Opinion ID: 852183
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Raising a Crawford Claim

Text: Fifth, Baer argues that Maynard was ineffective because he failed to challenge an alleged violation of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2003). (Appellant's Br. at 38-39.) Under Crawford, testimonial hearsay is not admissible unless the declarant is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine him. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. In this case, Court-appointed physicians Dr. Lawlor and Dr. Davis both testified that Baer was mentally ill. (Trial Tr. at 1908-09, 1929, 1992-93.) The State questioned both doctors using a report Dr. Masbaum had prepared after examining Baer in December 2004 for an unrelated case. (Trial Tr. at 1905-08, 1977-82.) Trial counsel objected both times, first on the grounds that it was outside the scope of defense counsel's own examination, and then on grounds the prosecutor was making a spectacle using a report counsel could not cross-examine. (Trial Tr. at 1905-07, 1980.) Dr. Lawlor had diagnosed Baer with a personality disorder but testified that he thought Baer could appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions at the time of the crimes. (Trial Tr. at 1864, 1871.) He recounted receiving reports about Baer having auditory hallucinations and ADHD as a child. (Trial Tr. at 1869-71.) Dr. Lawlor also gave a detailed account of the crimes as Baer described them to him, although he did not think that the voices Baer claimed to have heard during the murders constituted auditory hallucinations. (Trial Tr. at 1874-86.) In response to defense counsel's questioning, Dr. Lawlor stated that he did not think Baer was malingering, or faking, a mental illness. (Trial Tr. at 1893.) When the State asked Dr. Lawlor about Baer's voices, Dr. Lawlor maintained that Baer's description did not indicate a split personality and that Baer did not mention anything about a voice called Super Beast. (Trial Tr. at 1904-05.) Defense counsel quickly objected on grounds of relevance when the prosecutor asked Dr. Lawlor to review a report from Dr. Masbaum, but the trial court overruled the objection to the extent that the report was relevant to the issue of malingering. (Trial Tr. at 1905-07.) According to Dr. Masbaum's report, Baer once tried to present himself to Masbaum as having a split personality, telling Dr. Masbaum that he was talking to Fred on one day but talking to Michael on another. (Trial Tr. at 1907.) Dr. Lawlor conceded that Baer could have been malingering, to Dr. Masbaum if not to him, and that this information was inconsistent with his diagnosis because typically, the discrete personalities aren't aware of each other's existence. (Trial Tr. at 1908.) Dr. Davis then testified that he considered Baer mentally ill to the level of having a mental disease or defect. (Trial Tr. at 1929.) According to Dr. Davis, Baer admitted committing the murders and described having auditory hallucinations, hearing voices, and having a raging, out-of-control part of himself that came out on the day of the murders. (Trial Tr. at 1922.) Baer had called this raging part of himself Super Beast. (Trial Tr. at 1923.) Dr. Davis also reviewed Baer's childhood experiences with depression, custody issues, hospitalization for suicide attempts, prescription drug use, and illicit drug abuse. (Trial Tr. at 1925-28.) Finally, he discussed the clinical link between drug abuse and psychosis, one that might materialize in some patients but not in others. (Trial Tr. at 1929-37, 1940-43.) In response to the State's questioning, Dr. Davis stated his impression that the phrase Super Beast did not refer to a voice Baer heard but rather to the raging part of him. (Trial Tr. at 1977.) After the prosecutor and Dr. Davis speculated over whether Super Beast originated from a tattoo on Baer's left forearm, the prosecutor asked Davis to read passages from Dr. Masbaum's report suggesting that Baer had heard voices since he was a child that appeared to come from a Winnie the Pooh doll. (Trial Tr. at 1978-80.) After the prosecutor asked Dr. Davis if Baer thought that voices telling him to kill his brother came from the Winnie the Pooh doll, trial counsel objected, Mr. Puckett is having a pretty good time, but I can't cross-examine that report.... He's made fun of my client for claiming that he heard Winnie the Pooh when that's not what the report said, so I'm going to object to this. This is not funny. (Trial Tr. at 1979-80.) Giving Baer the benefit of the doubt as to the form of defense counsel's objections, a defendant has a right to be confronted with witnesses against him in a criminal prosecution. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment effectively codified existing common law, which prevented a trial court from admitting testimonial hearsay statements unless the State showed both that the declarant was unavailable to testify and that the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 53-54, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not comprehensively define the breadth of testimonial statements in Crawford, it did describe a core class of testimonial statements that included (1) ex parte in-court testimony such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially; (2) extrajudicial statements contained in formalized testimonial materials, affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions; and (3) statements made under circumstances that would lead an objective witness to reasonably believe that the statement would be available for later use at a trial. Id. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Regardless of whether the trial court should have admitted this evidence under Crawford, Maynard's decision not to present this issue on appeal did not prejudice Baer because admitting it for this limited purpose constituted harmless error. The jury heard evidence from two experts that Baer was mentally ill to the level required by Ind.Code § 35-36-1-1. (Trial Tr. at 1908-09, 1929, 1992-93.) It heard evidence that Baer suffered from ADHD and depression as a child, that he was hospitalized, that he used prescription drugs, and that he eventually started huffing and abusing illicit drugs. (Trial Tr. at 1925-28.) It heard evidence that chronic drug abuse could damage a person's mental abilities to the point of near-retardation and could exacerbate any preexisting mental illnesses. (Trial Tr. at 1929-37, 1940-43.) It is unlikely that a jury unconvinced by this evidence would have entered a GBMI verdict or recommended a sentence of life if only the State had not cross-examined Dr. Lawlor and Dr. Davis mentioning Dr. Masbaum's report.