Opinion ID: 1311325
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Arkansas Supreme Court's Decision

Text: In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), the Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer in a capital case not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death. Id. at 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954. The Court later explained the corollary rule that the sentencer may not refuse to consider or be precluded from considering `any relevant mitigating evidence.' Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 4, 106 S.Ct. 1669, 90 L.Ed.2d 1 (1986) (quoting Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 114, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982)). The Court has used broad language to describe the relevance standard, observing that the meaning of relevance in the mitigation context is not unlike the meaning of relevance in other contexts; it is evidence which tends logically to prove or disprove some fact or circumstance which a fact-finder could reasonably deem to have mitigating value. Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U.S. 274, 284, 124 S.Ct. 2562, 159 L.Ed.2d 384 (2004) (quoting McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 433, 440, 110 S.Ct. 1227, 108 L.Ed.2d 369 (1990)). The precise application of that broad language, however, is not always clear, and we have acknowledged that there is little guidance on what constitutes relevance for Lockett purposes. Sweet v. Delo, 125 F.3d 1144, 1158 (8th Cir.1997). The Lockett line of cases has focused on the categorical exclusion of certain types of mitigating evidence. See Sweet, 125 F.3d at 1158 (collecting cases). This case, however, involves a somewhat different issue: namely, the extent to which a trial judge may, when there are no categorical limitations on mitigation evidence, exclude testimony because of its apparent lack of probative value. The Supreme Court has addressed this issue only indirectly. In Skipper, the Court held that evidence of a defendant's positive adjustment to pre-trial incarceration could not be categorically excluded from the sentencing decision, but it also stated that not all facets of the defendant's ability to adjust to prison life must be treated as relevant and potentially mitigating. 476 U.S. at 7 n. 2, 106 S.Ct. 1669. As one example, the Court suggested that the frequency of the defendant's showers would be irrelevant. Id. Similarly, in Tennard the Court stated that it had never denied that gravity has a place in the relevance analysis, insofar as evidence of a trivial feature of the defendant's character or the circumstances of the crime is unlikely to have any tendency to mitigate the defendant's culpability. 542 U.S. at 286, 124 S.Ct. 2562. Evaluated against this precedent, the Arkansas Supreme Court's rejection of McGehee's mitigation arguments was not unreasonable or contrary to clearly established law. McGehee introduced five mitigation witnesses to establish that he had a dysfunctional family, very poor relationships with his father and stepfather, and a mother who behaved erratically and struggled to manage her children. Much of the testimony was discursive, anecdotal, and open-ended. At the time the prosecutor made his first objection to Christensen's testimony, Christensen had just recounted a lengthy anecdote of arguably no mitigating value. Christensen had testified that as an adolescent, McGehee refused to keep his mother's curfew and that a battle of wills ensued. McGehee's mother locked the doors after McGehee failed to come home one evening. Rather than asking his mother for permission to enter the house, McGehee apparently chose to sleep outside with his dog, subsisting on bottled tomatoes and sandwiches delivered by his aunt. McGehee's counsel then asked Christensen to discuss what happened to McGehee's dogs when he was a small child, and Christensen answered, [w]hen he was a baby, he had a Doberman Pincher. At that point, the prosecutor objected on the ground that the testimony was irrelevant. McGehee's counsel did not explain the substance of the testimony or how the jury could find a story about McGehee's dogs relevant to his sentence. In upholding the trial judge's decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court accurately observed that it was not clear where defense counsel was going with the testimony. McGehee I, 992 S.W.2d at 124. Later, after the jury had retired to deliberate, McGehee's counsel proffered additional information about Christensen's testimony. He stated that he wanted to show that the family was violent because the dogs' throats had been slit and McGehee's parents had told him it was because he wanted a new puppy. McGehee's counsel did not request that the jury be returned to the courtroom to hear that additional evidence, and McGehee has cited no authority that should have compelled the trial judge to take that step sua sponte. Moreover, even after the proffer, the relevance of that testimonyif understood as a question about the gravity of the evidence and its likelihood of influencing the sentencing decisionis debatable. The death of a pet can be a traumatic experience for a child, and the story of parental cruelty may have contributed to the picture of family dysfunction. But to the extent that the testimony was offered to show a pattern of physical violence, it was contradicted by other evidence. McGehee's grandmother testified that McGehee was not physically abused or neglected as a child. Christensen never stated that McGehee suffered physical abuse, and McGehee's counsel did not allege any such abuse as a mitigating circumstance. Accordingly, the trial judge's statement that the incident was an isolated act of cruelty to animals that happened years and years ago appears to have been a fair characterization. We cannot say that the Arkansas Supreme Court's decision affirming the trial judge's ruling was unreasonable. Nor was it unreasonable for the Arkansas Supreme Court to conclude that McGehee was not prejudiced by the trial judge's decision to sustain an objection to Christensen's testimony about the abuse of McGehee's sister, Kimber. Christensen testified that McGehee's stepfather was not allowed to discipline Kimber and that he had once beat her to the point that she had bruises on the back of her legs, prompting a visit from Family Services. The prosecutor objected on the basis that the witness was talking about somebody who isn't even the defendant, [and straying] way far afield from directional testimony. The trial judge sustained the objection, but did not admonish the jury not to consider that evidence. McGehee argues that the jury was unable to consider the evidence because it could have interpreted the judge's decision to sustain the objection as an admonition to disregard Christensen's testimony. He contends that this is so because the jury was earlier instructed to follow all of the judge's evidentiary rulings. The evidentiary instruction to which McGehee points, however, was given during the guilt phase of McGehee's trial. The jury did not receive a similar instruction before its sentencing deliberation. To the contrary, the jury was instructed that it could consider anything, in its discretion, that it found to be a mitigating circumstance. During his closing argument in the penalty phase, McGehee's counsel highlighted the fact that the jury could consider mitigating circumstances ignored by the lawyers or the court. McGehee's reliance on Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), in which the Court granted habeas relief because of the absence of such juror discretion, is therefore misplaced. Even if there were any error in the exclusion of Christensen's testimony, it was harmless. [2] See Sweet, 125 F.3d at 1158-59 (concluding that Lockett errors may be held harmless). Although McGehee's childhood was apparently difficult, the excluded evidence does not begin to approach the significance of the evidence in other notable cases in which the absence of mitigation testimony has been held prejudicial. See, e.g., Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 391-92, 125 S.Ct. 2456, 162 L.Ed.2d 360 (2005) (petitioner's parents were violent alcoholics, and he was beaten regularly, locked inside an excrement-filled dog pen, and not allowed to visit other children); Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 517, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003) (petitioner was left home alone for days, forcing him to beg for food and eat paint chips and garbage, and he was physically and sexually abused by his mother and foster parents); Terry Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 395-96, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000) (petitioner had a nightmarish childhood, during which he was forced to live in unimaginable squalor and severely and repeatedly beaten by his father). As noted above, McGehee had the opportunity to provide evidence of the dysfunctional family and poor parenting that influenced his life choices. The mitigation testimony was somewhat conflicting, however, in that it showed that McGehee was not physically abused and that he had at least some family members and friends who cared for him during his childhood and early teenage years. Additional testimony about the death of McGehee's dogs would not have significantly altered the jury's picture of McGehee's upbringing, and it would not have been likely to influence the sentencing decision. More precisely, we conclude that the Supreme Court's recent observation in a death penalty case is particularly apt here: Additional evidence on [this point] would have offered an insignificant benefit, if any at all. Wong v. Belmontes, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 383, 388, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2009) (per curiam); cf. Grayson v. Thompson, 257 F.3d 1194, 1227-28 (11th Cir.2001) (holding that petitioner was not prejudiced by the absence of mitigation evidence, in part, because [a]lthough the graphic picture of [petitioner's] home life ... was not presented at trial, the judge did not wholly disregard [petitioner's] unfortunate background in sentencing him to death). The absence of any prejudice is particularly apparent given the horrific nature of the crime. See Sweet, 125 F.3d at 1158 (considering the nature of the crime as one element in determining harmlessness). The evidence at trial showed that McGehee was the ringleader of a torture murder and that his weaker, younger victim was brutalized because he told the truth when confronted by the police. McGehee inflicted most of the blows during the several hours in which Melbourne was tortured, and he exhibited no hesitation or remorse, apparently laughing just after he had left Melbourne's naked body lying in the woods. In the context of ineffective assistance of counsel claims, at least one of our sister circuits has stated that in death penalty cases involving a carefully planned murder, torture, rape, or kidnapping, the aggravating circumstances of the crime outweigh any prejudice caused when a lawyer fails to present mitigating evidence. Payne v. Allen, 539 F.3d 1297, 1318 (11th Cir.2008) (quoting Dobbs v. Turpin, 142 F.3d 1383, 1390 (11th Cir.1998)). McGehee's crime involved both torture and kidnapping, compounded in its cruelty by McGehee's mocking, taunting statement, how does it feel to know you are going to die? In light of the entire record, therefore, we cannot say that the excluded evidence had a substantial and injurious effect on the jury's sentencing decision. See Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 121-22, 127 S.Ct. 2321, 168 L.Ed.2d 16 (2007) (standard for reviewing harmlessness in § 2254 proceedings). Accordingly, the district court erred in granting McGehee's habeas petition on this claim.