Opinion ID: 2362987
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Wiggins/Rompilla Claim

Text: The Wiggins/Rompilla claim made by Evans is that his attorneys in the 1992 re-sentencing proceeding failed to investigate his social and psychological history and that there is a reasonable probability that, but for that omission, the result of that re-sentencing proceeding would have been different. In support of his fourth motion to reopen the 1995 post conviction proceeding, counsel produced a 51-page Psychosocial Evaluation of Mitigating Circumstances In Life Of Vernon Lee Evans, Jr., prepared by a licensed social worker, Pamela Taylor, and an 18-page Investigation Of Psychological Mitigating Factors in Life Of Vernon Lee Evans prepared by a psychologist, Janice Stevenson. Both reports were based predominantly on interviews with Evans and members of his family plus various documents. In her report, Ms. Taylor concluded, in pertinent part: (1) There was a Multi-Generational Family Legacy of Emotional Dysfunction. Evans's parents, she said, came from emotionally troubled backgrounds, and various members of his extended family  uncles, aunts, cousins  suffered from major mental disorders, gambling addiction, or may have been alcoholics. His father's uncle and cousin committed suicide. His grandmother was known to faint when she got upset. One of his father's cousins is reported to have had a chronic addiction to gambling. Although Evans's sisters are accomplished in their various careers and present a positive public image, the oldest ones had experienced significant instability and personal difficulties and inner turmoil in their lives. One, who holds a doctorate in divinity, teaches bible studies, and is gainfully employed, was sexually promiscuous as a teenager, is separated from her second husband, and has a strained relationship with her 37-year-old daughter. Another, who holds a college degree and was pursuing a masters in business administration while employed as a financial aid counselor at Morgan State University, felt unloved as a child, once attempted suicide, and thirty years earlier had a psychotic breakdown. (2) Evans's parents did not know how to express loving feelings toward their children, to have empathy for their individual needs, to address conflict appropriately, or demonstrate constructive problemsolving skills. They unwittingly set up an environment of chronic fearfulness, suppression of normal emotional reactions, and boundary violations which forced the children to live in an environment which was toxic and traumatizing. Ms. Taylor asserted that Evans's father was physically abusive toward Evans and his sisters. All of this, she said, afforded Evans neither the safety, security, nor nurturing for a healthy self to develop. (3) There was an anxious and insecure home environment during Evans's formative years. The household was characterized as fearful and full of tension between family members, and it was difficult for Evans to navigate these emotional rapids within the family. Much of this seemed to emanate from marital discord between the parents. (4) There were episodes of abandonment and extreme neglect by the parents. On one occasion, the mother left home for ten days. The children were not actually abandoned, however, as the father remained in the home to care for them. On another occasion, when Evans and his father went to the beach together, the father left him for a time and Evans became frightened. Evans has nearly no memories of his father spending quality time with him. (5) Evans experienced persistent taunting from his peers, apparently because he was small. This, according to Ms. Taylor, exacerbated his feelings of inferiority, personal shame, alienation, fearfulness, humiliation, and powerlessness. (6) On one occasion, when Evans was eleven, a man on a delivery truck exposed himself and asked Evans to kiss his penis. Evans escaped without having to perform. (7) Although Evans's mother described him as a normal and happy child, a childhood friend interviewed by Ms. Taylor described him as sad. When Evans was 10, he took a bottle of Darvon from his mother's medicine cabinet and overdosed on the pills. He was taken to the hospital and recovered from the incident. An aunt recalled Evans looking depressed. By the time he was in high school, he was on drugs. (8) Evans sustained several head injuries that, according to Ms. Taylor, created Risk for Organic Compromise. The first of these events occurred when, at the time of his birth, a doctor accidentally dropped a scalpel on his head, giving the infant a gash. When he was nine, he fell down the steps and got a big bump. He also was struck by a car and spent one night in the hospital. Ms. Taylor did not indicate how any of those events created a Risk for Organic Compromise. (9) On a number of occasions, Evans witnessed his father with other women, which Ms. Taylor characterized as Traumatic Witnessing of Painful Betrayal by Father. There is no indication that Evans ever saw his father engaged in any sexual activity; the only incidents of this kind that he witnessed were seeing his father on one occasion in the arms of another woman and on another occasion going into a house with another woman. Ms. Taylor reported several episodes when Evans's mother followed or chased his father in a car and complained about his relationships with other women. (10) In part because of his father's philandering, Evans had Unresolved Anger towards Father. (11) Evans grew up in an impoverished, tough neighborhood. Ms. Taylor refers to that as Coping through Displaced Rage, Fear and Sadness into a Tough Street Demeanor. (12) According to Ms. Taylor, Evans was predisposed both biologically and socially, for developing problems with substance abuse, and by 13 or 14 was using drugs. (13) Symptoms that Ms. Taylor regarded as resounding cries for help by Evans went unnoticed and unattended because his parents were self-absorbed with their own problems. On the positive side, Ms. Taylor listed as strengths Evans's Capacity for Compassion and Empathy for Loved Ones  an underlying concern and sensitivity to his family's needs and welfare, Repaired Close Family Relationships with Strong Advocacy for his Children and Grandchildren, and a Newfound Spiritual Grounding and Therapeutic Strides towards More Healthy Self-Awareness. The greatest part of Ms. Taylor's findings regarding Evans's childhood came from her conversations with Evans, his parents, and his siblings, who testified at his re-sentencing hearing and simply gave a different account of Evans's childhood. Much of the information regarding Evans's parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins came from interviews with various uncles, aunts, and first and second degree cousins. From some of the same history developed by Ms. Taylor, Dr. Stevenson concluded that [s]ince he was nine years old, Vernon has continuously met the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic and Severe, Depressive Disorder, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. He currently meets the criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder. Evans claims that the dysfunctional childhood he suffered, as documented in these reports, was far worse than that suffered by Wiggins or Rompilla and that, had this information been developed and presented to the jury at the 1992 re-sentencing hearing, the outcome probably would have been different. The post conviction court was, of course, aware of what had transpired at the re-sentencing hearing. The transcript of that hearing was before the court and various witnesses testified as to what occurred. In considering whether the court abused its discretion in refusing to reopen the 1995 proceeding to allow this attack to proceed, it is important to examine at least the facial validity of Evans's argument. In Wiggins, counsel was aware, from evidence they had, that Wiggins's mother was a chronic alcoholic, that she had left him home alone on occasion, and that, as a child, he had been shuttled among various foster homes. When they lost a motion to bifurcate the sentencing proceeding, to deal first with whether Wiggins was a principal in the first degree and then with mitigation, counsel chose to concentrate on principalship and not present a significant mitigation defense. That was a strategic decision. As a result, they made no further investigation beyond the rather meager evidence they had of Wiggins's childhood. They thus never learned that the mother frequently left him and his siblings home alone, forcing him to beg for food and eat paint chips and garbage, that she was physically abusive, that she had sex with men while the children slept in the same bed, that she once forced Wiggins's hand against a hot stove burner that led to his hospitalization, that from the age of six he had been shuttled from one foster home to another, that the father in the second foster home repeatedly molested and raped him, that at age 16, he began living on the streets, that, on one occasion, he was gang-raped by a foster mother's sons, and that he was sexually abused as well by a supervisor in a Job Corps program. The Supreme Court found to be deficient counsel's failure to follow up on the information they had and to make any further investigation into Wiggins's social and emotional history. The Court made clear that Strickland does not require counsel to investigate every conceivable line of mitigating evidence or to present mitigating evidence at sentencing in every case, Wiggins v. Smith, supra, 539 U.S. at 533, 123 S.Ct. at 2541, 156 L.Ed.2d at 492, but concluded that the supposedly strategic decision by counsel to forego that kind of defense was made without a proper investigation of facts necessary to support that decision and was, for that reason, unreasonable. In that regard, the Court noted that counsel did, in fact, mention to the jury that Wiggins had an unfortunate childhood; the problem was that, because they had failed to make a proper investigation, the defense was a lame one. With respect to the prejudice prong, the Court found that the mitigating evidence that counsel failed to discover was powerful. It noted that the severe privation and abuse in the first six years of his life while in the custody of his alcoholic, absentee mother coupled with the physical torment, sexual molestation, and repeated rape during his subsequent years in foster care showed the kind of troubled history we have declared relevant to assessing a defendant's moral culpability. Id. at 535, 123 S.Ct. at 2542, 156 L.Ed.2d at 493. The Court found a reasonable probability that a competent attorney, aware of the nature and extent of that abuse, would have not only have offered evidence of it but would have made the mitigation defense a priority. In Rompilla, it was clear that the State intended to offer at sentencing Rompilla's extensive history of felony convictions, as evidence of a propensity to use violence, which was an aggravating factor. Defense counsel, though she had ample opportunity to do so, never looked at the files in those cases, especially the transcript of a prior rape case, and was therefore wholly unprepared to counter or attempt to ameliorate that evidence. The file in the rape case would have revealed evidence of Rompilla's dysfunctional childhood, filled with pervasive domestic violence. Had school and mental health records been obtained, they would have revealed evidence of possible schizophrenia and mental retardation, all of which could have been used in support of a mitigation defense that bears no relation to the few naked pleas for mercy actually put before the jury. Rompilla v. Beard, supra, 545 U.S. at 393, 125 S.Ct. at 2469, 162 L.Ed.2d at 379. None of that evidence was presented to the jury. In this case, evidence presented during the 1995 post conviction proceeding indicated that Evans wanted counsel at the re-sentencing proceeding to concentrate on showing that he was not the shooter. If that defense proved successful, there could be no death penalty and therefore no need for mitigation evidence. The problem was that Evans had already been convicted twice of the two homicides  first in Federal court, then in Worcester County  and, given the evidence, counsel had little hope of succeeding on that issue. Ms. Chester, lead counsel at the re-sentencing hearing, stated that, as a result, they intended to present a strong mitigation case and, unless the State's case on principalship fell apart, not contest that issue too strongly. In a way, it was an opposite approach to that taken in Wiggins. That, indeed, was their focus; they did present a mitigation defense. In opening statement, counsel described mitigation not as a justification for the killings, but as a reason not to impose the death penalty. The mitigation, she indicated, would center on two things: first, that, if given life imprisonment, it was unlikely that Evans, even though rehabilitated and then free of drug addiction, would ever be released and therefore would never be a further danger to society; and second, that he grew up in a caring, loving family, but that, in his early teens, he drifted into and became consumed by drugs, turned away from his family, and got into the clutches of Grandison. It was that, from which he had since recovered, that led to the tragic murders. That argument was based on what Evans himself said and was corroborated by the testimony of his parents and his siblings, both at the initial sentencing in 1984 and at the re-sentencing in 1992. At the 1984 proceeding, Evans's father said that the relationship in the home was normally as any boy would be, up until [Evans] reached maybe seventeen, when the father discovered that Evans had a drug problem. The father said that he tried to talk with and counsel his son, and when that did not work, he spoke to a judge, who recommended a treatment program. The father got Evans into the program and felt that it had done him some good. The father said that we were always able to talk, talk over problems. He would always tell me about his problems. At some point, he discovered that Evans was seeking support from a friend of the father who worked in a drug program. The father acknowledged current tension in the family but attributed it to what Evans had done: My family. Well, my youngest child, up until this happened, she was doing fine. She is married and is living with her husband, but now she has a problem because of this. All times of the night she calls me and I have to go and counsel with her, try to solve some problems for her. My ex-wife is the same. We seek help through her minister. My other daughters, I have to counsel with them, trying to explain the best I can. We still don't know why. (Emphasis added). The father added that the family is a close one  that Evans had a very good relationship with his own children. He said that he loved his son but felt that somewhere along the line he's let [us] down. Evans's mother gave very similar testimony. She said that Evans had a very close relationship with his sisters and with her and that imposition of the death sentence would have a devastating effect on her, on Evans's father, and on his sisters. Gwendolyn Spence, Evans's sister, a high school graduate with one year of college at the time, was employed as an administrative assistant at a health center. When asked about her relationship with Evans while growing up, she responded that he was just like any typical brother  that a lot of times we just looked up to him for the right thing to do and that [h]e was always there for us to ask. She said that they had a very close relationship, that Evans was a lot of comfort to me, and he still is. Spence said that she learned of her brother's drug problem around 1978-79 and tried to help him get into a program. Crystal Wilson and Linda Trusty, also younger sisters who were successful in life, corroborated Ms. Spence's testimony. They too said that they had a very good relationship with Evans, both growing up and currently. Gwendolyn Geter, a childhood friend who mothered three of Evans's seven children, testified that Evans was the type of person that he always wanted to be a father, and he always wanted to have fatherly love and understanding with kids and that he had a wonderful relationship with his children. Felicia Bell, who mothered another child of Evans, gave similar testimony, about the close relationship he had with that child. None of these witnesses  parents, siblings, girlfriends  alluded to any serious discord in the family; none of them spoke of any physical or psychological abuse by the father or the mother, none of them said anything about the father's supposed philandering. Evans did not testify, but he did allocute. He made no claim of family turmoil. Indeed, he said that he had been protecting his family all his life, and I love my mother, my father, my children very much. He acknowledged that, by age 14 or 15 he began abusing drugs, although his parents did not find out until a few years later. Evans's parents and sisters gave much the same testimony at the 1992 re-sentencing. There, too, the emphasis was on mitigation, in the form that Evans's problems stemmed from his significant drug abuse, commencing when he was thirteen or fourteen, and that, since the murders, he had conquered that devil and was a different person. When the father testified, the rest of the family was in court listening. He said that [f]rom day one until I would say about age thirteen, fourteen, he was my dreams of a son and he fell in line with all of the other of my kids. . . . We were very close. Things began to change when Evans was about thirteen, when Evans began using drugs and detached himself from the family. Evans's mother described an almost idyllic early family life, showing photographs of the family together. She described trips they took, how proud they were at Evans's early academic achievements, the college plans they had for him, how things began to change and how her husband was trying to really get him on the right track. She stated that, by the time they became aware that Evans was missing school it was too late for us to do anything about it. Evans's three sisters also testified, much as they did in 1984, only in some more detail. Again, none of them alluded to any family turmoil, any abuse, any philandering by the father. As in 1984, Evans chose to allocute. He began by acknowledging: It has been nine years since I have been involved in this hideous crime. My family was not to blame, for Lord knows, I have shamed them. I know this because of the tears I have seen them shed.  (Emphasis added). In his allocution, Evans blamed everything on his descent into drug abuse, and he averred that he was now rid of that curse: I didn't just continue the lifestyle of drugs and associate myself with individuals that didn't want to excel. I rid myself of the one thing that allowed others to use me. I became drug-free. I began to profit as a human being. Ms. Taylor's and Dr. Stevenson's recitation of all of the supposed discord and dysfunction in Evans's nuclear family came primarily from the very people who, on two occasions, testified under oath (or allocuted) to precisely the opposite-Evans himself and his parents and sisters. Twenty-one years after testifying in the first proceeding and thirteen years after testifying in the second, they have now presented to a social worker employed by new counsel an entirely different, and contradictory, version of their family life. The notion that, if asked, they would have explained all of this to defense counsel in 1984 or 1992, is belied by the testimony and allocution they actually gave at those times. This is not pre-existing, reliable, undiscovered evidence that would have supported a credible mitigation defense, as was the case in Wiggins and Rompilla. It is a dramatically different story told, for the most part, by the very witnesses presented by counsel at the two sentencing proceedings, including Evans himself. If this new story were to be repeated by the parents and sisters to a new jury, the cross-examination would be nothing short of devastating. We find no abuse of discretion in the court's refusal to reopen the 1995 post conviction proceeding.