Opinion ID: 1353458
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Much of Owens's Evidence is Irrelevant To This Appeal

Text: The district court reviewed Owens's claims only to the extent and form in which they were presented to the state courts. As the state points out, this was correct because considering new facts for the first time in federal court would render AEDPA meaningless because a state court could not apply federal law to facts it never saw. Owens includes evidence outside the state-court record in her appeal, but this evidence should, and will, be ignored. Furthermore, Owens's method of presenting her evidence complicates how we view the record. At her post-conviction hearing, she did not present evidence of mitigation, and then call an independent mental health professional to explain the evidence's meaning. Instead, she introduced most of her mitigating evidence though her mental health expert, traumatologist Eric Gentry, whose services were paid for by the state during the post-conviction proceedings. Therefore, much of Owens's evidence is part of the record only because Gentry summarized the information in his testimony. Yet when Owens presented her petition to the district court, her IAC claim included Subclaim 1(b), that counsel were ineffective for not obtaining an independent mental health expert. This claim was rejected and it has not been certified for appeal, so it should not be considered. Hill v. Mitchell, 400 F.3d 308, 335 (6th Cir.2005). This ruling impacts the way we view Owens's evidence that is only part of the record because Gentry recounted it second-hand. It is logically inconsistent to say that we may not consider trial counsel's ineffectiveness in not obtaining funds for a mental health expert, but we may look at the evidence such an expert could have presented, if only counsel have been effective enough to get the money to hire him. It is also logically inconsistent, when asking what trial counsel should have done, to rely on evidence from an interview with a mental health counselor given in preparation for the post-conviction hearing when Owens was interviewed three times by mental health professionals before her trial but refused to cooperate despite being advised to do so by her attorneys. Owens must affirmatively prove that she was prejudiced. So, when arguing that certain evidence should have been presented, Owens must show that it could have been presented without the aid of a state-funded mental health expert. She cannot do this by pointing to evidence that is only part of the record because it was introduced through a state-funded mental health expert. Furthermore, even if we consider the evidence presented through Gentry, the state court and the district court correctly determined that Gentry is not credible. His qualifications are dubious, his sources suspicious, and his testimony subject to contradiction. Gentry had a Masters in Counseling degree (the record is not clear from where), but he is not a medical doctor, and at the time he testified, he had no license in any discipline and had not published. His claimed certifications included Art Therapy, Biofeedback, and Eye Movement Desensitization. His experience consisted of one year at an adolescent shelter, one year as a sex abuse counselor, one year working with homeless children, one year as a counselor in a wilderness school, a year and a half at a community agency, and four years working for another psychiatrist as a therapist. He had no training in forensic psychology and he had never testified as an expert before. Gentry offered a psychosocial history of Owens's life. He concluded that because Owens grew up in a poor home where she suffered physical and emotional abuse and later suffered additional physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of Ronald Owens, she developed very poor problem-solving and conflict resolution skills and thus warranted leniency. Almost all of this report was hearsay, some of it double and triple hearsay from anonymous persons. Gentry produced no medical evidence and performed no clinical tests. He also relied extensively on reports from members of Owens's family (whom Owens refused to let her counsel contact) and on statements from Owens herself (who refused to testify at trial, and certainly has a motive to be less than truthful). One of his major sources was Owens's brother Wilson, yet Gentry admitted on cross-examination that he did not know that Wilson, who lived in an adult care facility, suffered from mental retardation. Owens's sister Carolyn Hensley testified that when she spoke with her brother Wilson about Gentry's interview, Wilson was very confused and had been manipulated by somebody. Given Gentry's extensive reliance on Wilson's testimony, Hensley's observation did not help Gentry's credibility. Nor did the fact that Gentry testified on direct examination that he had verified one incident of abuse with Owens's family members but later admitted on cross-examination that he had not. Even if one accepts his unverified allegations of trauma, to the extent that those allegations rest on hearsay from Owens or her family, they are irrelevant to Owens's IAC claim because Owens's counsel wanted to present the substance of such evidence directly at trial through the testimony of Owens and her family, but Owens refused to cooperate. Finally, any evidence that Gentry would have presented at trial easily could have been contradicted and would have opened the door to evidence unfavorable to Owens. Gentry claimed that Owens's husband had once raped Owens with a wine bottle and broken the neck off inside Owens's vagina, yet there is no other evidence that such an assault occurred. Gentry quoted Owens's brother Wilson as saying that life growing up was a living hell, but this testimony could be contradicted by presenting Hensley's testimony about Wilson's mental limitations and evidence that he had been manipulated. Gentry claimed that Owens told him that she hired the hitman in a single moment of depression; trial testimony indicated that she had solicited multiple hitmen over a period of weeks. Gentry claimed that Owens was sexually abused by her uncle and reported the incident to her mother but later admitted that Owens's mother said that no sexual abuse occurred. Owens's sister stated that while their father was too aggressive with discipline[], the severe abuses that she reported to Gentry never happened. Hensley further testified that she did not trust what Owens said because over a period of years Owens would just lie about stuff. Nothing in Gentry's testimony, even if we consider it, supports finding that Owens's counsel's performance was ineffective.