Opinion ID: 2352739
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: EED Defense

Text: Appellant also argues that his lawyer was deficient in failing to investigate and to present fully an EED defense. Appellant points out that he has a family history of mental illness, suicide attempts, and abuse as a child. He makes no attempt, however, to prove any connection between these facts and his mental state at the time of the murder. Instead, Appellant cites two federal cases in which counsel was found ineffective for failing to present an EED defense: Bloom v. Calderon, [52] and DeLuca v. Lord. [53] In Bloom , the appellant had been charged with killing his parents. The appellate court found the lawyer ineffective based on his failure to introduce evidence of extensive child abuse to support an EED defense. [54] In DeLuca , counsel was found ineffective for failing to introduce evidence of rape trauma where his theory of the case was that the appellant had killed the deceased because he had previously raped her. [55] The facts here do not rise to the level where failure to present evidence of emotional disturbance could support a finding of ineffective counsel. First, as the trial court pointed out, Appellant's claims in this regard were speculative in that the facts he alleged were in the vein of he was likely ... sensitive and probably reacted to the victim's alleged sexual advances. Second, it is clear that Appellant's lawyer did present some evidence sufficient to warrant an EED instruction because the trial court did, in fact, give such an instruction to the jury. This was not ineffective assistance of counsel, and an evidentiary hearing was not warranted. We also note that, in this portion of his brief, Appellant again raises the question of whether his lawyer should have consulted expert witnesses. Whether that failure constitutes ineffective assistance is addressed above.