Opinion ID: 6110100
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: mr. braddy failed to show he received ineffective assistance of counsel during his commitment proceeding

Text: Mr. Braddy alleges his trial counsel was ineffective when she discussed various steps of the pretrial SVP screening process during opening statements and through examination and cross-examination of various expert witnesses at trial. He says this brought otherwise inadmissible and unfairly prejudicial information before the jury. The State argues Mr. Braddy had no right to effective assistance of counsel and, therefore, this claim is without merit. It also argues the evidence was not unduly prejudicial and was part of reasonable trial strategy. In In the Matter of the Care and Treatment of Nicholas Grado , decided today, this Court recognized a due process right to effective assistance of counsel in SVP commitment proceedings. Mr. Braddy, therefore, was entitled to effective assistance of counsel during his SVP commitment proceeding. Mr. Braddy relies on two cases from other jurisdictions to support his ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Neither of these cases involved a claim of ineffective assistance of respondent's counsel. Rather, both involved misuse of evidence of this pretrial process to try to bolster the State's case that respondent was an SVP. In In re Care & Treatment of Foster, 280 Kan. 845 , 127 P.3d 277 (2006) , during opening statements, the prosecutor told the jury the respondent's case had already been reviewed by a ... 'multidisciplinary team' ... [and] a 'prosecutor's committee' ... who made a determination based on the records and psychologists' opinions as to whether [the respondent] was at risk to reoffend. Id. at 280 . The prosecutor further told the jury there had been a pretrial probable cause hearing ... where a judge found enough evidence to go forward. Id. Not surprisingly, the Kansas Supreme Court held allowing the State ... to tell the jurors - before it even hears any evidence - that a multidisciplinary team of professionals, a team of prosecutors (including  the attorney prosecuting the case), and the judge have all previously determined that sexually violent predator commitment proceedings should proceed against [the respondent] is extremely prejudicial. Id. at 288. This kind of evidence, it held, stack[s] the deck against the respondent because a jury has a natural tendency to look for guidance from those clothed in authority. Id. at 286 . In re Detention of Stenzel, 827 N.W.2d 690 (Iowa 2013) , involved similar conduct by a prosecutor inappropriately detailing all of the pretrial findings that respondent was an SVP as well as informing the jury the judge had found probable cause to believe respondent was an SVP. Id. at 694-95 . The Iowa Supreme Court found such statements were lacking in probative value and unfairly prejudicial to the respondent, id. at 706 , and presented a  'real danger the jury will be unfairly influenced' by a purportedly unbiased 'imprimatur,'  id. at 707 . Here, in contrast to Foster and Stenzel, it was not the prosecutor but Mr. Braddy's counsel who introduced the evidence. The evidence was not admitted as part of an attempt to prejudice the jury into believing Mr. Braddy must be an SVP but as part of the defense effort. As in Grado , so too here, under either the Strickland standard applied to SVP proceedings in other states, or under the meaningful hearing based on the record standard applied in Missouri termination of parental rights cases such as In Interest of J.P.B. , Mr. Braddy's counsel was not ineffective. Indeed, Mr. Braddy does not claim he did not receive a meaningful hearing. Further, under Strickland, actions that constitute sound trial strategy are not grounds for ineffective assistance claims, State v. Simmons, 955 S.W.2d 729 , 746 (Mo. banc 1997) , and counsel is strongly presumed to have rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment, Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690 , 104 S.Ct. 2052 . Mr. Braddy's counsel appears to have brought up the screening process in her opening statement to discredit and point out shortcomings in the process the State undertook prior to trial, as follows: You're going to hear from [the doctor who] reviewed [Mr. Braddy's] case when he was getting ready to be released. What you're going to hear from her is that the amount of review that she did was no more than about three hundred pages at the most. In a case where the pages easily reach a thousand, maybe two thousand. ... You're also going to hear that the point of her evaluation is not to come into the court and tell you whether or not he qualifies to be committed. You're going to hear from her own report that the limitation of her evaluation is to determine if [Mr. Braddy] should be screened out. That's what you're going to hear, [the doctor] coming in and saying, Well, my job was to screen him and pass him along, not come to court, not testify in the trial, not even conduct a full evaluation of all the documents. Counsel did not discuss additional details of the screening evaluation results during opening statements. Counsel also attempted to show the limited relevance of the prescreening process to the court proceeding during her cross-examination of Dr. Weitl after Dr. Weitl testified on direct that she used to work at the department of corrections as a pretrial screener for potential SVPs. 5  As part of an effort to discredit Dr. Kircher's end-of-confinement report Mr. Braddy's counsel also mentioned the screening process in cross-examination in an attempt to show the jury Dr. Kircher did not utilize all presently available information in making the report and did not conduct the evaluation for the purpose of testifying at trial. 6 While the usefulness of undertaking cross-examination regarding these pretrial issues, in retrospect, seems minimal, counsel had limited options available. She knew Dr. Scott would testify Mr. Braddy did not qualify as an SVP, and counsel needed to somehow discredit the prosecution's experts, who found he did. In these circumstances, the Court cannot say the strategy, at the time, to demonstrate the limitations and superficiality of the pretrial process was so flawed as to be unreasonable. Similarly, this Court cannot say counsel was ineffective in asking Dr. Scott about the process as part of counsel's effort to show the State's experts based  their opinions on incomplete information, whereas Dr. Scott had complete information when he reached his opinion, to a reasonable degree of certainty, [Mr. Braddy is] not more likely than not to commit another sexually violent act if not confined. (Emphasis added.). 7 Mr. Braddy has failed to show his counsel's conduct was ineffective. 8