Opinion ID: 1353458
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Guideline 10.7 Investigation

Text: A. Counsel at every stage have an obligation to conduct thorough and independent investigations relating to the issues of both guilt and penalty. 1. The investigation regarding guilt should be conducted regardless of any admission or statement by the client concerning the facts of the alleged crime, or overwhelming evidence of guilt, or any statement by the client that evidence bearing upon guilt is not to be collected or presented. 2. The investigation regarding penalty should be conducted regardless of any statement by the client that evidence bearing upon penalty is not to be collected or presented. . . . . Penalty Counsel's duty to investigate and present mitigating evidence is now well established. The duty to investigate exists regardless of the expressed desires of a client. Nor may counsel sit idly by, thinking that investigation would be futile. Counsel cannot responsibly advise a client about the merits of different courses of action, the client cannot make informed decisions, and counsel cannot be sure of the client's competency to make such decisions, unless counsel has first conducted a thorough investigation with respect to both phases of the case. (Emphasis added.) The Sixth Amendment requires a comprehensive investigation, as the cases discussed in footnote 2 explain. My colleagues' singular reliance on Schriro v. Landrigan, 550 U.S. 465, 127 S.Ct. 1933, 167 L.Ed.2d 836 (2007), for the proposition that counsel could completely abandon investigating and using domestic violence and psychological abuse as a meritorious defense demonstrates the majority's effort to alter the governing standard in order to affirm the death penalty. In Schriro the Supreme Court found that the defendant specifically instructed counsel not to present any mitigating evidence, id. at 1941, and thus distinguished Wiggins v. Smith and Rompilla v. Beard . The Supreme Court distinguished Wiggins and Rompilla only on the ground that in those cases the defendant refused to assist in the development of a mitigation case, but did not inform the court [as in Schriro] that he did not want mitigating evidence presented. In Gaile Owens' case she did not even refuse to cooperate, much less instruct counsel not to put on mitigating evidence. My colleagues cannot legitimately hide behind the Schriro case and use it to construct a rule that counsel can abandon any investigation and development of spousal abuse when the defendant is reticent to take the stand. Defense counsel's time sheets and his certified representation to the state court showed that counsel abandoned the investigation of the defense  spending a total of only two hours of investigation in preparation for the mitigation or sentencing phase of Mrs. Owens' case. The majority speculation that these statements of defense counsel to the court were false is ludicrous. Counsel was required by law to certify that the foregoing [two hours of time] represents an accurate and complete statement of time and expense in connection with the above action. (App.251-59.) The majority's assumption that counsel lied to the court in a written certification and in fact spent long hours of investigation for the sentencing hearing is inexplicable. Counsel had no incentive to falsify his investigation and every reason to tell the truth. His pay depended upon the hours of investigation spent, and his integrity and honesty depended upon his telling the truth. Had counsel performed a full and complete investigation as required by the ABA standard quoted above and adopted by the Supreme Court, here is the evidence that counsel would have found and could have presented to the jury: Ron Owens was abusive toward Ms. Owens. He subjected her to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse beginning with their wedding night when he was forceful and impatient, demanding sex immediately upon entering their hotel room. When Ms. Owens revealed to her new husband that she was in great pain and bleeding profusely, he called her frigid, and angrily left the hotel room stating that If you won't, I know where I can find someone who will. R. 17, Addendum 12: PCR, Vol. 7, Ex. R, pp. 9-10; Apx. pp. 340-341. Ron Owens inserted large objects into Ms. Owens's vagina and rectum, causing her pain and bleeding. At one point, Mr. Owens inserted a wine bottle into Ms. Owens's vagina and manipulated it with such vigor that it broke inside her. Id., Ex. R., p. 10; Apx. p. 341. Mr. Owens also used a penis-shaped marijuana pipe to penetrate Ms. Owens's vagina which caused her pain and humiliation. Id., Ex. R., p. 10; Apx. p. 341. Ron Owens's sexually abusive behavior not only placed Ms. Owens at risk, but also risked the life of their unborn son. The night before the birth of her second son, Ron Owens forced Ms. Owens to engage in such brutal sexual intercourse that Ms. Owens's placenta partially detached, requiring an emergency C-section to save Ms. Owens and her son. Id., Ex. R. p. 14; Apx. p. 345; Id., Ex. 1, p. 32; Apx. p. 285. Ron Owens not only sexually abused Ms. Owens, but was also emotionally abusive toward her. Upon the birth of her children, Mr. Owens accused Ms. Owens of not taking properly her birth control pills and complained that the children would be an unbearable financial burden. Id., Ex. R, pp. 13-14; Apx. pp. 344-345. In addition, Mr. Owens regularly berated Ms. Owens telling her, among other things, that she did not sweat much for a fat person. Id., Ex. R, pp. 10-11; Apx. pp. 341-342. Ron Owens was also deceitful and unfaithful to Ms. Owens. Mr. Owens had lied to Ms. Owens and to others about his background, falsely claiming that he volunteered to serve as a medic in Vietnam, and that he was shot twice and contacted Malaria while in Vietnam. Id., Ex. R., pp. 11-12; Apx. pp. 342-343; Id., Ex. N; Apx. p. 293; Id., Ex. Q; Apx. p. 328. Moreover, Mr. Owens had lied about his credentials on a job application at Baptist Hospital, stating that he had a B.S. degree when he did not. Id., Ex. R, p. 12; Apx. p. 343; Id., Ex. O; Apx. p. 311. (Final Brief of Appellant filed August 3, 2007, 11-13.) The incompetence of defense counsel in this case is well illustrated by Mr. Marty's post-trial excuse that he thought investigating and showing spousal abuse would have made the jury more likely to favor capital punishment. He testified: Q. Mr. Marty, going back to an earlier question concerning, for instance, the report by K.D. Wray concerning the verification of an affair, sexual affair with Ron Owens, do you think that would have been important knowledge for you to have in this case? A. It may or may not have been. It may have given her a motive to kill him. Q. Do you think it might have been useful in sentencing, perhaps, to give the jury a reason not to kill her? A. It may have given them [the jury] a stronger reason to kill her. (Emphasis added.) Post-conviction counsel's answer to Marty's excuse for abandoning the investigation and offering no proof of domestic abuse is unanswerable: [T]his killing was not worthy of the death penalty. That is the reason why the prosecution offered Gaile Owens a life sentence in the first place: A woman who kills her husband because of an affair is less culpable than other murderers. In fact, case law is replete with circumstances in which the unfaithfulness of a spouse  even if not providing a legal justification for the killing  has reduced the killing to something less than a death penalty case.2 One can easily understand how a woman who has been cheated on, beaten, and emotionally and/or sexually abused might kill her husband and why life in prison  not death  is the appropriate sentence under the circumstances.3 2 See, e.g., State v. Thornton, 730 S.W.2d 309 (Tenn.1987); Whitsett v. State, 201 Tenn. 317, 299 S.W.2d 2 (1957); Drye v. State, 181 Tenn. 637, 184 S.W.2d 10 (1944); State v. Reagan, No. M2002-01472-CCA1-23-CD, 2004 WL 1114588 (Tenn.Crim. May 19, 2004); State v. McCarver, No. M2002-00123-CCA-R3-CD (Tenn.Crim.App. Jan.26, 2004); State v. Belcher, No. 03C01-9608CC00299, 1987 WL 749392 (Tenn.Crim.App. Nov.26, 1987); People v. Buggs, 112 Ill.2d 284, 97 Ill.Dec. 669, 493 N.E.2d 332 (1986); People v. Carlson, 79 Ill.2d 564, 38 Ill.Dec. 809, 404 N.E.2d 233 (1980). 3 Indeed, even this month in West Tennessee, defendant Mary Winkler was sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty of shooting her husband in the back while her children were present in their home. Much like Mrs. Owens's allegations of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, Ms. Winkler claimed that she was physically and emotionally abused by her husband, that he was sexually inappropriate, and that she was hiding her financial troubles from him. See http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/08/ winkler.sentence.ap/index.html, last visited June 14, 2007. See generally, Note, Developments in the Law: Legal Responses to Domestic Violence, Battered Women Who Kill Their Abusers, 106 Harv. L.Rev. 1574 (1993). (Final reply Brief of Appellant filed August 7, 2007, 6-7.) To make matters even worse, Mrs. Owens' appointed counsel each thought the other was responsible for conducting the sentencing hearing; consequently, neither prepared for it. (App.387, 411.) As a result, counsel were so ill prepared that when Dr. Max West, a psychiatrist who had interviewed Mrs. Owens years earlier, began to testify about her family history, defense counsel failed to understand that the Tennessee capital sentencing statute, T.C.A. § 39-2-203(c) (now repealed), expressly made such hearsay testimony admissible at the mitigation hearing. As a result, counsel failed to point out the statute to the trial court when the prosecutor objected on hearsay grounds. The state court erroneously ruled the testimony inadmissible when defense counsel let the objection go unanswered. Defense counsel also failed to follow the provisions of Tennessee law that would have allowed him to hire a psychologist or psychiatrist to testify that Mrs. Owens was suffering from the recognized personality disorder of battered wife syndrome. See Note, Developments in the Law: Legal Response to Domestic Violence, Battered Women Who Kill Their Husbands, 106 Harv. L.Rev. 1574-1597 (1993). The record now contains extensive testimony from an expert in the field showing that the traumatic treatment Mrs. Owens experienced in childhood and as the wife of a sadistic husband created an intense anxiety disorder resulting in impulsive actions in conflict with her core values and beliefs. Her mental disorder includes physical manifestations such as an eating disorder causing her weight to fluctuate drastically from 100 to 170 pounds. As a result of defense counsel's failures, the jury heard nothing, not a stitch, of Mrs. Owens' family history or the sadistic treatment she received at the hands of her husband. The fact that Mrs. Owens was so ashamed of her past that she did not want to take the stand and testify in no way excuses counsel's failure to investigate and prepare for the mitigation hearing or counsel's incompetent failure to cite the law allowing hearsay testimony in such hearings. Counsel obviously had no comprehension of the law governing sentencing hearings, did nothing to investigate mitigating facts, abandoned Owens' best defense and did not prepare at all for the sentencing hearing. If that is not ineffective assistance of counsel in a capital case, there is no such thing as ineffective assistance of counsel.