Opinion ID: 2975252
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Procedural Default Mistake

Text: There is no question in this case that counsel for Cone filed before trial an extensive threepage “Motion for Production of Exculpatory Evidence” that covered the waterfront of exculpatory material, as well as a “Motion for Disclosure of Impeaching Information.” (App., Add. 1, doc. 1, pp. 54-56, 98-99.) The State does not claim that Cone did not request before trial the type of exculpatory evidence withheld from Cone. Our Court’s earlier mistaken ruling that the doctrine of procedural default barred the Brady claim was based on false statements of the record by the Tennessee Attorney General’s office in its brief in this Court and by incorrect statements from the record by two Tennessee courts. In its brief before this Court, the State argues that the Brady claim “is clearly procedurally defaulted” because “Cone’s Brady claims were simply never raised in the state court.” (Final brief, pp. 12-13.) This “simply never raised” statement can itself only be characterized as a deliberate falsehood. On October 5, 1993, soon after counsel for Cone learned of the existence of the exculpatory statements, counsel filed an amendment to his second petition for post-conviction relief in the criminal court of Tennessee at Memphis in which Cone was originally sentenced to death. The amendment’s paragraph 41 stated the Brady claim as follows: Additional Claims for Review 41. Petitioner was denied his rights under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, Sections 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16 and 17 of the Tennessee Constitution, because the State withheld exculpatory evidence which demonstrated that petitioner that petitioner [sic] did in fact suffer drug problems and/or drug withdrawal or psychosis both at the time of the offense and in the past, such evidence including, but not limited to, statements of Charles and Debbie Slaughter, statements of Sue Cone, statements of Lucille Tuech, statements of Herschel Dalton, and patrolman Collins, and other persons unknown at this time, such statements contained in official police reports, and/or contained in other documents unknown and/or through personal recollections of officers or others. Such evidence was highly exculpatory and exculpatory to both the jury’s determination of petitioner’s guilt and its consideration of the proper sentence. There is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence not been withheld, No. 99-5279 Cone v. Bell Page 16 the jurors would not have convicted petitioner and would not have sentenced him to death. (App. 2006) (emphasis added). Two months later on December 16, 1993, the Criminal Court in Memphis, “William H. Williams, Senior Judge,” dismissed this paragraph 41 Brady claim stating only: The petitioner, by way of his Third Amendment [to the second post-conviction petition] , continues with grounds 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 and 52, all of which grounds are clearly re-statements of previous grounds heretofore determined and denied by the Tennessee Supreme court and upon Direct Appeal or the Court of Criminal Appeals upon the First Petitioner. (App. Add. 4, p. 233) (emphasis added). Judge Williams did not cite or attempt to point out when or how or what court had “previously determined” the claim. In fact, the Brady claim is never mentioned by the Tennessee courts in any previous opinion or order, including the Tennessee Supreme Court opinion on direct appeal quoted above, the trial court order on the first postconviction petition, Cone v. State, No. P-3653 (Tenn. Crim. Ct. at Memphis, Sept. 19, 1986) (App. 1954) (mentioning only claims of prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel), or the Tennessee Court of Appeals opinion affirming the denial of the first post-conviction petition on the same grounds, Cone v. State, 747 S.W.2d 353 (Tenn. Ct. Crim. App. 1987). Had Judge Williams read paragraph 41 closely, or made inquiry, or conducted a hearing, or asked for briefs, it would have been obvious that the material had only recently been discovered and the new claim could not possibly have been “previously determined.” The State prosecutors at the trial and appellate levels had been concealing the mitigating evidence for 10 years since the trial. If the inattentive and unfocused treatment of a capital defendant’s Brady-mitigation claim in the Memphis trial court shows a broken judicial system unable to cope with its responsibilities in capital litigation, the treatment of the claim on review in the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals was worse. At least Judge Williams did not excoriate pro bono defense lawyers for diligently pursuing their duty to represent Cone. In Cone’s appellate brief in the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, filed August 22, 1994, counsel pointed out that the trial court was clearly in error. Counsel pointed out that the trial court did not address or examine “each individual issue” and that a reading of the decisions “clearly shows that the issues were neither presented on direct appeal nor addressed in the initial post-conviction petition.” (App. Add. 4, p. 16.) But, in a brief opinion, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, like the trial court, did not specifically address the Brady-mitigation issues. The opinion begins: Appellant contends that the trial court’s dismissal of his second petition was premature, because . . . the trial court declined to hold an evidentiary hearing . . . . Our conclusion as to the timeliness of the trial court’s dismissal is therefore dependent on our resolution of the substantive issues of waiver and previous determination. .... Had Judge Williams not provided this court with such an exemplary and meticulous treatment of the appellant’s petition, our task in reviewing the relevant issues would have been difficult if not insurmountable. .... No. 99-5279 Cone v. Bell Page 17 The trial court found that most of the appellant’s stated grounds for relief, in addition to being repetitious and cumulative, were previously determined either on direct appeal or in the appellant’s first petition. Cone v. State, 927 S.W.2d 579, 580-81 (1995). After denying all of the claims without specifically addressing them, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals then criticized Cone’s lawyers: [T]he appellant should not be able to extend the post-conviction process and delay the administration of justice ad infinitum by filing subsequent petitions which disingenuously claim that the grounds asserted were unknown to the appellant when his previous petition was filed. Id. at 582. The Court then says that counsel’s “perpetual disrespect for the finality of convictions disparages the entire criminal justice system” and further complains about counsel’s conduct: “The courts, the executive branch of the government, the legal profession, and the public have been seriously inconvenienced by the prosecutions of baseless habeas corpus and post-conviction proceedings.” Id. Counsel for Cone filed a petition for review in the Tennessee Supreme Court of this decision setting out the Brady claim in detail. The Tennessee Supreme Court denied review. This treatment of Cone’s claim illustrates a completely broken system of review in capital cases in Tennessee. The judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals who wrote the opinion stating that the Brady issue was “previously determined,” then became the Attorney General of the State by the time the issue came to federal court. When the issue was later presented to the federal courts, including this Court, the Attorney General maintained his previous judicial position that the Brady claim was “previously determined” but shifted the main focus to: “Cone’s Brady claims were simply never raised in the state court.” (Final Brief, p. 12.) In the federal court, the Attorney General attempts to conceal the very fact that the claim of Brady concealment was even presented in the Memphis trial court by stating that the “claims were simply never raised in the state court.” Of course, the two procedural default defenses to the Brady claim — “never raised” and “previously determined” — cannot both be true. The fact is that neither is true. They were clearly raised but never decided. The Attorney General is deliberately falsifying the procedural record in the case. It is difficult to tell exactly what the District Court below held with respect to the Brady claims. The District Court mixes the Brady-mitigation claims up in a discursive discussion of ineffective assistance of counsel claims, moving from a discussion of these Brady claims on page 17 of the opinion below (App. p. 1549) to a discussion of ineffective assistance of counsel and then back to the claims at page 27. (App. 1559.) All we can really tell about the District Court’s disposition of the Brady-mitigation claims is that the court said they are procedurally defaulted. It is unclear why they are procedurally defaulted. The District Court seems to agree at page 1559 with the Attorney General’s false argument that the claims have “never been presented to the state courts” and “are now barred by the state post-conviction statute of limitations.” In a footnote at this point, the District Court relies upon Tennessee’s three-year statute of limitations for filing post-conviction petitions. T.C.A. § 40-30-102. The Court begins the limitation period on July 1, 1986, long before Cone discovered the mitigation evidence that the prosecutor at the trial and appellate levels had concealed. Despite the inconsistency between the State’s witnesses (Roby, Flynn and the two experts) and the newly-discovered documents, the District Court wound up its discussion by saying: The evidence of Cone’s guilt was overwhelming, and the material evidence that he was acting under the influence of amphetamine psychosis was, and continues to be, virtually nonexistent. No. 99-5279 Cone v. Bell Page 18 (App. 1563-64.) In our Court’s earlier opinion invoking procedural default, we accepted the mistake of Judge Williams in the Memphis trial court and the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals by repeating three times that the “independent and adequate state ground in this instance is the State court’s finding that Cone’s claims were previously determined.” 243 F.3d 969. We accepted the Attorney General’s alternative argument and based our holding of procedural default on the Tennessee courts’ mistaken position that the claims were “previously determined.” This is simply false. The law of the case doctrine relied on by the majority does not wed us forever to a clear misreading of the record, especially a misreading brought about by the State’s falsification of the record in the case. Courts should correct their mistakes where important matters are concerned, and a man’s life is an important matter. The previous decisions of the Supreme Court and this Court tell us what is obviously true: “Death is different.” Mistakes cannot be corrected after a man is executed. They must be corrected now. I would set aside the previous “procedural default” ruling on Cone’s claim and remand the case to the District Court for a full hearing on the merits regarding his mitigating evidence that the State has now attempted to conceal for 25 years. After relying on procedural default throughout its first opinion in this case, and now relying on procedural default again in its present opinion, the majority throws up its hands and says, “Well, anyway, all the withheld documents are not really Brady material.” It does so without any analysis of the record, or the Brady and mitigation lines of cases, and states no basis for its conclusory statement. The majority’s conclusory “well anyway” attitude is just as conclusory and misleading as the prosecutor’s false, death knell statement to the jury that the defense statement was “baloney” that Cone was not a heavy drug user as a result of his wartime experience. The undisclosed, withheld documents directly contradict both the prosecutor’s “baloney” statement and the majority’s “not Brady material” conclusion. And beyond these errors, the majority seems totally unconcerned that the Tennessee Attorney General’s office has completely falsified the procedural record in the case by asserting that the Brady-mitigation claims were both “never raised” and “previously determined.”