Opinion ID: 1434440
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Our review is limited to the record presented in the state habeas petitions

Text: According to the majority, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2), which requires development of the record in state court, is inapplicable because Pinholster exercised diligence in pursuing an evidentiary hearing in state court regarding his mitigation ineffective assistance claim. By withdrawing its order to show cause and dismissing Pinholster's habeas petition on the merits, the state court denied Pinholster any further opportunity to develop the factual record in state court. Maj. op. at 668. The majority double-faults. First, Pinholster has not been diligent in presenting the diagnosis of Drs. Olson and Vinogradovthe two experts on whom he now reliesin his state habeas petitions. If Pinholster's trial counsel could have presented such expert opinions (or any expert opinion to the same effect) at the penalty phase, then Pinholster's habeas counsel could easily have presented such declarations in his first state habeas petition some 9 years after trial. And they certainly should have done so in his second state habeas petition, which was filed 13 years after trial. Maybe the majority believes that was impossible because Drs. Vinogradov and Olson weren't available. But if not these particular doctors, there must have been some doctors who could have come up with the same diagnosis in 1993 or 1997 when Pinholster brought his state habeas petitions. If that was not possible, it would destroy Pinholster's claim that his trial counsel were ineffective by failing to come up with a Vinogradov and Olson-like diagnosis in 1984. Pinholster is thus caught in a finger trap: He cannot claim trial counsel were incompetent in 1984 for failing to do that which diligent habeas counsel didn't do in 1993 or 1997. If competent trial counsel should have come up with this diagnosis at trial, then diligent habeas counsel should easily have come up with it in the state habeas petitions. But if diligent habeas counsel couldn't do it 9 years after trial, then trial counsel certainly couldn't have been incompetent in failing to do so at trial. The 18 year delay in presenting the diagnosis of organic personality syndrome must mean either that habeas counsel was not diligent or trial counsel was not ineffective. There's no escape. The majority seems to think that Michael Williams, 529 U.S. at 430-32, 120 S.Ct. 1479, Bradshaw v. Richey, 546 U.S. 74, 79, 126 S.Ct. 602, 163 L.Ed.2d 407 (2005), and Holland v. Jackson, 542 U.S. 649, 652-53, 124 S.Ct. 2736, 159 L.Ed.2d 683 (2004) (per curiam), authorize Pinholster's habeas-by-sandbagging, but they don't. Michael Williams excused petitioner's failure to present evidence to the state courts only when the factual basis of the claims was not reasonably available to petitioner's counsel during state habeas proceedings. Id. at 442, 120 S.Ct. 1479. The claim in Michael Williams that could not have been presented to the state courts was based on information that only the prosecutor possessed, and petitioner's lawyers couldn't have discovered it until the case got to federal court. Id. at 440-43, 120 S.Ct. 1479. By contrast, a different claim, one based on evidence that was available to petitioner while in state courtbut which he failed to present therewas held precluded. Id. at 438-40, 120 S.Ct. 1479. In our case, nothing prevented Pinholster's counsel from presenting expert declarations with the same diagnosis as Drs. Olson and Vinogradov to the state supreme court. There was no problem with paying for such experts: Petitioner did present reports from two other psychiatrists, Drs. Wood and Stalberg, so his lawyers obviously had sufficient funding. Compare Michael Williams, 529 U.S. at 442, 120 S.Ct. 1479 (state court denied funding for an investigator). Nor did the state hide anything from Pinholster; his own mental condition was hardly something the state could have concealed in any event. Compare id. at 441-42, 120 S.Ct. 1479. Nor did Pinholster need the court's subpoena power to obtain the expert reports. Compare id. at 439-40, 120 S.Ct. 1479. Nor can Pinholster claim that such expert opinions weren't available at the time of the state habeas petitions, because that would make them irrelevant for purposes of evaluating the trial lawyers' performance back in 1984. The reports of Drs. Olson and Vinogradov are just like the evidence in Michael Williams that the Supreme Court said couldn't be used because it was not first presented in state court. Holland and Bradshaw help petitioner even less than Michael Williams. Holland states bluntly: In this and related contexts we have made clear that whether a state court's decision was unreasonable must be assessed in light of the record the court had before it. 542 U.S. at 652, 124 S.Ct. 2736 (citing Yarborough, 540 U.S. at 6, 124 S.Ct. 1, Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 348, 123 S.Ct. 1029, 154 L.Ed.2d 931 (2003), and Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 697 n. 4, 122 S.Ct. 1843, 152 L.Ed.2d 914 (2002)). Bradshaw, like Holland, was another reversal of a court of appeals that had relied on extrinsic evidence without first determining whether the habeas petitioner had been diligent in developing it in state court. We could be next. But there are two reasons the majority is wrong, not just one. The second is that petitioner hasn't shown he couldn't have returned to state court to present the Vinogradov and Olson evidence. He returned to state court once already after swapping out psychiatric experts. See pp. 686-87 supra. The California Supreme Court may not have been thrilled to receive the second petition, but it did decide it on the merits and did not preclude further filings. Pinholster could have gone backcould still go back, so far as we knowto present the evidence from Drs. Vinogradov and Olson to the California Supreme Court. Our case is thus different from Michael Williams, where state postconviction relief was no longer available at the time the [hidden] facts came to light, [and] it would have been futile for petitioner to return to the Virginia courts. 529 U.S. at 444, 120 S.Ct. 1479. Diligence under Michael Williams at least required Pinholster to try to go back to state court and present the expert opinions of Drs. Vinogradov and Olson. By failing either to present his newfangled theories to the state court or to show that such an effort would have been futile, petitioner has indulged in a double dose of non-diligence. Our consideration of his new evidence is clearly barred by section 2254(e)(2). This is the most dangerous part of the majority opinion as it blots out a key component of AEDPA. The statute was designed to force habeas petitioners to develop their factual claims in state court. See Michael Williams, 529 U.S. at 436-37, 120 S.Ct. 1479. The majority now provides a handy-dandy road map for circumventing this requirement: A petitioner can present a weak case to the state court, confident that his showing won't justify an evidentiary hearing. Later, in federal court, he can substitute much stronger evidence and get a district judge to consider it in the first instance, free of any adverse findings the state court might have made. I don't believe that AEDPA sanctions this bait-and-switch tactic, nor will it long endure. The majority also says that none of this matters because excluding the two expert reports would not affect our result. Maj. op. at 669. If the majority means that, it should avoid making such terrible law and reach its result without relying on Pinholster's new psychiatric evidence. But I don't believe the majority does mean it. The majority must rely heavily on the new experts, see, e.g., maj. op. at 661, 675-77, because everything else Pinholster's lawyers managed to dig upafter sifting through the rubble of his life for close to two decadesis so piddling. It's hardly the stuff that would justify finding the state court unreasonable. See pp. 709-16 infra. The proof is in the pudding: If the expert declarations didn't matter, the majority would leave them out and avoid making an obvious error under Michael Williams. That it won't tells us something important.