Opinion ID: 2790291
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Comparison to Other Cases

Text: The determination whether a petitioner was prejudiced by his lawyer’s failure to discover and present mitigating evidence is an inherently fact-intensive inquiry, and requires close consideration of individual records, rather than oversimplified, ordinal comparisons between summaries of the suffering experienced by capital defendants. Such judgments are “uniquely moral decision[s] in which bright line rules have a limited place.” Hendricks, 70 F.3d at 1044. That said, our finding of prejudice to Doe is indeed supported by just such a comparison; we have found prejudice in other similar cases. See Douglas, 316 F.3d at 1088–90 (mitigation not presented at trial included evidence that the defendant was raised by an alcoholic foster father who locked him in a closet, had to scavenge for food, was beaten and gang-raped by other prisoners when he was a teenager, was decorated in the Marines, suffered a head injury, and consumed a lot of alcohol); see also Karis v. Calderon, 283 F.3d 1117, 1137–41 (9th Cir. 2002) (mitigation not presented at trial included evidence that the Had J.B. conducted an adequate mitigation investigation, he would, by his own admission, have presented a very different story: one of significant childhood abuse and neglect, compounded by the trauma of repeated sexual victimization and subjugation beginning at the age of 17, and leading to significant mental health problems and efforts to selfmedicate. It is well recognized that the mitigating factors present in Doe’s case are characteristically interrelated. See National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report 47 (June 2009) (“Individuals dealing with the consequences of sexual abuse may find it difficult to reintegrate into society, relate to their families, and rebuild their lives. Some self-medicate with alcohol and drugs to escape emotional or physical suffering. Some turn back to crime, become homeless, or reenter the criminal justice system.”). DOE V. AYERS 75 defendant’s father was violently abusive towards his mother during his early childhood, that the defendant occasionally returned from visits to his father with suspicious injuries, and that his mother’s second husband also beat and controlled her, and mistreated the defendant); Silva, 279 F.3d at 847 n.17 (mitigation not presented at trial included evidence that the defendant had been “severely abused and neglected as a child by alcoholic and impoverished parents; . . . [and] that he likely suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” as well as a brain disorder stemming from alcohol and drug abuse); Jackson, 211 F.3d 1148, 1163 (9th Cir. 2000) (mitigation not presented at trial included evidence that the defendant “suffered repeated beatings in childhood, and that his mother choked him when angry with him,” that his “childhood and adolescence were characterized by neglect and instability,” and that he “exhibited signs of mental illness” as a child);63 Hendricks, 70 F.3d at 1037, 1044 (mitigation not presented at trial included evidence of the defendant’s “alleged history as a victim of sexual abuse and possible genetic predisposition to various psychiatric disorders,” “hard childhood, [and] drug problems”); cf. Miles v. Ryan, 713 F.3d 477, 492–93 (9th Cir. 2012) (declining to find prejudice in a case where the defendant may have observed violence in connection with his mother’s work as a prostitute during his childhood, but there was no evidence that he himself was abused or neglected). In a leading case, the Supreme Court found that the petitioner, Wiggins, was prejudiced by his defense counsel’s failure to present evidence that he “experienced severe 63 Jackson’s lawyer also failed to present medical evidence going to his ability to think clearly at the time he committed the crime. We held, however, that this evidence “was prejudicial as well.” Id. (emphasis added). 76 DOE V. AYERS privation and abuse in the first six years of his life while in the custody of his alcoholic, absentee mother.” Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 534–35. It added that he “suffered physical torment, sexual molestation, and repeated rape,” and had been homeless. Id. at 535. In another case, the Supreme Court found that the petitioner, Rompilla, was prejudiced by his defense counsel’s failure to discover that he was raised by parents with serious drinking problems who fought violently, that his father “beat him when he was young with his hands, fists, leather straps, belts and sticks,” that he received verbal abuse rather than expressions of affection, and that he lived in squalor.64 Rompilla, 545 U.S. at 391–93. Although Doe’s life was, of course, different than Wiggins’s and Rompilla’s, he, too, clearly “has the kind of troubled history we have declared relevant to assessing a defendant’s moral culpability.” Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 535.