Opinion ID: 2790291
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Rape in Prison

Text: The most compelling mitigating evidence that J.B. failed to discover was also the easiest to obtain. There was reliable evidence, in documents that J.B.’s investigator specifically instructed him to request and in testimony from a prison guard and multiple prisoners,39 that Doe – then a 17-year-old 39 The state argues that the evidence from which defense counsel could have established that Doe was repeatedly raped in prison would not have been credible. This is not the case. The fact that Doe was repeatedly and violently assaulted by other prisoners is very well corroborated, through the combination of his prison records, his own statements as reported by two psychological experts, the declarations of some family members and friends, the declarations of a number of fellow prisoners, and the confirmatory declarations of two prison experts with knowledge of the prison. The evidence is detailed and consistent. At the hearing in the district court, counsel for the state was apparently so unconcerned with refuting the testimony of those prisoners that he accepted the submission of their declarations and waived the right to cross-examine them. P.P., a warden at the prison just before Doe’s term of incarceration, concluded based on his review Doe’s prison record that it was “extremely likely that petitioner [Doe] was repeatedly subjected to forced sexual contact by other inmates during his incarceration . . . .” Another expert, D.B.F., an associate professor of criminal justice, had served as an expert on jails and prisons in state and federal courts in Doe’s DOE V. AYERS 53 boy who had never been involved with the criminal justice system before his conviction for stealing two purses – was brutally and repeatedly raped while he was incarcerated. Doe himself, when asked directly about his experience by trained mental health professionals equipped with his records and charged with the task of discovering information relevant to the penalty phase, disclosed his abuse in vividly painful detail. However, evidence concerning Doe’s chilling, brutal experience in prison was completely absent from the penalty phase of the trial. Had J.B. conducted an adequate investigation, he would have discovered this information and could have presented it, along with psychological expert testimony explaining its impact, to the jury. Dr. J.C. reported, based on her review of Doe’s prison record and the interviews she conducted with Doe and others, that he experienced “a series of violent physical and sexual home state. D.B.F. described the notorious prison in which Doe was incarcerated: The strong ruled, and the weak either served or perished. Sexual abuse and homosexual slavery were widespread, with inmates auctioned, sold and traded like cattle by other inmates. . . . Many young inmates – black and white – who came to [the prison] in the 1970s to serve short terms for less serious felonies ended up with much longer sentences, including natural life terms, for trying to escape or fighting back, sometimes to the death, against rape and exploitation. The rampant sexual violence in this prison was also acknowledged by another former warden in his memoir. (Citation omitted.) Even if jurors were inclined to doubt the truthfulness of prisoners’ testimony, they would presumably credit that of a warden and a professor. 54 DOE V. AYERS assaults directed at him by other prisoners.”40 He was only 17 years old when his incarceration – and brutalization – began.41 She noted that his records from the penitentiary hospital include entries showing that he suffered lacerations, bruises, and fractures consistent with these assaults. E.P. found, during his review of Doe’s prison records, “a report by a guard stating that he saw [Doe] lying on the seat of a garbage truck face down with his jump suit pulled down below his knees and inmate [R.S.] lying on [Doe] with his penis in [Doe]’s rectum.”42 40 It is unclear how many times Doe was raped. E.P. noted that Doe told him he had been raped three times, but that other sources reported many more. “It is common for male victims of prison rape to under-report the number of times they have been raped,” he explained, “because of the shame and trauma associated with prison rape.” E.P. believed that Doe had been raped more than three times. Additionally, Dr. J.C. received a report from a close friend of Doe’s that he was raped in the jail where he was held prior to being transferred to prison. Doe also revealed that he suffered violence at the hands of guards, including gassing and starvation, which he described as a “nightmare.” His aunt also reported hearing from a cousin of Doe’s, N.M., that guards had beaten and kicked Doe until his clothes came off and he urinated and defecated on himself. However, because these incidents are not corroborated elsewhere in the record, we have not weighed them in mitigation. 41 Youth is one of the primary risk factors for sexual victimization in prison. Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-79, § 2, 117 Stat. 972, 972; see also National Prison Rape Elimination Commission Report 7 (June 2009) (“Youth, small stature, and lack of experience in correctional facilities appear to increase the risk of sexual abuse by other prisoners.”). 42 At least one guard observed Doe’s sexual abuse firsthand. G.M. spoke positively of Doe: “[Doe] was an inmate who listened. . . . I saw [Doe] DOE V. AYERS 55 These assaults were not only physically painful but terrifying.43 share his food with other inmates. I liked him and I never had any trouble with him. He was just a young kid when he was [in prison].” He reported: During the 17 years I worked at [the prison] full-time, I wrote up inmates for infractions of the rules a total of twelve times. One of those twelve times . . . I was tipped off by a third inmate . . . that something was going on in a garbage truck. When I went to investigate, I found [an inmate, R.S.] having anal sex with [Doe] who was bent over the front seat of the truck. . . . [R.S.] was a much bigger man than [Doe]. The fact that guards did not observe – or at least did not report – the other occasions when Doe was raped is hardly surprising, given that the dorms in this prison were not staffed at night. One prisoner, D.S., explained that “the dorms were wild and out of control at night. Young inmates were regularly raped, inmates were routinely killed. No one was safe. . . . The guards just didn’t care what went on out of their sight.” Another prisoner, A.S., said that “the mentality of the guards was to let it all happen and ignore the inmates getting hurt as a means of keeping control.” In the same year this case began, another circuit denounced “the inability or unwillingness of some prison administrators to take the necessary steps to protect their prisoners from sexual and physical assaults by other inmates” as “a national disgrace.” Martin v. White, 742 F.2d 469, 470 (8th Cir. 1984). 43 See Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 611–12 (1977) (Burger, C.J., dissenting) (“[Rape] not only violates a victim’s privacy and personal integrity, but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as physical harm in the process. The long range effect upon the victim’s life and health is likely to be irreparable; it is impossible to measure the harm which results. Volumes have been written by victims, physicians, and psychiatric specialists on the lasting injury suffered by rape victims. Rape is not a mere physical attack it is destructive of the human personality. The remainder of the victim’s life may be gravely affected . . . . [S]hort of 56 DOE V. AYERS [Doe] was told by another inmate . . . that [P.], one of the stronger and most powerful inmates in his Camp, had stated [Doe] was going to be his “punk” and if [Doe] didn’t submit, [P.] was going to take his life. Another inmate [J.E.] physically assaulted [Doe] and told him he would be his “gal boy” or he would die. Doe reported that he “remembers lying on the floor after one of these physical assaults wondering[,] ‘[H]ow am I gonna survive? Can I make it out of here alive?’” Doe told Dr. J.C. that One particular sexual assault was immensely painful for [him]. In this incident, [Doe] was beaten and anally raped by [J.J.], a man with whom he had become close friends during the time he had already spent [in prison]. . . . Thus, when [J.J.] turned and sexually assaulted [Doe] in the shower, leaving him lying on the bathroom floor, [Doe]’s pervasive sense of powerlessness, shame, and rage was further complicated by his experience of betrayal by a man he had grown homicide, [rape] is the ultimate violation of self. . . . Victims may recover from the physical damage of knife or bullet wounds, or a beating with fists or a club, but recovery from such a gross assault on the human personality is not healed by medicine or surgery.” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). DOE V. AYERS 57 to trust.44 As [Doe] describes it, “I wasn’t the same after that; I wonder why I didn’t kill myself then.”45 44 It also appears that other rapes were arranged by people who knew Doe, including his own stepfather, B.G., who had served time in the same prison, and a man from Doe’s neighborhood, R.R., the uncle of a friend, who was incarcerated at the same time. Dr. J.C. stated: [Doe]’s traumatic experiences [in prison] may have been even more painful to him due to the knowledge that at least some of the assaults may have been arranged by his mother’s husband. Family members report that [B.G.], [Doe]’s mother’s husband at the time [Doe] entered [prison], had it in for [Doe] and set it up so that [Doe] would be raped. Doe’s aunt heard from her nephew, N.M., that this was true. Two prisoners independently stated as much. One said: [R.R.] saw to it that [Doe] was taken to the gym and set up. At the gym, [Doe] was forced to go into a room with various guys who forced him to have sex with them. . . . After that [Doe] tried to keep on running. The problem was that [R.R.] had too many friends in the main prison. Even though [Doe] kept moving from camp to camp, he was never safe. 45 In fact, Doe did hurt himself. Dr. J.C. discovered, upon review of Doe’s prison records, that they “document [Doe]’s attempts to harm himself by mutilating his right forearm and wrists.” She noted that in her expert opinion, “[t]his suicidal gesture is not surprising given that [Doe]’s long-standing depression had been complicated by feelings of betrayal, shame, and rage, along with ongoing anxiety regarding continued future assaults.” 58 DOE V. AYERS On another occasion, Doe told E.P., he was “raped in a full dormitory, in front of all the other inmates there at the time.”46 A different time, Doe was walking on the grounds when he was grabbed and pulled to the ground with a knife to the throat [and raped]. [Doe] says about this experience, “I had come too far to die up in this place here,” which of course was his primary concern. . . . When he was released [Doe] was “just glad to get out of there walking.” Powerful prisoners apparently controlled Doe no matter where he moved in prison. E.B., a prisoner who knew Doe, said: The older inmates got [Doe] when he first came to [prison]. . . . An older inmate put a claim on [Doe]as his own. [Doe] was moved to . . . a camp here, . . . for protection. . . . [Doe] could have tried to get away from [B.] and from being forced to have sex with other inmates by moving from one camp to another, but [Doe] never would have been able to really get away. Once [Doe] was owned by 46 Doe told E.P. that he had “blocked . . . out” the memory of this particular rape until he was released. E.P. explained that this “dissociative event,” a “symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” “indicates the relative severity of this particular rape, which was much more public and therefore more shameful than the prior rape. The public nature of it would also represent greater danger since that kind of branding in the prison culture can lead to many more rape attempts.” DOE V. AYERS 59 [B.], it would have been impossible for [Doe] to be safe anywhere inside [the prison]. A.R., who knew Doe when he was growing up and when he was incarcerated, explained based on his knowledge of the prison: Once an inmate is forced to become some guy’s lover, that’s it. And that inmate wouldn’t just be forced to have sex with the one inmate, he would be forced into prostitution for the benefit of the inmate who owned him – often for just a carton of cigarettes. . . . The inmate who owned him would send word to the new cell or dorm that [Doe] belonged to him. Someone in the new setting would be charged with taking care of [Doe] for the first inmate, and it would all start again. [Doe] would have had no way to escape the life he was forced into. He would have been utterly trapped.47 Dr. J.C. observed that Doe, in his efforts to escape harm, changed his custody or work assignment 73 times in less than five years. Many of his requests to be transferred to administrative lockdown were made in the early hours of the morning; as other prisoners corroborated, assaults often occurred at night. (Again, this striking evidence, like the evidence of Doe’s self-harming, was available in the prison 47 Cf. LaMarca v. Turner, 662 F. Supp. 647, 686 (S.D. Fla. 1987) (“[O]nce an inmate is raped, he is marked as a victim for repeated sexual assaults for the remainder of his imprisonment.”), aff’d in part and vacated in part on other grounds, 995 F.2d 1526 (11th Cir. 1993). 60 DOE V. AYERS record J.B. neglected to request.) During their interview, Doe told E.P. that he arranged to be “sent to solitary confinement by getting himself written up for failing to obey a directive or by deliberately being disrespectful to guards.”48 As Dr. J.C. put it, “After the assault by [J.J.] and by the other strong prisoners, [Doe] had earned the label of ‘galboy’ and from that point on, lived a ‘cat and mouse game,’ repeatedly requesting transfers, protective custody, and administrative lockdown.” E.P. opined that the fact that Doe “elected to experience the psychological trauma of solitary confinement to reduce the risk of continued sexual assaults underscores how terrifying and repulsive he found the idea of being sexually approached and violated by fellow inmates.” D.B.F., the professor of criminal justice, concluded that Doe’s “constant[] moving reflect[s] that he must have been in a constant state of fear. . . . I expect [Doe] was one of those who left [the prison] very messed up.” Not only did Doe suffer the trauma of sexual victimization and subordination; upon his release, he had to face friends and family members who knew of his 48 Another prisoner, P.M., suggested that Doe had deliberately injured himself in order to effectuate a transfer. D.B.F. noted that assignment to isolation would have rendered Doe “ineligible for work, recreation, free time on the yard, membership in inmate organizations, or other aspects of normal social interaction.” However, P.R., an inmate counselor who reviewed Doe’s files, doubted whether even isolation would have ensured his safety, given that sexual assaults often occurred in that unit as well. He suggested that “[i]n order to have any measure of safety during the particular years [Doe] was here, he would have had to become partners with another inmate for protection.” DOE V. AYERS 61 humiliation.49 He had trouble upon his return home as a result. As one fellow prisoner, A.S., whose sister had told him that Doe had “a lot of trouble on the street because guys had heard what happened to him,” put it: “The stigma of all that followed [Doe] back home . . . .” In a letter to a girlfriend, I.R. – one who told D.S. in a taped interview that Doe had been “fresh meat” from whom other prisoners “got some” – Doe wrote: “You told me once I was a whore in there. And that really hurt me . . . . And when you told me that, I just felt like you didn’t have any more respect for me as being a man.” This evidence is powerful. As another prisoner, A.R., stated in his declaration, “Prison rape is the most devastating thing you can experience.”50 Undoubtedly, this evidence 49 The (widely corroborated) fact that many of Doe’s friends and relatives knew about the rape makes even more obvious how utterly inadequate J.B.’s mitigation investigation was. According to A.S., a neighbor, Doe’s own mother knew. She might well have revealed this information to J.B. or D.S., if they had only asked. 50 For decades, the federal courts have recognized how powerfully damaging the experience of “confinement in a prison where violence and terror reign” would be to a prisoner, in clearly recognizing “a right, secured by the eighth and fourteenth amendments, to be reasonably protected from constant threat of violence and sexual assault by [] fellow inmates . . . .” Woodhous v. Virginia, 487 F.2d 889, 890 (4th Cir. 1973); see also Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994) (“Being violently assaulted in prison is simply not ‘part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society.’” (quoting Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981))); id. at 853 & n. (Blackmun, J., concurring) (“The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who . . . are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable. Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem, accompany the 62 DOE V. AYERS would have moved at least some of the jurors who decided Doe’s punishment.51 The Constitution requires that the sentencing jury’s decision “reflect a reasoned moral response perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure.”); cf. United States v. Rodriguez, 213 F. Supp. 2d 1298, supplemented, 214 F. Supp. 2d 1239 (M.D. Ala. 2002) (concluding that a defendant’s rape in prison warranted a downward departure in the sentence). 51 The district court inappropriately dismissed the impact of Doe’s rape in prison, finding that “[w]hile prison abuse is inexcusable, the reserve of empathy for prisoners is shallow.” Profoundly traumatic experiences in prison have served as highly effective mitigation in other capital cases. See, e.g., Douglas, 316 F.3d at 1089–90 (concluding that trial counsel’s penalty-phase performance was prejudicially ineffective in part because he failed to introduce evidence that the defendant “was arrested and put in a Florida jail where he was beaten and gang-raped by other inmates” in his late teens, despite the fact that the defendant was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering two teenage girls). While not everyone is sympathetic to the plight of prisoners who are sexually assaulted, most are – and this sympathy is not new. A 1994 poll found that 78% of respondents did not accept rape as “part of the price criminals pay for wrongdoing”; 59% thought being raped “constituted a violation of an inmate’s constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment” even before the Supreme Court decided the question in Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994). Charles M. Sennott, Poll Finds Wide Concern About Prison Rape; Most Favor Condoms for Inmates, Boston Globe, May 17, 1994. Nor is the horror of prison rape recognized only by a political subset of the American population. The Prison Rape Elimination Act was a model of bipartisan cooperation, and it passed both houses unanimously. See Pat Nolan & Marguerite Telford, Indifferent No More: People of Faith Mobilize to End Prison Rape, 32 J. Legis. 129, 139 (2006) (noting that the coalition to pass the Prison Rape Elimination Act was an “unlikely amalgam of groups” and observing that it “recruited legislators from across the political spectrum”). While some jurors might dismiss all acts of violence against those serving criminal sentences out of hand, many would feel sympathy for or even perhaps identify with Doe’s experience of sexual brutalization. DOE V. AYERS 63 to the defendant’s background, character, and crime.” California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 545 (1987) (O’Connor, J., concurring) (emphasis in original). We are convinced that if the jury had heard about what had happened to Doe in “that man-made hell,” this evidence alone would have stirred sufficient compassion or understanding in the jury to result in a life sentence.