Opinion ID: 154173
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Other Acquaintances:

Text: 12 Moreover, Dr. Hatcher’s report itself describes Mr. Davis as “physically and verbally aggressive” in his relationships. It also details his criminal history, which includes arrests and convictions for theft, burglary, felony menacing (in which Mr. Davis asked a convenience store clerk to come outside the store to help him open an ice machine, at which time Mr. Davis held a knife to her neck and dragged her down an alley, during which the clerk’s throat was slightly cut), and first-degree sexual assault of a 15 year-old girl, prior to his participation in Ms. May’s murder. Pet’r’s Ex. No. 112, Appellee’s Addendum. The jury would surely have observed the increasingly violent nature of Mr. Davis’s conduct. This would hardly have struck a sympathetic chord with them. See Brewer, 51 F.3d at 1527 (“The jury undoubtedly would have been struck, as we are, by Mr. Brewer’s escalating criminality.”). -23- Mr. Davis also asserts he suffered prejudice from Mr. Truman’s failure to call other mitigation witnesses, such as people who lived for awhile in the same apartment building as the Davises, and the Davises’ employer. Such evidence was, however, either as likely to harm as help Mr. Davis in front of the jury, or was also directed at showing that Ms. Fincham was the dominant figure in the Davis relationship, and by implication the dominant figure in the murder, a proposition which Mr. Davis’s own testimony effectively rebutted. Among the items of testimony Mr. Davis now claims should have been presented was testimony from Clint and Victoria Hart, who at one time lived in the same apartment as the Davises. In an interoffice memorandum prepared for Mr. Davis’s first attorneys, public defenders, an investigator reported a conversation he had with the Harts, in which they said the following things about the Davises: “. . . [T]hey [the Davises] were ripping everybody off, they would borrow money and never paid it back, they were charging for services at the apartments giving receipts for the services and pocketing the money then blaming the owner for having to charge for the services. . . . Gary drank a lot and . . . they were swingers and tried to get people to swap partners and even jokingly approached them about doing it. . . . .... . . . [B]oth Gary and Becky were bull shitters but Becky seemed to have the upper hand on that and . . . they both lied consistently about everything . . . . . . . Becky acted like she was [in charge] but Gary was the one that really was, he was more subdued where as Becky was talkative and would just rattle on especially when she was lieing [sic].” -24- Interoffice Mem. dated 9/10/86, Appellee’s Addendum. Such negative information about the Davises was obviously more likely to harm rather than help Mr. Davis in front of the jury, and certainly suggested that finding truly helpful mitigating testimony from acquaintances was going to be extremely difficult. We therefore see no prejudice from Mr. Truman’s decision not to present testimony from the Harts. Mr. Davis also argues Mr. Truman should have presented testimony from Robert Russell, an acquaintance of Mr. Davis and Leona Coates. In a memorandum prepared for Mr. Davis’s first attorneys, Investigator Jim Smith described an interview with Mr. Russell, in which Mr. Russell generally described how he and Mr. Davis used to go drinking together, and stated that Mr. Davis was not unfaithful to Leona Coates during their marriage. Mr. Russell also said he was “surprised” to hear of Mr. Davis’s involvement in the murder. Interoffice Mem. dated 10/9/86, R. Vol. VI. In another memorandum prepared in connection with Mr. Davis’s habeas petition, Mr. Russell described Mr. Davis as a good, kind and dependable father and worker, without “a mean bone in his body.” Pet’r’s Ex. No. 107, R. Vol. IX. He further offered his opinion that “the murder had to do with alcohol and someone else’s influence.” Id. We again see no prejudice to Mr. Davis from the failure to present testimony from Mr. Russell, given its generality and vagueness in 1986 (merely expressing “surprise” about Mr. Davis’s involvement in the murder). Even as elaborated nine years later, Mr. Russell’s characterization of Mr. Davis as lacking “a mean bone in his body” is flatly inconsistent -25- with a multitude of other evidence about Mr. Davis, and the reference to alcohol does little to help Mr. Davis other than to raise once again all of the problems discussed above with using alcoholism as a mitigating circumstance in Mr. Davis’s particular case. Finally, Mr. Davis argues he suffered prejudice from the failure to present testimony from Pauline Cowell, the woman for whom the Davises worked at the time of the May murder. In the same memorandum prepared in 1986 by Investigator Jim Smith, Mr. Smith described an interview with Ms. Cowell, in which she said that Mr. Davis “was usually very shy around her,” and that she “does not believe that Gary killed Ginny [May], she is not sure what role he played in it but she does not believe he did it.” Interoffice Mem. dated 10/9/86, R. Vol. VI. She also said that “the stories they, especially Becky told, turned out to be half truths or out right lies.” Id. As with the other acquaintance testimony, it is hard to see how this would have made any difference with the jury. Ms. Cowell said she did not believe Mr. Davis killed Ms. May, but her otherwise unsupported belief was completely contradicted by Mr. Davis’s own testimony. -26- Ms. Cowell also offered that both the Davises told “half truths or out right lies.”13 That is hardly likely to positively impact the jury deliberating Mr. Davis’s fate. In sum, we find no prejudice from the failure to call these various acquaintances of Mr. Davis to testify in the penalty phase of the trial.