Opinion ID: 162812
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: chambers claim

Text: 25 Ellis argues that the trial court's exclusion of Dr. Garcia's pre-trial diagnosis of schizophrenia denied him due process under Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973), and its progeny by preventing him from presenting his insanity defense. We agree. 26 In his brief to the OCCA on direct appeal, Ellis challenged the exclusion of the Garcia report on various grounds, including Chambers. The OCCA, however, upheld the exclusion without any reference to Ellis's Chambers claim, holding only that the report properly was excluded under state law. Ellis v. State, 867 P.2d 1289, 1296-97 (Okla.Crim.App.1992) (concluding that, under 12 Okla. Stat. § 2403 (1981), the evidence properly was excluded because its probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of confusing the jury). Because the OCCA did not consider Ellis's federal constitutional claim, our review is de novo. Romano v. Gibson, 239 F.3d 1156, 1166 (10th Cir. 2001) (reviewing de novo where on direct appeal, [petitioners] did challenge the trial court's exclusion of this evidence on federal constitutional grounds, [but] the [OCCA] addressed these claims only under state law). However, the state court's determination that nothing in the Garcia report was directed at the issue of sanity is entitled to deference under § 2254(d)(2). 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2) (basing review on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding). 27 We have stated that state evidentiary determinations ordinarily do not present federal constitutional issues.... However, the Supreme Court, in, e.g., Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973), and Green v. Georgia, 442 U.S. 95, 97, 99 S.Ct. 2150, 60 L.Ed.2d 738 (1979) (capital sentencing proceeding), has provided an exception, under some circumstances, if a state court applies the State's evidentiary rules unfairly to prevent a defendant from presenting evidence that is critical to his defense. Romano, 239 F.3d at 1166. [T]o determine whether a defendant was unconstitutionally denied his or her right to present relevant evidence, we must balance the importance of the evidence to the defense against the interests the state has in excluding the evidence. Richmond v. Embry, 122 F.3d 866, 872 (10th Cir.1997). Further: 28 [T]o establish a violation of ... due process, a defendant must show a denial of fundamental fairness .... It is the materiality of the excluded evidence to the presentation of the defense that determines whether a petitioner has been deprived of a fundamentally fair trial. Evidence is material if its suppression might have affected the outcome. In other words, material evidence is that which is exculpatory — evidence that if admitted would create reasonable doubt that did not exist without the evidence. 29 Richmond, 122 F.3d at 872 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). See also Romano, 239 F.3d at 1168 ([W]e need ask no more than whether the trial court's application of this state evidentiary rule excluded critical exculpatory evidence.). 30 We conclude that the OCCA unreasonably determined the facts in light of the evidence presented when it concluded that the Garcia report did not bear upon Ellis's sanity at the time of the incident. The report was prepared in response to the trial court's specific request for an assessment of Ellis's competency at the time of the shootings, i.e. legal sanity. The report diagnosed Ellis as paranoid schizophrenic. It classified his paranoid schizophrenia as chronic, a term defined in the then-current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3d ed.-Rev.1987) (DSM-III-R) as having shown signs of the mental disturbance more or less continuously for more than two years. The report stated that Ellis had a severe dissociative disorder in the past and he may have been completely depersonalized at the time of the incident. The report observed that at the time of the initial status report, Ellis revealed he was hearing voices, and that he felt his body was frozen by the demons and spirits trying to take over his body. We cannot agree that [n]othing in the report was directed to the question of sanity. Ellis, 867 P.2d at 1296. 31 Moreover, we conclude that the Garcia report was exculpatory — and thus implicated the fundamental fairness of the trial — because it would have create[d] reasonable doubt that did not exist without it. Richmond, 122 F.3d at 872. With Dr. Garcia's diagnosis and observations excluded during the guilt phase, Ellis's case for insanity was highly vulnerable to the argument, seized upon by the prosecution in its closing argument as quoted above, that Ellis only began faking mental illness around the time of the killings. The prosecution emphasized during the guilt phase that Ellis introduced no diagnosis of insanity and no testimony of medical professionals that he was insane. See also Mem. Op. & Order at 46-47 (stating that insanity evidence presented during guilt phase does not establish that either his alleged head injury, his emotional state, or any mental illness from which he suffered at the time of the shooting were so severe as to prevent him from understanding the nature and consequences of his acts, or from knowing that they were wrong and [t]he evidence was clearly not sufficient to enable a reasonable jury to find the Petitioner not guilty by reason of insanity). The Garcia report would have provided the jury with objective, professional validation of Ellis's longstanding mental illness, validation provided by the Eastern State Hospital's chief forensic pathologist based on extended observation. It is reasonably probable that the Garcia report would have put Ellis's other evidence of mental illness in an altogether different light to the jury. 32 We reject the district court's conclusion that the value of the Garcia report to the defense was outweighed by the danger of misleading the jury and confusing the issues of competency and sanity. We note that the jury could have been instructed on the difference and ordered not to blur the two, and [a] jury is presumed to follow its instructions. Weeks v. Angelone, 528 U.S. 225, 234, 120 S.Ct. 727, 145 L.Ed.2d 727 (2000). More significantly, under the circumstances any meaningful risk of confusion weighed entirely against Ellis. The Garcia report tended to show that Ellis was insane at the time of the crime but was competent now to stand trial. If, as the OCCA and the district court posit, the jury was irremediably likely to be unable to distinguish sanity from competency, their confusion could only lead them to conclude that Ellis was sane then because he is competent now. In theory, of course, the jury could mistakenly conclude that Ellis is incompetent now because he was insane then, but such a conclusion would have been altogether irrelevant: the competency issue was not before the jury because it already had been resolved by the court prior to trial. Thus, even if we were to assume that an instruction could not cure the risk of confusion regarding competency and sanity, it is clear that Ellis alone bore that risk. The state's interest in excluding the Garcia report clearly was outweighed by Ellis's interest in presenting it. 33 Accordingly, we conclude that Ellis's due process right to present evidence critical to his defense was violated by the trial court's exclusion of the Garcia report during the guilt phase of the trial.