Opinion ID: 65379
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Failure to present exculpatory evidence

Text: The district court found that Davis rendered ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to present  and, through hearsay objections, preventing the prosecution from presentingcrucial exculpatory evidence: [Davis] did not present important exculpatory evidence in the form of statements made by Baker before his death concerning the events that led to his death. Had she presented that evidence, or allowed it to be presented, the jury would have heard evidence that directly contradicted the testimony the jury heard from persons who said they were eye witnesses to an assault by Richards on Baker that the State claimed caused Baker's death. The jury would have known that Baker told two people that a person by the name of Ron was the principal assailant. Through that exculpatory evidence, Davis could have made plausible arguments that, even though Richards hit Baker, others also hit him, and that the conduct of the others occurred sometime after the altercation between Richards and Baker and led to Baker's death. Those arguments would have been consistent with a self-defense theory and an alternative contention that, at most, Richards was guilty of an assault offense. Richards, 578 F.Supp.2d at 859-60 (footnote omitted). The unpresented exculpatory evidence in question is, essentially, as follows. First, testimony from witness Joy Thomas (Thomas), who lived in a house near the slab church and who testified that Baker came, injured, to her home at 3:00 a.m. on February 14, 2003, that Baker told her that he was attacked by three to five people after he had fallen asleep after eating sausages with a man named Ron (whom Thomas described as a black male over six feet tall, whereas Richards is five feet nine inches tall), that he was hit in the head with a brick while held down, that Ron had the brick, and that the attack may have been motivated by an earlier incident in which Baker hit a woman in a dispute over a can. By a sustained hearsay objection, Davis prevented Thomas from answering the prosecutor's question as to what Baker said while at Thomas's house. Second, testimony from Officer J.R. Oakley (Oakley), the police officer who arrived at the Thomas residence after she called 911 to report the attack on Baker. According to Oakley's report, Baker told him that he was woken at 3:30 a.m. by an attack by four men, one of whom had a stick and another of whom had a brick. Baker told Oakley that he knew the men with the brick and stick, and that they were attacking him in retaliation for reporting a friend of theirs to the police. [4] Davis's sustained hearsay objection prevented Oakley from answering the prosecutor's question as to what Baker said about the time the altercation occurred and whether Baker was able to name his assailants. Oakley was permitted to testify that Baker gave him names, but he was not permitted to relate those names. Third, testimony from witness Michael Fornier (Fornier), a homeless person who was in the area of the slab church at around 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. on February 14 and talked with Baker, that while they were talking a black male roughly six feet, three inches tall came walking by, at which point Baker became extremely agitated and said that is the man right there that beat me last night. Due to another sustained hearsay objection from Davis, Fornier was not allowed to tell the jury what Baker told him. Finally, testimony from Richards that the fight described by Brown, Qualls, and Richards himself took place at 10:00 or 10:30 p.m., rather than 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. as described by Brown. Davis testified at the evidentiary hearing that she had kept out the evidence from Thomas and Oakley because it might, in addition to exculpatory material, have implicated Richards, which would have been inconsistent with her initial defense theorythe theory that others were responsible for Baker's death and that Richards never struck Baker, or mob theory as she called itwhich she was forced to abandon when Roger Richards testified, to her surprise, that Richards had told him he (Richards) struck Baker in self-defense. The district court rejected this contention, concluding that Davis had always intended to put forth some form of self-defense theory: Apparently recognizing the significance of Davis's failure to present this exculpatory evidence, or even to allow it to be presented when the prosecutor attempted to do so, Davis strived at the July 21-22 hearing to create the appearance of a strategic reason why she kept the exculpatory evidence from the jury. In the process, Davis has engaged in what might best be described as legal prestidigitation. Id. at 860. On appeal, the State argues first that, contrary to the district court's conclusion that Davis invented her mob theory after trial, the record supports Davis's testimony, noting Davis's opening statement, in which she told the jury that they will hear that a period of time elapsed between some kind of altercation between this man or another man or four other men or eight other men, and you are not going to know because no one could because so much time had expired . . . between any of these altercations and the time of Baker's death, and that Davis's decision not to introduce it was part of a reasoned trial strategy. Thus, according to the State, Davis made a sound strategic decision to object to Oakley's testimonyas Davis explained, she did not want the jury to hear that Baker identified Richards to the police as one of his attackers. Similarly, Davis made a reasoned decision to object to Thomas's testimony: as Davis testified at the evidentiary hearing, when Davis interviewed Thomas before her trial testimony, Thomas told her that Baker mentioned Richards, and Davis wanted to keep this testimony from the jury. Through her objection and subsequent cross-examination, the State argues, Davis was able to have the jury hear Baker's statement to Thomas that they just jumped me without implicating Richards, as well as produce evidence from Thomas that, several days prior to his death, Baker had had to run for his life from six or seven guys who were angry with him for having hit a woman. The extent to which Davis's decisions were governed by a reasoned trial strategy is an important question. See Loyd v. Whitley, 977 F.2d 149, 158 (5th Cir.1992) (noting that whether counsel's omission served a strategic purpose is a pivotal point in Strickland and its progeny and that this crucial distinction between strategic judgment calls and plain omissions has echoed in the judgments of this court). After a careful examination of the record and reviewing the district court's lengthy account of its reasoning, and in consideration of both the district court's opportunity to observe the witnesses and assess their credibility and the deference due to the state court's findings under AEDPA, we are not convinced that the district court clearly erred in disregarding Davis's account of her trial strategy. Cf. Canal Barge Co. v. Torco Oil Co., 220 F.3d 370, 375 (5th Cir.2000) (stating that, after a bench trial, [t]he burden of showing that the findings of the district court are clearly erroneous is heavier if the credibility of witnesses is a factor in the trial court's decision. (quotation omitted)). Although Davis's opening statement provides some indication that Davis intended, at some point and in some fashion, to put forth evidence of other attackers, Davis voir-dired on self-defense, her affidavit mentions only her self-defense theory and specifically states that Richards turned down the State's plea offer because he insisted he acted in self-defense, and the State itself argued to the district court that Davis was following a self-defense theory shortly before the evidentiary hearing. Cf. Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 526-27, 123 S.Ct. 2527 ([T]he `strategic decision' the state courts and respondents all invoke to justify counsel's limited pursuit of mitigating evidence resembles more a post-hoc rationalization of counsel's conduct than an accurate description of their deliberations prior to sentencing.). Further, as the district court correctly observed, writings in Davis's trial notebook strongly suggests both that Richards told her early on that he had hit Baker with a rock and that she knew that Richards had told his brother that as well. Even if we were to accept Davis's version of her trial strategy, however, there does not appear to be any legitimate strategic reason for Davis's failure to present evidence (or more evidence) that another attack, involving multiple assailants, took place after the incident described by Brown [5] once Richards's involvement in an altercation with Baker became known through Roger Richards's testimony. See Moore, 194 F.3d at 604 (5th Cir.1999) (The Court is . . . not required to condone unreasonable decisions parading under the umbrella of strategy.). The State next argues that the exculpatory evidence the district court held Davis should have introduced would have been cumulative. As the State notes, the jury heard from Oakley that he initially searched for four suspects, and from Waters that as a result of Baker's police report, the police began to look for two suspectsRon Watkins and Albert Richards. Further, Davis extensively questioned Waters regarding Fornier's statement to the police in an effort to show that Richards did not fit the description of the man Baker pointed out to Fornier as the man who had beaten him, and, further, was successful in getting Waters to say that Fornier had identified Watkins as the man pointed out by Baker as the perpetrator. Although the district court dismissed this testimony as somewhat garbled, [6] the State argues that it is quite clear. Thus, according to the State, the jury heard Baker's account of his assault three different times. The State is correct that cumulative testimony generally cannot be the basis of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. See United States v. Harris, 408 F.3d 186, 191 (5th Cir.2005) (This Court has previously refused to allow the omission of cumulative testimony to amount to ineffective assistance of counsel.). The fact that there is some overlap among the excluded testimony and what came out trial will not necessarily preclude relief, however. Harrison v. Quarterman, 496 F.3d 419, 426 (5th Cir.2007); see also id. (citing Stewart v. Wolfenbarger, 468 F.3d 338, 359 (6th Cir.2006)) (finding additional alibi testimony was not cumulative where it would have added a great deal of substance and credibility to the defendant's alibi defense). Here, while we agree with the State that Davis did present some of the evidence that the district court focused on, Davis failed to meaningfully bring out the significant differences between the version of the incident described by the prosecution's key eyewitnesses, Brown and Qualls (and Richards himself), and the attack as described by Baker to Oakley and Thomasincluding the time, the motive, and whether Baker was asleep. We agree with the district court that, even applying a strong presumption to the contrary and giving appropriate deference to the state court's factual findings, Davis's failure to bring in this evidence was objectively unreasonable under prevailing professional norms and was not the product of a conscious and informed decision on trial tactics and strategy. Virgil, 446 F.3d at 608 (quotation omitted); see also Moore, 194 F.3d at 611 (Counsel's decision to exclude [exculpatory evidence], which produced no conceivable benefit to the defense and prejudiced Moore by precluding reliance upon a plausible alternative defensive theory that was supported by other evidence in the record, was professionally unreasonable.). Given the seriousness of Davis's unreasoned failure to present this powerful exculpatory evidence, we also agree that the state court's decision was an unreasonable application of Strickland. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).