Opinion ID: 1380225
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: guilt phase error failure to investigate

Text: By pleading guilty, Mr. Worthington waived any claim that counsel was ineffective except to the extent that the conduct affected the voluntariness and knowledge with which the plea was made. Roll, 942 S.W.2d at 375. In any ineffectiveness case, a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel's judgments. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Mr. Worthington argues counsel acted unreasonably in not further investigating his social and medical history. In regard to the guilt phase, he alleges that had an adequate investigation been done he would not have pled guilty but would have proceeded to trial using a diminished capacity defense. In support, at the post-conviction hearing, he presented the testimony of three experts, Dr. Jonathan Pincus, Dr. Dennis Cowan, and Dr. Robert Smith, who together testified that he had a variety of serious mental and physical disorders, including Tourette's syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, frontal lobe cerebral brain dysfunction, and post-traumatic stress disorder. [2] The motion court was not required to believe these doctors' diagnoses, which were not otherwise supported by prior medical opinions and which were based on very limited experience with Mr. Worthington. Dr. Pincus' diagnosis was based on a single meeting more than four years after the murder and rape. Similarly, Dr. Smith examined Mr. Worthington over four years after the crime and the majority of the tests he administered related to substance abuse issues. Dr. Cowan also had just a single meeting with Mr. Worthington almost five years after the murder. Because of their limited familiarity with him, these experts necessarily largely based their conclusions on his own self-reporting of symptoms, history, and condition. While the motion court could have accepted their conclusions, it was not required to do so. It found that Mr. Worthington was not a reliable or credible witness due to his conflicting testimony throughout the proceedings, and this greatly undermined the reliability of these experts' diagnoses. Furthermore, the fact that Mr. Worthington found experts who were willing to testify at the post-conviction stage that he had a variety of medical disorders does not mean that counsel were ineffective in failing to find similar experts before deciding that a diminished capacity defense would not be effective and recommending that Mr. Worthington plead guilty. While he argues that their decision not to pursue this defense resulted from lead defense counsel's refusal to provide necessary funds for investigation and his failure to seek such funds from the State as permitted by Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68, 105 S.Ct. 1087, 84 L.Ed.2d 53 (1985), the record supports the motion court's contrary conclusions. Defense counsel were seasoned capital-litigation attorneys, with extensive experience in criminal and death penalty litigation. Prior to the work done on this case, Mr. Green had been involved in 40 to 50 capital cases. He had received training from the state and had attended national seminars and symposiums on how to litigate a capital case. Mr. Rosenblum's area of practice was exclusively criminal defense. He had tried 150 or more jury trials, with over 50 being homicide cases and seven being capital cases. In a deposition taken for the post-conviction hearing, Mr. Rosenblum stated that he had initially considered and investigated the benefit of presenting a diminished capacity defense. To assist him in deciding whether to take that approach, he had hired a psychiatrist, Dr. Kevin Miller, who met with Mr. Worthington twice and reviewed his records. But, like the State's expert, Dr. Miller found that Mr. Worthington did not suffer from mental disease or defect at the time of the offense and that he could appreciate the nature, quality, and wrongfulness of his conduct. Mr. Rosenblum testified that he believed that in general, diminished capacity defenses do not go over well and are difficult to defend, that he believed that it would be an uphill battle to present the defense with all the evidence of Mr. Worthington's drug and alcohol abuse, and that the portion of Dr. Miler's report that supported the defense was outweighed by the negative effect it might have. In particular, he feared Dr. Miller's report would corroborate Dr. Givon's anti-social personality and malingering diagnoses, and so he made a strategic decision not to pursue the diminished capacity defense. While defense counsel could have continued to consult additional experts in the hope of finding one who might support a diminished capacity defense, counsel is not required to seek out an expert who might provide more helpful testimony. Taylor v. State, 126 S.W.3d 755, 762 (Mo. banc 2004). Counsel is entitled to instead pursue other reasonable defense strategies. Id. Further, there was no showing that lack of funds played an improper part in that decision. The evidence showed that a family friend hired Mr. Rosenblum for $50,000. Mr. Rosenblum in turn contracted for Mr. Green to look for mitigating evidence and to investigate social history for $10,000. While Mr. Green at one point said he asked Mr. Rosenblum to give him additional funds so he could conduct further investigation on issues regarding mitigation and DNA testing, it is not ineffective to consider cost in deciding what type of investigation to do and how to do it, so long as the resulting investigation is adequate. Mr. Worthington has failed to show that counsel did not adequately investigate using other means. Defense counsel did have sufficient funds to hire two experts on the issue of diminished capacity. One, Dr. Miller, as noted, ultimately did not testify when counsel decided not to pursue a diminished capacity defense, but he was available. A second expert, Dr. Evans, did testify on behalf of the defense in the penalty phase. In these circumstances, counsel cannot be found to have failed to sufficiently investigate a diminished capacity defense in the guilt phase. Rather, counsel instead made a strategic choice to advise Mr. Worthington to plead guilty and concentrate on his penalty phase defense. A reasonable strategy, even if it looks imperfect in hindsight, cannot provide the basis for an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Cole, 152 S.W.3d at 270. While Mr. Green initially stated that he also wanted money for a DNA expert, he said he then determined that it would not be necessary. Moreover, Mr. Worthington did not offer any evidence that, had a DNA expert been located, the expert would have been able to testify favorably to the defense. Absent a showing that further investigation would have provided such evidence, no prejudice could have resulted from the failure to further attempt to obtain a defense DNA expert. See State v. Davis, 814 S.W.2d 593, 603-604 (Mo. banc 1991) (When a movant claims ineffective assistance of counsel for failure to locate and present expert witnesses, he must show that such experts existed at the time of trial, that they could have been located through reasonable investigation, and that the testimony of these witnesses would have benefited movant's defense). In sum, it was not unreasonable for defense counsel to conclude that the risk of a death sentence was greater if Mr. Worthington went to trial than if he pled guilty and the penalty phase was tried to the judge. Mr. Worthington at the time agreed and made a knowing decision to plead guilty. Based on this evidence, the court did not err in concluding that it was reasonable to plead guilty rather than attempt a diminished capacity defense.