendoza’s difficult upbringing. They also obtained, via Mendoza’s relative in Cuba, a doctor’s summary of Mendoza’s childhood medical records in Cuba, which were consistent with Ms. Mendoza’s testimony. The records were signed by Dr. Pedro A. Rivera Richards and contained the seal of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health. After Ms. Mendoza’s testimony, the defense proffered these medical records. The records were in Spanish and were read to the jury in English through an interpreter.9 They documented Mendoza’s mental health problems and treatment from ages 2.5 to 5 (1968 to 1971), and then from ages 10 to 13 (1976 to 1979). 9 The trial court overruled the State’s hearsay objection to the admission of the medical records. 15 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 16 of 58 The medical records stated that Mendoza’s “[m]ain diagnosis” was “definitive dominant character with aggressive predominance and schizophrenic and schizoid characteristics.” His other diagnoses were “fears, nocturnal fears during infancy, and enuresis.” According to the records, Mendoza first received psychiatric care when he was two-years-old. From ages two to five, Mendoza received “specialized treatment and family counseling.” At five-years-old, he was released from treatment. At age ten, Mendoza went back to a pediatric psychiatrist in Cuba “because he was not progressing in school” and “found himself isolated.” Mendoza had many “fights and brawls” inside and outside school in Cuba. Mendoza received “all types of psychotherapy, talks and meetings and family sessions” as well as “special school therapy for his conduct and specialized medical treatment.” He was evaluated “by the whole medical group,” including psychiatrists and psychologists and subjected to various psychometric tests. When he was 13-years-old, Mendoza reported having “visions, hallucinations and auditive types of sensations of persons calling him.” This led the doctors to diagnose “characteristics of schizophrenic and schizoid characters.”
Mendoza’s next witness was Gloria Dardy-Porter, the medical records custodian for the State Corrections Rehabilitation Services. Ms. Dardy-Porter 16 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 17 of 58 authenticated Mendoza’s prison medical records, which were admitted into evidence. These records showed that, while incarcerated prior to trial, Mendoza received medical treatment for, inter alia: (1) chronic right leg pain resulting from a gunshot wound he suffered in 1988; (2) mental health problems, such as hearing voices and experiencing other hallucinations; and (3) routine ailments, like a sore throat, cough, and constipation.
After establishing Mendoza’s difficult background and serious mental health issues, trial counsel called on Dr. Toomer, one of the psychologists who had evaluated Mendoza. Dr. Toomer testified about Mendoza’s multiple psychological problems and lack of treatment for them. Trial counsel obtained Dr. Toomer’s report before trial. We now recount his trial testimony. Dr. Toomer was imminently qualified as he: (1) had bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in psychology; (2) was licensed to practice psychology in Florida; (3) had been a psychologist for 17 years; (4) was a “diplomat of the American Board of Professional Psychologists”; (5) was published in various medical journals and had recently published a book on psychology; and (6) had testified as an expert in psychology numerous times since 1975. Dr. Toomer was a 17 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 18 of 58 professor at Florida International University, where he directed the graduate mental health program. He also had a private clinical and forensic psychology practice. 10 Dr. Toomer met with Mendoza four times at the prison. Dr. Toomer performed his evaluations in English, not Spanish, because there was no language barrier between Mendoza and him. Dr. Toomer first obtained from Mendoza a “psychosocial history,” which was “a process or series of questions” indicating “overall functioning, place of birth, demographic data, information regarding childhood, parental relations, sibling relationship, prior medical history, [and] prior areas of problems or difficulty.” Dr. Toomer stated, “[i]n other words, it’s a life history of the individual’s functioning from earlier on up to that point.” As to his childhood in Cuba, Mendoza told Dr. Toomer “that he had received treatment and it had something to do with his having supposed experiences with multiple personalities.” Mendoza “also described . . . an extensive drug history that dated back to the age of nineteen involving the use of alcohol, marijuana and some crack cocaine.” Dr. Toomer testified that Mendoza’s “multiple personalities” diagnosis indicated “something rather serious,” and Dr. Toomer was concerned that Mendoza had not received any treatment in the United States. Dr. Toomer 10 Dr. Toomer testified that “forensic psychology” refers to “the interaction of psychology and the law,” whereas “clinical psychology” focuses on “the impact of human behavior and treatment and diagnosis of the mentally ill.” 18 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 19 of 58 suspected that Mendoza resorted to illegal drugs as a form of “self-medication” for his mental health problems. Dr. Toomer testified about his psychological testing of Mendoza. He administered the Bender Gestalt Designs, which “is a screening instrument where the individual is asked to . . . draw on a piece of paper with a pencil . . . drawings of symbols that he observed on a particular card.” “The discrepancies between the drawings and what the individuals produce is indicative of functioning or lack of functioning or deficiencies in functioning in a variety of areas . . . and organicity or brain damage.” Mendoza’s performance on the Bender Gestalt indicated “poor impulse control and high levels of anxiety and aspects of poor judgment.” Dr. Toomer also administered the Carlson Psychological Survey, which “measures an individual’s overall functioning across four basic dimensions and . . . compares [the individual’s] functioning against individuals who have been charged with or accused of crimes.” The test “assess[es] functioning across a variety of areas such as chemical abuse, thought disturbance, anti-social tendencies and self depreciation.” It also has various mechanisms to detect whether an individual is “faking or not responding appropriately” to the psychological evaluation. Dr. Toomer described Mendoza’s performance on the Carlson Psychological Survey as “difficult.” The results indicated that Mendoza suffered from “inferiority, poor self esteem, impulsivity and irrational behavior,” as well as 19 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 20 of 58 “changes in mood shifts or behavior changes from time to time.” Dr. Toomer suspected brain damage as a cause for Mendoza’s behavior. The test showed that Mendoza was in the 99th percentile for chemical abuse and in the 99th percentile for “thought disturbance.” Dr. Toomer explained that “thought disturbance” refers to “the degree to which there are perceptual disturbances or difficulty in terms of reality testing,” and one way to measure thought disturbance is by asking “whether or not the person experiences hallucinations, audible or visual.” As for anti-social tendencies, referring to “the tendencies of an individual to violate social norms,” Mendoza was in the 85th percentile. Mendoza was in the 95th percentile for self depreciation. During later meetings with Dr. Toomer, Mendoza demonstrated “heightened agitation, nervousness, sweating, [and] a sense of being out of touch with reality.” Mendoza was unable to remember who Dr. Toomer was from one visit to the next and complained of auditory and visual hallucinations. Dr. Toomer concluded that Mendoza was “suffering some very significant deficits in terms of his reality testing and they [were] reflected in impairment both in terms of cognitive ability as well as affective or emotional ability.” Dr. Toomer also suspected brain damage, which “would not be inconsistent given [Mendoza’s] history of drug and substance abuse.” Seeing no evidence of anti-social personality disorder, Dr. Toomer believed that Mendoza could be rehabilitated. 20 Case: 13-14968 Date Filed: 07/31/2014 Page: 21 of 58 On cross-examination, Dr. Toomer acknowledged that Mendoza did not actually state that his drug use was a means of “self-medication” for his mental health problems. Mendoza had only told Dr. Toomer that “he took the drugs because it calmed him down and helped him to feel better.” This statement led to Dr. Toomer’s “utilization [sic] that he was using drugs for self-medication.” Over trial counsel’s objection, the State asked Dr. Toomer if he was aware that Mendoza had “a pending trial in other robberies using a firearm[?]” Dr. Toomer was aware of the pending charges. 11 Nevertheless, based on his “mental status evaluation” and Mendoza’s history, he believed Mendoza could be rehabilitated. Dr. Toomer testified that he did not find anything indicative of antisocial personality disorder.