Opinion ID: 2995876
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Brown’s Sentencing Hearing

Text: At the February 25, 1992, sentencing hearing, Brown was again represented by Palmer. Since nearly a month had passed, Palmer certainly had the opportunity to acquaint himself with Brown’s file, which included a copy of the Menard subpoena Kozlowski had served. Though Menard had still not complied with the subpoena for Brown’s medical records, and even though his client was being sentenced without the benefit of these critically important documents, Palmer failed to make even a cursory inquiry into the reasons Kozlowski had sought the records, much less into the reasons why the prison had failed to produce them. Even though Palmer had ob- No. 01-2326 13 served Brown’s erratic behavior and outburst at trial, and in spite of the fact that he knew or should have known about Kozlowski’s subpoena and Menard’s inaction on that subpoena, Palmer failed to request an adjournment of the sentencing to allow him more time to produce these records. The sentencing was also affected by the incomplete and inaccurate pre-sentence report that had been filed with the court. The investigating officer who authored the report, Sunsaray Hodges, failed to collect information about and report on Brown’s family history, psychiatric history and illness, prior psychiatric treatment and confinement, the circumstances surrounding his general discharge from the Navy, and his conduct while in prison. Thus, because of this inaccurate report, the judge was still unaware at the time of sentencing that Brown had been diagnosed as suffering from chronic schizophrenia. As this court has stated before (though in a slightly different context), a sentencing judge’s inquiry is broad in scope, “largely unlimited either as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come.” United States v. Gerstein, 104 F.3d 973, 978 (7th Cir. 1997) (quotation omitted). The reasoning for this is plain: The sentencing stage of a trial is one of the most important parts of the criminal process. In order for a judge to be well advised of the facts surrounding the defendant’s background, and particularly in view of the judge’s obligation to the general public, as well as to the defendant, to be fair, reasonable, and just, it is imperative that he be allowed to draw upon a wealth of information concerning the defendant’s background, from his date of birth up to and including the moment of sentencing. . . . In order to render justice to all the judge must be able to impress upon a defendant through the expansive contents of an all 14 No. 01-2326 encompassing sentencing report that we are a country of laws and not men. Id. During the sentencing hearing, Palmer asked the trial judge to consider Brown’s strange behavior at trial as a mitigating factor in the severity of his sentence: I understand there was a psychiatric evaluation in this case. I understand he did come back fit; however your Honor did see his demeanor throughout the trial, and I’d ask your Honor to take that into consideration, that although he did come back legally fit, you saw everything that occurred in the court, Judge. And I’d ask your Honor not to ignore that. This is a man who does have problems. This is a man who is not an extremely—a violent person. This is not a person who on his own volition is a violent person. We would ask the court to take all of that into consideration in sentencing him, and we would ask for leniency in the sentence. The trial court responded that “certainly some psychological observation of [Brown] is in order,” but in spite of this comment reflecting his awareness of the problem and in spite of the request for a psychiatric exam (on which the court failed to act), the judge went on to conclude that Brown was fully responsible for his own actions at the time of the offense and went on to describe him as a “pathetic individual” who “could have overcome” his “pathos” “a long time ago” if he had “made some effort” to do so. The judge found him guilty, and in sentencing him to the maximum term for armed robbery, 30 years, stated that Brown had “virtually no hope for rehabilitation.”