Opinion ID: 213878
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Confidence in the Outcome

Text: The question before this court is whether the California Supreme Court unreasonably applied United States Supreme Court law in its apparent conclusion that there was not a reasonable probability that, absent [counsel's] errors, the [jury] ... would have concluded that the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not warrant death. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052. A reasonable probability is a probability of a different verdict that is sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome. Id. at 695, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Because a unanimous verdict was required to produce a death sentence in this case, one cannot be confident in Samayoa's death sentence unless one is confident that not a single one of the twelve jurors would have been moved to vote for a sentence of life without parole had he heard the unpresented evidence of Samayoa's physically and psychologically abusive childhood. The jury was instructed that: [t]he weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances does not mean a mere mechanical counting.... You are free to assign whatever moral or sympathetic value you deem appropriate to each and all of the various factors that you are permitted to consider. The evidence that was not presented was of crucial importance to the individualized, open-ended moral deliberation in which the jury was instructed to engage. As noted earlier, the Supreme Court has explained that a defendant's troubled history is relevant to assessing a defendant's moral culpability, Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 535, 123 S.Ct. 2527, because of the belief, long held by this society, that defendants who commit criminal acts that are attributable to a disadvantaged background ... may be less culpable than defendants who have no such excuse. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 319, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989) ( quoted in Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 535, 123 S.Ct. 2527). Each of the twelve jurors would have almost certainly differed to some degree with respect to how much moral or sympathetic value he chose to assign to the nightmarish circumstances of Samayoa's childhood and the effect it had on him during his adulthood. Given that each juror in this case was called upon to weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances in light of his own empathy and moral judgment, counsel's failure to inform the jury that Samayoa was raised in an unimaginably abusive environment, both physically and emotionally, would, alone, suffice to call into question any reliance on the outcome of the proceeding. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 692, 104 S.Ct. 2052. But this case involves more than just counsel's failure to obtain and present readily available evidence going directly to Samayoa's moral responsibility; for what the jury heard instead was a mitigation case that almost certainly sealed Samayoa's death sentence, a case consisting of discredited experts, lukewarm prison guards, and family members who misleadingly testified that Samayoa was raised in a loving environment. I therefore would hold, in line with Porter, 130 S.Ct. 447, Rompilla, 545 U.S. 374, 125 S.Ct. 2456, and Wiggins, 539 U.S. 510, 123 S.Ct. 2527, that it would have been an unreasonable application of Strickland for the state court to conclude that Samayoa was not prejudiced by his counsel's inexcusable performance. In coming to a contrary conclusion, [9] the majority first emphasizes the undeniable brutality of Samayoa's crime, as well as that of his prior offenses. However, in Rompilla, 545 U.S. 374, 125 S.Ct. 2456, the Supreme Court held that a defendant with a similarly brutal crime and a similar criminal record was entitled to habeas relief due to his counsel's failure to introduce evidence of a traumatic, abusive upbringing. The defendant in Rompilla was convicted of murdering his victim during the course of a robbery in which he stabbed the victim multiple times, including 16 wounds around the neck and head, id. at 397, 125 S.Ct. 2456, beat the victim with a blunt object, and gashed the victim's face, possibly with shards from broken liquor and beer bottles found at the scene of the crime, id. He then set his victim's body on fire. Id. Moreover, like Samayoa, the Rompilla defendant had a significant history of felony convictions, id. at 378, 125 S.Ct. 2456, including a rape conviction for an offense in which he held his victim at knifepoint, slashed her breast, and raped her for over an hour, id. at 402, 125 S.Ct. 2456 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Despite the brutality of the offense and past convictions in Rompilla, the Court nonetheless held that the defendant was prejudiced by his counsel's failure to investigate and provide the jury with certain mitigating evidence, such as the fact that Rompilla had abused alcohol from an early age and been raised in a highly abusive environment. Id. at 391-93, 125 S.Ct. 2456. While this case and Rompilla differ in some factual respects, as any two cases necessarily will, Rompilla's holding forecloses the majority's pat conclusion that because Samayoa's crime and past convictions were brutal the judicial system need not concern itself with the fact that he was sentenced to death despite his attorney's failure to investigate or present the jury with the powerful mitigating evidence of his horrendous upbringing and the shocking abuse to which he was subjected throughout his youth. [10] The majority next suggests that counsel's failure to introduce any evidence of Samayoa's upbringing did not prejudice him because the evidence of organic brain injury that was presented during the guilt phase of his trial is a type of evidence that is more significant than environmental factors. Maj. Op. at 929 (quoting Sears v. Upton, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 3259, 3262, 177 L.Ed.2d 1025 (2010)). Even if it is true that evidence of organic brain damage is, as a general matter, more significant than evidence of childhood abuse, that is certainly not the case where the defense's psychological experts are exposed as inept and are discredited, and the jury has already implicitly rejected their testimony that the defendant suffers from organic brain damage. Actual evidence of many years of severe physical and psychological abuse is undeniably more significant than evidence of organic brain damage that is not credible, and that has already been rejected by the very jury that will determine the capital defendant's fate. Here, counsel failed entirely to present uncontroverted mitigating evidence that is of undeniable import, choosing instead to refer the jury to the discredited evidence it had already rejected.