Opinion ID: 3049501
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Trial Counsel’s Penalty-Phase Preparation

Text: Lane first met with Johnson on the day Lane was appointed, March 28, 1994. Lane had good contact with Johnson and “visited him fairly regularly in jail.” Johnson called Lane at Lane’s home on average once a week throughout the four-year representation. During the first approximately three years after his appointment, Lane chose 8 to focus his efforts on: (1) challenging Johnson’s tape-recorded statement to police, which Johnson claimed, and Lane believed, was edited by police officers to erase Johnson’s request for an attorney; (2) trying to suppress eyewitness identifications of Johnson and certain items of physical evidence; (3) “interact[ing] with various experts who were assisting [Lane] with these matters” and other experts who assisted Lane “on forensic matters related to Ms. Sizemore’s death and the crime scenes”; and (4) “preparing and litigating numerous pre-trial motions.”6 Johnson “maintained his innocence throughout” the case. Lane felt Johnson had a chance to be acquitted because of “the circumstantial nature of the evidence against Mr. Johnson and the lack of conclusive physical evidence tying him to a homicide.” Lane testified: Compared to other death penalty cases where the evidence is just overwhelming that the person did it, this was not such a case. You would try that case totally differently. You’d forget about did he do it. And you start trying it about, well, why did he do it. This case was not like that. As part of his pretrial preparation, Lane consulted with other criminal defense lawyers and with experienced capital attorneys at the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Multicounty Public Defender’s Office, spoke with a 6 After Jones was appointed, he and Lane worked together on the whole case, but Lane was lead counsel and did most of the work. Jones testified that “Lane was more in charge” of the penalty phase of the trial than Jones was. 9 mitigation specialist, and attended several death penalty seminars that stressed the importance of mitigation and the defendant’s social history. Lane began his penalty-phase investigation in earnest in 1997, about a year before trial, although he may have had discussions with Johnson in 1994 or 1995 about “what had happened to [Johnson] in his life.” As detailed later, Lane discussed Johnson’s background and marital, social, employment, and medical history not only with Johnson but also with his parents, brother, former girlfriend, and others. Two investigators were assigned to assist Lane. Lane knew the State would use evidence of Johnson’s escape in sentencing. Lane believed that “the escape incident could prove to be devastating to Mr. Johnson’s case if [he] proceeded to a sentencing phase” because, in Lane’s experience, “future dangerousness is of great concern to juries in capital cases, and an escape clearly raises the specter of future dangerous behavior in the jury’s eyes.” Lane felt the evidence of Johnson’s escape “would be some of the most damaging evidence presented.” As noted earlier, Lane discussed the escape with Johnson for almost three hours. Although Johnson now alleges he escaped due to fear of going back to the old Dougherty County jail, Johnson never told Lane this. Lane acknowledged that he never asked Johnson specifically what made him escape. Nonetheless, it is 10 undisputed that Johnson never told Lane that he escaped because of his fear of going back to the old Dougherty County jail. In fact, even after the escape, Johnson was taken back to the Miller County jail.