Opinion ID: 564808
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the administration of psychotropic medication by the state

Text: 21 Petitioner earnestly contends that neither he nor his counsel were aware that, during his incarceration leading up to and through his capital murder trial, he was being regularly administered Thorazine, an anti-psychotic drug, and Sinequan, an antidepressant, by jail authorities. This information was allegedly deliberately concealed from them by the state, notwithstanding defense counsel's written Brady requests for production of all exculpatory evidence. Given this information, counsel contends, Jones would have requested a sanity commission and would have been able to procure powerful psychiatric mitigating evidence. 22 According to Jones, the gravamen of his new claim is that the state's failure to disclose the evidence of psychotropic medication was an objective factor external to Jones and his counsel, caused by interference by officials, McCleskey, 111 S.Ct. at 1470, such that cause for this second petition exists. Certainly, he contends, the state may not use as a bar to a claim the underlying facts of the claim itself ... The hiding [of evidence] is the legal claim ... (emphasis added). 23 We are not persuaded that Jones made a substantial showing that the state's action interfered with Jones's ability to raise the Brady claim in his first federal habeas petition. Our review of Jones's court filings over the years demonstrates that his counsel were at every stage of the proceedings at least on notice of his mental problems. In the first federal habeas petition, Dr. Brabham described Jones as probably psychotic at the time of the murder and hypothesized that his condition derived from drug and alcohol abuse which had caused organic brain damage. Defense counsel's affidavit with the 1989 state habeas petition averred that he knew the significance of Jones's problems in 1984 and was only prevented by the underfunding of his defender's office from investigating them further. The expert medical affidavits attached to the 1989 state habeas petition refer to Jones's substantial pre-crime mental problems, head injuries, medication with drugs such as Sinequan, and to a 1984 auditory hallucination episode. Given this background knowledge and counsel's experience as public defenders, defense counsel knew or with reasonable diligence could have found out that Jones was under constant psychotropic medication at the jail. 24 The abundant signposts of Jones's mental problems at the time of the offense and at the time of the first habeas petition disprove his allegations of cause under McCleskey. The Supreme Court made clear that causerequires a showing of some external impediment preventing counsel from constructing or raising a claim. Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 492, 106 S.Ct. 2639, 2648 [91 L.Ed.2d 397] (1986). For cause to exist, the external impediment, whether it be government interference or the reasonable unavailability of the factual basis for the claim, must have prevented petitioner from raising the claim.... 25 McCleskey, 111 S.Ct. at 1472. Had counsel examined Jones in depth about his medication and consulted with jail authorities or with outside experts, the nature of his medication would have come to light. Compare Amadeo v. Zant, 486 U.S. 214, 108 S.Ct. 1771, 100 L.Ed.2d 249 (1988) (finding cause due to official interference where an undated, unsigned memorandum surfaced in unrelated litigation that showed surreptitious attempts to exclude blacks from the jury system). The state did not prevent Jones from investigating a potential Brady claim for his psychotropic medication. 26 Reinforcing our conclusion that the state's alleged actions are not cause for omitting his mental illness claims, McCleskey points out, in an excerpt quoted above, that the filing of a serial habeas petition will not be excused simply because evidence discovered by the petitioner after the first filing would have supported or strengthened a claim. Jones raised other Brady claims and ineffectiveness claims in his first federal habeas petition, the latter directly relating to counsel's failure to investigate psychiatric evidence. Although Jones characterizes the evidence of psychotropic medication while in jail as an independent Brady claim, it might also be characterized simply as new evidence supporting the claims he had already discovered. Even if viewed from this perspective, McCleskey 's analysis forecloses a finding of cause. See McCleskey, 111 S.Ct. at 1475.