Opinion ID: 4535848
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Strickland Prong One

Text: With respect to the first Strickland prong, deficient performance is performance that falls “below an objective standard of reasonableness” and is outside of “the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687–88 (quoting McMann v. SMITH V. BAKER 25 Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 771 (1970)). The objective measure of counsel’s performance is determined by looking at the “reasonableness under prevailing professional norms.” Id. at 688. Professional norms are measured at the time of counsel’s actions rather than by reference to modern norms. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 196 (2011). This assessment is made “from counsel’s perspective at the time,” so as “to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689. We “defer to a lawyer’s strategic trial choices, [but] those choices must have been made after counsel [ ] conducted reasonable investigations or [made] a reasonable decision that ma[de] particular investigations unnecessary.” Summerlin v. Schriro, 427 F.3d 623, 630 (9th Cir. 2005) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691). During the April 1996 second penalty hearing, counsel based Smith’s sentencing argument on character evidence very similar to the evidence presented at the first trial, and did not arrange or request a mental health evaluation of Smith. Smith’s first-chair counsel at the second penalty hearing, Donald York Evans, acknowledged in a 2007 declaration filed with Smith’s federal habeas petition that Smith was “an interesting case, psychologically,” and that when he first met Smith, Evans “wanted to do a complete psychological workup on him.” Evans admitted that he “did not press the issue” because Smith declined to submit to testing and Evans “wasn’t confident that [he] would get anything [he] could use from an evaluation anyway.” Evans “suspected [Smith] had schizoid tendencies and a high IQ but that was just [his] guess and [Smith] wouldn’t participate in an evaluation.” State habeas counsel’s 2002 interview of second-chair counsel, Peter LaPorta, was consistent. Asked whether “there [was] anything else that [counsel felt] should have been done for [Smith’s] second penalty phase” LaPorta responded, “[Y]es, 26 SMITH V. BAKER to put it succinctly. I was very uncomfortable with the background information that [had been] developed on the family and the family history, military history, educational history, any psychological history.” We agree with Smith that the performance of his second penalty-phase counsel was deficient. This is not a case in which counsel chose not to pursue mental health mitigation evidence because there were other defense theories to pursue; indeed, the presentation made on Smith’s behalf at the second penalty phase was exceptionally sparse. The transcript reflects only about twenty-five pages of testimony from three family members and three family friends who testified about Smith’s character and his relationship with his family, even though red flags regarding Smith’s mental health were raised in the pre-trial competency assessment and by his behavior before and during trial. It was incumbent upon counsel to investigate Smith’s mental health even though Smith denied mental illness. The record shows that Smith’s lawyers did not conduct an investigation to ascertain the extent of any possible mental impairment, or to determine whether mental health could have been raised as a mitigating factor at sentencing. Counsel concluded that any psychological assessment performed without Smith’s cooperation would be of little or no value, but one of the two expert declarations filed on Smith’s behalf in 2007 was prepared solely based on the expert’s review of the record. If nothing else, a comparable report could have been prepared at the time of the sentencing without Smith’s participation. The applicable American Bar Association (ABA) guidelines made clear that “[t]he investigation for preparation of the sentencing phase . . . should comprise efforts to discover all reasonably available mitigating evidence.” ABA Guidelines 11.4.1(C) (1989). The ABA guidelines further specified that counsel SMITH V. BAKER 27 should collect a medical history (including “mental and physical illness”) and investigate a defendant’s social history in preparation for the penalty phase. Id. 11.4.1(2)(C). On the record before us, we do not hesitate to conclude that the failure to investigate Smith’s mental health history contravened the ABA guidelines. We have said that “strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation.” Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 521 (2003) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690–91). Smith’s counsel had good reason to be concerned about Smith’s mental state yet they acknowledged that they did not try to obtain a psychiatric report, apparently because Smith objected. We do not minimize the difficulty presented by Smith’s failure to cooperate, but Smith had no other viable defense and his inability to recognize that and submit to a mental health evaluation may well have been another indicator of a mental health disorder. The failure to pursue mental health mitigation evidence “ignored pertinent avenues for investigation of which [counsel] should have been aware.” Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30, 40 (2009) (per curiam). The record does not demonstrate that counsel’s failure to investigate was strategic. No alternate mitigation evidence or argument was proffered to the jury, despite what appears to be agreement among Smith’s attorneys that he may have suffered from some sort of mental illness. See Evans v. Lewis, 855 F.2d 631, 637 (9th Cir. 1988) (“Counsel’s failure to investigate [a petitioner’s] mental condition[, despite prior notice,] cannot be construed as a trial tactic.”); see also Hendricks v. Calderon, 70 F.3d 1032, 1043 (9th Cir. 1995) (“[W]here counsel is on notice that his client may be mentally impaired, counsel’s failure to investigate his client’s mental 28 SMITH V. BAKER condition as a mitigating factor in a penalty phase hearing, without a supporting strategic reason, constitutes deficient performance.”). Our concurring colleague concludes that Smith’s counsel’s performance was not deficient, cautioning that counsel’s performance must not be judged with hindsight. Concurrence at 46–47. We do not doubt this rule, but in our view it is the concurrence that misapplies it. By conflating Strickland’s prongs one and two, the concurring opinion decides that it was permissible to forgo a psychological evaluation because, without Smith’s cooperation, his lawyers guessed that a psychological assessment would be of “no value.” Concurrence at 49–51. There is no question that Smith’s failure to cooperate with a psychological evaluation would have hindered any effort to muster persuasive mitigating evidence for the second penalty phase, but this comes into play at Strickland step two, when we consider whether counsel’s deficient performance resulted in prejudice. At step one, we consider whether Smith’s lawyers’ performance fell below an objectively reasonable standard, and that question is largely a function of the choices that were available to counsel. Here, we consider the questions raised by Smith’s pre-trial competency evaluation and by counsel’s own observations of Smith’s behavior; Smith’s persistent failure to recognize the implausibility of his trial testimony; his concerning trial conduct; and the fact that there was almost nothing else to offer in defense of the death penalty. On this record, it was unreasonable to forgo a psychological evaluation merely because Smith had confidence in his own mental health and counsel assumed an assessment would be of little value. Indeed, it is easy to imagine that a defendant’s insistence that he is not ill may be a symptom of mental illness. The out-of-circuit cases the concurring opinion cites SMITH V. BAKER 29 are not to the contrary. See, e.g., Coleman v. Mitchell, 244 F.3d 533, 544–46 (6th Cir. 2001) (distinguishing cases in which the failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence constituted ineffective assistance, because defendant served as co-counsel and instructed counsel to pursue an alternate strategy); Johnston v. Singletary, 162 F.3d 630, 642 (11th Cir. 1998) (per curiam) (concluding that counsel’s decision to forgo psychiatric testimony was strategic where defendant refused to cooperate and his medical records contained substantial data regarding his criminal history). We conclude that Smith satisfied his burden of demonstrating a “substantial” argument that his second penalty-phase counsel’s performance was deficient.