Opinion ID: 2025015
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Additional mitigation evidence, collected in the first post-conviction proceeding, was cumulative of the large amount of mitigation evidence presented at trial following reasonable investigation by counsel.

Text: Williams has submitted a report by social worker Jill Miller, which describes the environment in which Williams was raised, and a report by registered nurse, Jean Thompson, which describes brain injuries at birth that Williams may have suffered. Petition, Exhibits 10 and 11. Williams cites a recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Wiggins v. Smith, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003), for the proposition that reasonable investigation of mitigating circumstances is required in capital cases. Neither report contains previously undiscovered evidence. Both were tendered as exhibits in the first post-conviction proceeding. In the post-conviction appeal, we affirmed the post-conviction court's refusal to admit these exhibits because of the large amount of evidence already available on Williams' difficult childhood. Williams v. State, 706 N.E.2d at 163-164. This large amount of evidence ... on Williams' difficult childhood was presented by counsel as evidence of mitigating circumstances at trial. Indeed, it was the weight he attributed to this large amount of evidence that formed the basis of Justice DeBruler's dissent. Rouster, 600 N.E.2d at 1352-53 (DeBruler, J., dissenting). (The federal court denied a related claim in the habeas proceeding. Williams v. Anderson, 174 F.Supp.2d at 872-73). We see no evidence that counsel's investigation was not reasonable within the meaning of Wiggins. To the extent this claim involves anything that could be characterized as previously undiscovered evidence, given the weight of all the other evidence in this case and the level of judicial scrutiny applied by the state and federal courts that have repeatedly reviewed this case, Williams has not presented anything that undermines confidence in the conviction or the death sentence. See Ind.Code § 35-50-2-9(k) (2003). To the extent this claim involves the consideration of anything outside the realm of previously undiscovered evidence, Williams has not established a reasonable possibility that he is entitled to post-conviction relief. See P-C. R. 1 § 12(b).