Opinion ID: 1795830
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Our Independent Review

Text: As we stated above, our job is to review independently the circuit court's legal conclusion  that is, whether Sochor has carried his burden of demonstrating a reasonable probability that the result of the penalty phase would have been different had counsel not been deficient. But in doing so, we must defer to the circuit court's factual findings if those findings are supported by competent, substantial evidence. As we stated in Porter v. State, 788 So.2d 917 (Fla.2001): The reason we have required postconviction evidentiary hearings on capital postconviction motions claiming ineffective assistance of counsel is to provide a defendant an opportunity to present factual and expert evidence which was not presented at the trial of the case and to have the trial court evaluate and weigh that additional evidence. Following such an evidentiary hearing, we have held that the performance and prejudice prongs are mixed questions of law and fact subject to a de novo review standard but that the trial court's factual findings are to be given deference. So long as [the trial court's] decisions are supported by competent, substantial evidence, this Court will not substitute its judgment for that of the trial court on questions of fact and, likewise, on the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given to the evidence by the trial court. We recognize and honor the trial court's superior vantage point in assessing the credibility of witnesses and in making findings of fact. Id. at 923 (citations omitted, emphasis added). As our review of both the penalty phase and the evidentiary hearing testimony reveals, the circuit court's finding that Sochor presented no significant, noncumulative lay testimony at the evidentiary hearing is supported by competent, substantial evidence. The main lay-witness testimony at the evidentiary hearing concerned Sochor's abusive childhood and drug abuse. Testimony about Sochor's abusive childhood was presented at the penalty phase, and the guilt-phase experts told the jury about his history of drug abuse. The closer question in this case is whether significant additional mental-health-related mitigation evidence was available that could have been presented at trial if counsel had not been deficient in his investigation and preparation. The answer to this question depends on whose evidentiary hearing testimony should be believed. Drs. Greer and Froming said such evidence was available. Dr. Ceros-Livingston said it was not. The postconviction trial judge heard all the evidence and was in a much better position than we are to assess[] the credibility of [the] witnesses and ... mak[e] findings of fact. Id. at 923. After reviewing the record and affording due deference to the trial court's superior vantage point from which to make credibility assessments, we believe that the trial court's decision to give Dr. Ceros-Livingston's testimony greater weight than the testimony of Sochor's new experts was supported by competent, substantial evidence. [18] Dr. Ceros-Livingston evaluated Sochor much closer to the time of the murder than Sochor's new experts did. At the time of her trial testimony, Dr. Ceros-Livingston was aware of Sochor's history of alcohol and drug abuse. She was also told by Sochor that the army had recommended that he get psychiatric care and that he once attempted to commit suicide. After administering the MMPI, she concluded that Sochor possibly was malingering. This was confirmed by Dr. Castillo, who believed that Sochor was suffering from a type of selective amnesia. While Dr. Froming criticized Dr. Ceros-Livingston's MMPI analysis, she did admit that the raw data could have supported the fake-bad profile. Furthermore, the evidentiary hearing experts' diagnoses of manic depressive disorder were contradicted by Dr. Ceros-Livingston's evidentiary hearing testimony and by the trial testimony of Drs. Zager and Castillo. Dr. Ceros-Livingston testified that even after reviewing the background records that were made available to the new experts, her original diagnosis did not change; she did not see anything in the records that suggested to her that Sochor suffered from manic depression. She noted that the new experts' reliance on the prison records was misplaced because those records did not actually indicate that Sochor had been suffering from any of the symptoms of manic depression; they indicated only that he had been prescribed Lithium. Furthermore, while both Drs. Greer and Froming testified that Sochor exhibited tangentiality, flight of ideas, rapid speech, grandiosity, and a manic mood  all symptoms of manic depression  such behavior was not observed by the trial experts who examined Sochor much closer to the date of the crime. Dr. Zager testified that in his interview with Sochor, he observed not only what Sochor was saying, but also how he said it and his stream of thought. At the time Dr. Zager made these observations, he was aware that Sochor had been prescribed Lithium and Sinequan, but he did not diagnose Sochor with manic depression. Rather, he believed that Sochor suffered from a longstanding problem of drug and alcohol abuse and a conduct disorder, socialized, aggressive type. Similarly, Dr. Castillo was aware that Sochor had been prescribed Lithium, but he affirmatively ruled out a diagnosis of manic depression. We are faced with a situation like the one we were faced with in Porter. [19] As we noted there: At the conclusion of the postconviction evidentiary hearing in this case, the trial court had before it two conflicting expert opinions over the existence of mitigation. Based upon our case law, it was then for the trial court to resolve the conflict by the weight the trial court afforded one expert's opinion as compared to the other. The trial court did this and resolved the conflict by determining that the greatest weight was to be afforded the State's expert. We accept this finding by the trial court because it was based upon competent, substantial evidence. 788 So.2d at 923. Another similar case was Cherry v. State, 781 So.2d 1040 (Fla.2000), where we deferred to the circuit court's factual findings and affirmed its denial of relief, even though Cherry's evidentiary hearing expert testified that Cherry suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, organic brain damage, and mental retardation. Id. at 1044. We wrote the following: Unlike Rose [v. State, 675 So.2d 567 (Fla.1996)], however, the testimony concerning the statutory mitigating evidence and some of the nonstatutory mitigating evidence was controverted either by the State during cross-examination or by Dr. Barnard [whose report was introduced into evidence at the penalty phase of Cherry's trial and who subsequently testified for the State at the evidentiary hearing]. The trial court rejected Dr. Crown's conclusions as to organic brain damage, fetal alcohol syndrome, and mental retardation to the extent they were based on mere speculation from the fact that Cherry's mother drank while pregnant and Cherry had been exposed to toxins as a child. Dr. Crown admitted that he had not performed any physical tests on Cherry to confirm these conclusions. The trial court also found that Dr. Crown's findings as to Cherry's borderline retardation and antisocial personality were contradicted by Dr. Barnard's reassessment of Cherry. Most significantly, Dr. Barnard, after considering the same background materials supplied to Dr. Crown, did not find any indication of organic brain damage and maintained the information did not support any statutory mitigating factors. The applicability of mitigating circumstances and the credibility of expert testimony are matters within the sound discretion of the trial court. Cherry, 781 So.2d at 1051 (emphasis added). [20] As in Porter and Cherry, we find that the circuit court's decision to credit the testimony of the State's mental health expert over the testimony of Sochor's new experts is supported by competent, substantial evidence. We also conclude that the circuit court's finding that the evidentiary hearing lay testimony was either cumulative or insignificant is also based on competent, substantial evidence. Based on our deference to the circuit court's factual findings and our independent review of the circuit court's legal conclusion with respect to those factual findings, we hold that Sochor has not established that he was prejudiced by counsel's deficient performance. [21] Sochor has not demonstrated that but for counsel's deficient performance the result of the penalty phase would have been different. Accordingly, we affirm the circuit court's denial of relief on this claim. [22]