Opinion ID: 3050954
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: whether the admissions defendant made to two

Text: jailhouse informants, Mark Mikles and Ronald McFarland, deliberately were elicited from defendant at the behest of law enforcement officials so as to render the statements inadmissible at trial . . . ; (2) whether the prosecution improperly failed to disclose to the defense any inducements offered by state agents to Mikles or McFarland for their testimony at defendant’s trial; and (3) whether defendant’s trial counsel failed to provide adequate representation with respect to the special circumstance allegations or the penalty phase of the trial. In re Jackson, 3 Cal. 4th 578, 584 (1992). On August 16, 1988, after taking testimony from eighteen witnesses and receiving into evidence twenty-seven exhibits, Justice Jefferson issued his first report, which made findings as to the first and third questions. First, the referee found that Mikles and McFarland had not impermissibly elicited Jackson’s statements at the behest of law enforcement. However, he concluded that Jackson was denied effective assistance of counsel at both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial. In the penalty phase, defense attorney Veganes presented no evidence on Jackson’s behalf and only interviewed three potential witnesses: Jackson’s father, grandmother, and aunt. Justice Jefferson found that there were many other relatives who could have provided mitigating evidence, including evidence of “unconscionable” “physical and psychological abuse” in Jackson’s childhood. Because the decision not to call any mitigating witnesses was based on Veganes’s misunderstanding of the scope of rebuttal evidence, it could not be considered a reasonable tactical decision. Similarly, at the guilt phase, Veganes completely failed to investigate the background of either Mikles or McFarland, despite his belief that “the testimony of those two witnesses” was “the guts of the Jackson case.” Had Veganes performed any investigation of these jailhouse informants, he would have discovered that JACKSON v. BROWN 903 Mikles was a former member of the Aryan brotherhood, that Mikles and McFarland had each been offered governmental assistance in exchange for testifying, and that the two witnesses had been in contact in jail and had the opportunity to collaborate to ensure consistency in their testimony. The referee concluded that these witnesses’ testimony was crucial to the jury’s finding that Jackson committed the crime “with the intent to cause death”; accordingly, Veganes’s ineffective assistance prejudiced both the jury’s special circumstances findings and the jury’s death verdict, although it did not affect the underlying convictions. On September 21, 1989, Justice Jefferson issued a supplemental report addressing the undisclosed inducements made to Mikles and McFarland. He found that law enforcement officers had promised Mikles that they would help him get a pending six-year sentence reduced, as little time as possible in an upcoming sentencing, and a pending parole violation sentence reduced, although they did not promise any specific results. Prosecutor Marin offered to write a letter to prison authorities on McFarland’s behalf to help him serve his time in Arizona, where his family lived. None of these inducements was disclosed at trial; in fact, both witnesses falsely testified that they had received no promises in exchange for their testimony, other than the “protection” described by Mikles. Justice Jefferson concluded: This was a clear case of concealment and a failure by the prosecution to disclose to petitioner Jackson’s lawyer, the inducements made to Mikles and McFar- land. The disclosure to the jury of these inducements could well have caused the Jackson jury to give little or no credence to the damaging testimony of Mikles and McFarland. The California Supreme Court reviewed Justice Jefferson’s reports and issued an opinion on August 31, 1992. In re Jackson, 3 Cal. 4th 578 (1992). The court agreed with the referee 904 JACKSON v. BROWN that the prosecution improperly failed to disclose the promises of assistance to Mikles and McFarland and that it failed to correct the perjured testimony concerning these promises. Id. at 594-97 (“Accordingly, we conclude that because the prosecution should have known of the false and misleading nature of the informants’ testimony, the prosecution was under a constitutional obligation to correct that testimony.”). However, the court concluded, in a 5-2 decision, that these constitutional errors were not prejudicial because Jackson had admitted to hitting Ott, and, at that time, Jackson knew that Curtis had recently died from a similar beating. Id. at 598-99. Therefore, “although defendant did not admit . . . that he acted with the intent to cause Mrs. Ott’s death,” his statement “went a long way toward proving the elements of the special circumstances finding.” Id. at 599. Moreover, the court pointed to the testimony of other witnesses and the statements they attributed to Jackson that “clearly established that defendant had the requisite culpability.” Id. For example, Jackson apparently referred to the victims as “ ‘two old bags [who] were a nuisance and . . . got what they deserved,’ ” id. (emphasis and alteration in original), and stated that “ ‘[t]his is what I did, that it was because I needed some money,’ ” id. (emphasis in original). Accordingly, the court found that the errors did not justify habeas relief as to either the special circumstances findings or the death sentence. Id. at 599, 600. For the same reasons, the court held that even if Veganes’s failure to investigate Mikles and McFarland was deficient, this deficiency did not prejudice the special circumstances findings so as to constitute ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment. Id. at 604-05. Finally, the court agreed with Justice Jefferson that Veganes’s failure to investigate potential mitigating evidence at the penalty phase was deficient performance; however, it disagreed with the referee’s conclusion that Jackson suffered prejudice. Id. at 615. Jackson filed his first federal habeas petition on April 1, 1996. Because it alleged unexhausted claims, it was stayed until Jackson exhausted his remedies in state court. On SepJACKSON v. BROWN 905 tember 9, 1996, Jackson filed a third habeas petition in the California Supreme Court, claiming, among other things, that the prosecutor impermissibly failed to disclose Mikles’s psychiatric reports. On February 23, 2000, the California Supreme Court denied this third petition on the merits and on various procedural grounds. On March 31, 2000, Jackson filed an amended petition for writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court. Agreeing with Justice Jefferson’s reports, the district court found that “the suppressed impeachment evidence was so extensive and damning that if the jurors had heard it, Mikles’s and McFarland’s credibility would have been irreparably harmed, and jurors would have given little or no credence to their testimony.” The district court agreed with the California Supreme Court that the prosecutor’s errors did not undermine the convictions; however, it found that the jailhouse informants’ testimony was central to the finding that Jackson acted with the intent to cause death and therefore required overturning both the jury’s special circumstances findings and the death sentence. The district court, like the referee, also concluded that Jackson had been denied ineffective assistance of counsel by Veganes’s failure to investigate Mikles and McFarland at the guilt phase and by his failure to present mitigating evidence at the penalty phase. Accordingly, the district court granted Jackson’s petition as to both the special circumstances findings and the death sentence, but not as to the underlying convictions. The parties timely appealed the district court’s judgment. The State does not contest the district court’s order vacating the sentence of death; however, it challenges the grant of relief as to the special circumstances findings. First, it argues that the district court’s legal findings of prosecutorial error relied on “new rules” of criminal procedure and hence were barred by Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). Second, it argues that even if these findings of prosecutorial error were not Teague-barred, the undisclosed offers and promises were 906 JACKSON v. BROWN immaterial and any prosecutorial error was harmless. Third, it argues that Jackson’s claim regarding the undisclosed psychiatric reports was procedurally defaulted, and that, either way, the failure to disclose did not constitute reversible error. Finally, the State contends that trial counsel’s failure to investigate Mikles and McFarland was not deficient and, in any event, was not prejudicial. Jackson cross-appeals the partial denial of relief as to his convictions. The district court heard numerous claims challenging the convictions but granted a certificate of appealability only as to whether (1) Jackson’s defense counsel’s repeated racially derogatory remarks during trial deprived him of a fair trial; (2) defense counsel impermissibly compelled him to stand trial in jail clothing despite his desire to wear civilian apparel; (3) the trial court erred in admitting irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence of Ott’s sexual assault and his defense attorney was ineffective in failing to object to this evidence; (4) the introduction of prerecorded testimony by Larry Rushing and Debria Lewis violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation; and (5) the cumulative effect of these errors rendered his trial fundamentally unfair.