Opinion ID: 407646
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Failure to Object to Admission of Crumbley Testimony

Text: 39 At the penalty stage of appellant's trial, the defense attorney waived appellant's doctor-patient privilege and allowed the prosecutor to introduce Dr. Crumbley's testimony. After cross-examining the doctor, he argued that the testimony established two mitigating circumstances: that the crime was committed while appellant was under extreme mental or emotional stress and that appellant's capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired. 26 The prosecutor countered these arguments by contending that the doctor's opinions concerning appellant's mental state were not reliable because the doctor had no psychiatric credentials and had performed no psychiatric tests on appellant. The prosecutor argued further that the doctor's testimony showed appellant was likely to kill other people in the future and was therefore a danger to society-an argument not justified by any of the statutorily enumerated aggravating circumstances but nonetheless likely to appeal to the emotions of the jurors. 40 At the evidentiary hearing, the attorney testified that he allowed the introduction of the doctor's testimony because he thought it would establish mitigating circumstances. He also stated that he had hoped the trial judge, who under the Florida statute renders the final decision on sentencing, would be able to cut through the emotional impact of that information, recognize it as a mitigating circumstance, and rule in accordance with that recognition. 41 The magistrate concluded that defense counsel's failure to object to the admission of Dr. Crumbley's testimony was so grievous an error that a substantial contention can be made that this failure alone constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. In the magistrate's view, the introduction of this frightening testimony was unnecessary to obtain evidence of psychiatric mitigating circumstances because the attorney could have obtained other psychiatric opinions through a privately employed psychiatrist. Moreover the magistrate noted that Dr. Crumbley's opinion as to whether the petitioner was laboring under emotional distress or a substantial mental impairment did not carry much force in light of his lack of psychiatric credentials. At the very least, the magistrate concluded, the use of Dr. Crumbley's testimony significantly increased the need to present humanizing information in order to counteract the dramatic impact of that testimony. 42 The district court judge disagreed that the attorney's decision to waive appellant's privilege constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. The judge found that the record of the penalty hearing, as well as defense counsel's testimony at the habeas hearing, showed that the attorney had had a cogent reason for his decision: (t)he Petitioner had already been found guilty at that point in the proceeding and counsel expected to develop on cross-examination the existence of two of the statutory mitigating circumstances, namely, that the Petitioner acted 'under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance,' and that 'the capacity of the defendant ... to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired.'  The judge found that defense counsel's cross-examination of the doctor at the penalty hearing was clearly directed toward developing the enumerated mitigating circumstances and that his argument at the habeas hearing reinforced the conclusion that development of those circumstances was the basis for his waiving the privilege. The judge disagreed with the magistrate's statement that Crumbley's testimony was unnecessary to establish the statutory mitigating factors: 43 (T)he magistrate's reasoning is further flawed on this point because it presupposes the contemporary availability of such testimony from other qualified sources. The fact is that two other practicing psychiatrists subsequently appointed by the trial judge failed to support Dr. Crumbley's view concerning the mitigating circumstances about which he testified. Defense counsel used what he had, and it may well have been all he could get. 44 The judge's disagreement does not rest on rejection of credibility choices made by the magistrate. The factors on which the magistrate's conclusion rested included (1) the content of appellant's conversations with Dr. Crumbley, which the magistrate found to be frightening; (2) the doctor's lack of psychiatric credentials, which in the magistrate's view rendered his opinion without much force; and (3) a presumption that other psychiatric opinions supportive of the statutory mitigating circumstances could have been obtained. The magistrate did not derive any of these considerations from testimony given at the evidentiary hearing, nor could he have done so. The facts involved were all taken from the record of the penalty hearing, with the exception of the question of availability of alternative favorable psychiatric testimony, which may have been based partly on information contained in appellant's proffer. As noted above, the judge was not required to accept the written proffer. Neither, of course, was he required to accept the magistrate's assessment of facts contained in the trial record. 45 Although the district judge's opinion indicates that he gave credence to defense counsel's testimony concerning the reasons for his decision to waive appellant's privilege, that testimony was not mentioned by the magistrate. The testimony established that despite the frightening nature of the evidence and its potential negative emotional impact on the jury, the defense attorney hope(d) that the judge would recognize it as a mitigating circumstance. Not only did the magistrate not explicitly reject this testimony, but such rejection is not implicitly required by his conclusion. See Louis v. Blackburn, 630 F.2d at 1108.