Opinion ID: 223075
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Other evidence of Otte's upbringing

Text: Otte also argues that his counsel were constitutionally ineffective for failing to present witnesses as to Otte's upbringing. Otte's attorneys, Patrick D'Angelo and Granville Bradley, hired mitigation specialist Pat Snyder to investigate Otte's history. Snyder traveled to Otte's childhood home of Terre Haute, Indiana, where she identified a number of people who might testify on Otte's behalf. On appeal, Otte points specifically to three witnesses. Sharon Joslin was Otte's second- and fifth-grade teacher, and described him as a very sad little boy who had trouble fitting in. Julia Bonham was Otte's fourth-grade teacher; she echoed Joslin's recollection that Otte had trouble being accepted by the other children. Bonham stated that even though Otte was frequently bullied, he did not fight back. Finally, Katherine Hoffman was a drug-program administrator who could have testified about Otte's trouble fitting in with his family and his success at the Gibault School, a structured detention facility for children. Otte also argues that his counsel were constitutionally ineffective by failing to present his school records, which indicated that Otte did very poorly and was referred for psychological testing, and which contained a notation that Otte was seriously emotionally handicapped. The Ohio Court of Appeals rejected this claim based largely on the post-conviction testimony of Otte's lead attorney, D'Angelo, who claimed that he made a tactical decision not to use these materials because they were a double-edged sword. In his words, you can try to make a sympathetic case, but at the same time it cuts the other way because it shows someone that's kind of cold blooded and getting worse and dangerous and people were predicting certain things and, lo[] and behold, look what happened here. After considering this testimony, the Ohio Court of Appeals held that counsels' tactical decision not to use the Snyder materials was not unreasonable. Strickland warns that strategic choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts relevant to plausible options are virtually unchallengeable, 466 U.S. at 690, 104 S.Ct. 2052, and D'Angelo was adamant that his mitigation choices were indeed strategic. He testified that he looked over the Snyder materials, discussed them with Snyder, and ultimately decided that they would not be helpful. Otte seeks to show that the state court's decision to credit D'Angelo's testimony was an unreasonable determination of the facts. Although Otte points to a number of inconsistencies in D'Angelo's testimony, this is hardly surprising considering that more than ten years separated Otte's trial and the post-conviction hearing. Further, D'Angelo's testimony freely admits his limited recollection of many aspects of the case, but becomes very lucid with regard to his struggle deciding whether to use the Snyder materials. Thus, we cannot say that D'Angelo's misstatements render the state court's decision to credit his testimony an unreasonable determination of the facts. It was also reasonable for the state court to credit D'Angelo's stated rationale for declining to present the Terre Haute witnesses. D'Angelo claimed that the information presented could have hurt Otte overall because it showed an escalating criminality that dated from his childhood. Otte responds that most of the information was presented by Dr. McPherson's testimony anyway, and this explanation is therefore preposterous. We disagree. The proposed testimony of Joslin and Bonham covered largely the same themes: that Otte was a sad and isolated, but affectionate, child. Joslin was adamant that Otte was not aggressive or a bully, but mentioned that he had stopped trying to buy the affection of his peers and was missing more school by the time she taught him in fifth grade. Bonham testified that Otte was not a discipline problem to me. But because of his difficulties socially, I was concerned about that. She also noted that his learning difficulties were not the worst in the class, which could have undermined the narrative of Otte's difficult childhood. Otte's actual school records would not have added much to all of this testimony, but could also have indicated a steady decline. McPherson's testimony was similar in that it included Otte's troubles at school and the fact that he was singled out and bullied by other children. Because her testimony was more limited in scope, however, it did not lend itself to the uncomfortable inference D'Angelo wanted to avoid; namely, that everyone around Otte perceived him as getting steadily more criminal and detached. The post-conviction testimony of Katherine Hoffman, the drug-program administrator, was an extensive narrative on Otte's drug use and his inability to fit into society. Among other things, she noted that Otte had been referred to an at-risk program because of just a general sense that there were problems everywhere, and seemed incapable of making any lasting progress: [W]e would have some big intervention session, and I would feel like we had made some inroads.... And it seemed like we'd go away from there with great expectation, and then things never seemed to work for very long. After Otte left the Gibault School, Hoffman's testimony was that I had this young man that I... felt was just falling through the cracks, and it didn't seem like we could get him to a place that he needed to be, and I was so worried about what was going to happen. Dr. McPherson, on the other hand, presented all of the information that was helpful  that he was addicted to drugs, referred to social programs, did very well at the Gibault School, and was transferred out of it through no fault of his own  but with significantly less detail regarding Otte's repeated failure to fit into society or the kind of lifelong downward spiral that might make Otte's fate seem inevitable. No one can know what evidence would have moved the panel to impose life on Otte instead of death. We might even agree with Otte that Hoffman and his teachers could have been helpful  they may have had more of a humanizing effect than the testimony of Dr. McPherson. But determining the optimal mitigation strategy is not our job. The question before us is narrow: was the state court's decision to credit D'Angelo's testimony and reasoning an unreasonable determination of the facts? The answer to that question is no. His inconsistencies were not sufficient to undermine his testimony that he agonized over what mitigation materials to present. His rationale for not presenting the materials is consistent with some of the damaging elements that Hoffman, Joslin, and Bonham might have introduced. The Ohio appeals court's application of Strickland was therefore not unreasonable.