Opinion ID: 856125
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Investigation of Social History

Text: Finally, Petitioner argues that Sattler’s performance was deficient because she failed to investigate mitigating circumstances thoroughly enough. Strickland itself involved a claim of ineffective assistance for failure to investigate mitigating circumstances. For that reason, Strickland is an especially good starting point for analyzing Petitioner’s claim that Sattler failed to investigate sufficiently his social history. The Supreme Court outlined the standards governing counsel’s duty to investigate as follows: [S]trategic choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts relevant to plausible options are virtually unchallengeable; and strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation. In other words, counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary. 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. 28 MILES V . RYAN . . . And when a defendant has given counsel reason to believe that pursuing certain investigations would be fruitless or even harmful, counsel’s failure to pursue those investigations may not later be challenged as unreasonable. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690-91 (emphasis added). In Pinholster, the Supreme Court provided more guidance, overturning an opinion in which we had drawn, from other recent Supreme Court cases, a “constitutional duty to investigate, and the principle that it is prima facie ineffective assistance for counsel to abandon their investigation of the petitioner’s background after having acquired only rudimentary knowledge of his history from a narrow set of sources.” 131 S. Ct. at 1406 (citation, internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted). In the decision that Pinholster reversed, we had explained that we “could not ‘lightly disregard’ a failure to introduce evidence of ‘excruciating life history’ or ‘nightmarish childhood.’” Id. (quoting Pinholster, 590 F.3d at 684). In reversing us, the Court in Pinholster explained Strickland: “No particular set of detailed rules for counsel’s conduct can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances faced by defense counsel or the range of legitimate decisions . . . .” Strickland itself rejected the notion that the same investigation will be required in every case. It is “[r]are” that MILES V . RYAN 29 constitutionally competent representation will require “any one technique or approach.” Id. at 1406–07 (alteration in original) (citations omitted) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688–89, 691, and Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 788-89). Here, Sattler’s actions are a reasonable implementation of her strategy—made explicit in her closing arguments at sentencing—to characterize Petitioner as a relatively normal person who made serious mistakes after his wife left and his mother died. Cf. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 672–74 (finding that counsel’s strategy—claiming “no significant history of criminal activity” and arguing that the defendant “should be spared death . . . because [he] was fundamentally a good person who had briefly gone badly wrong in extremely stressful circumstances” arising from “his inability to support his family”—was professionally reasonable, justifying a failure to investigate and present background information that might undermine those claims). Sattler’s failure to investigate more thoroughly is justified, then, by the irrelevance of additional social history to her chosen strategy. As Pinholster recognized, choice of a particular strategy can make “particular investigations unnecessary.” 131 S. Ct. at 1407; see id. at 1407–08 (approving of the notion that “ ‘“humanizing” the defendant . . . may be the wrong tactic in some cases because experienced lawyers conclude that the [sentencing authority] simply won’t buy it’” (quoting Pinholster, 590 F.3d at 692 (Kozinski, C.J., dissenting)). Because Sattler’s actions reflect a deliberate choice of reasonable strategy, they do not fall outside reasonable 30 MILES V . RYAN professional norms. We see no deficient performance in Sattler’s decision not to investigate Petitioner’s social history further, and AEDPA deference applies. It is on this holding that we part ways with the dissent. The dissent rests on the premise that the Arizona Superior Court’s holding—that Sattler’s approach to mitigation was not deficient—was “contrary to” clearly established federal law and that, as a result, we should review Petitioner’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim de novo, not with AEDPA deference. That argument is flawed because it overreads Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374 (2005), and Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510 (2003), in contravention of Pinholster’s clear instructions to the contrary. See 131 S. Ct. at 1406–07 (“The Court of Appeals erred in attributing strict rules to this Court’s recent case law.” (citing Rompilla and Wiggins)). Indeed, the dissent here appears to be making the same argument made by the dissent in Pinholster, an argument that was necessarily rejected by a majority of the Court. See id. at 1427 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“In reaching this conclusion, the majority commits the same Strickland error that we corrected, applying § 2254(d)(1), in Wiggins: It holds a purportedly ‘tactical judgment’ to be reasonable without assessing ‘the adequacy of the investigatio[n] supporting [that] judgmen[t].’” (alterations in original) (quoting Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 521)). Further, to the extent that the dissent finds support in Porter, 130 S. Ct. 447, that case is distinguishable. Porter held that the defendant “may have been fatalistic or uncooperative, but that [did] not obviate the need for defense counsel to conduct some sort of mitigation investigation.” Porter, 130 S. Ct. at 453. In Porter, counsel failed to conduct any investigation into the defendant’s background—he did not interview any witnesses or request any records. Id. Here, MILES V . RYAN 31 as the Arizona Superior Court held, Petitioner’s failure to disclose pertinent facts about his background “guaranteed that [Sattler] would not and Dr. Levy certainly would not, conduct further investigation into Petitioner’s background.” Sattler did conduct a mitigation investigation—she engaged an investigator who interviewed childhood friends of Petitioner, attempted to call his wife to testify at the penalty phase (but Petitioner refused to allow her to do so), and engaged Dr. Levy. Porter, therefore, is inapplicable here. But even if Sattler’s performance had been deficient, Petitioner suffered no prejudice. As with Petitioner’s claim regarding Sattler’s expert, the state court made no prejudice finding on the failure to investigate claim, so we must review prejudice de novo. That review is not subject to the evidentiary limitations announced in Pinholster, though it is subject to the limitations in § 2254(e)(2). See Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. at 1401 (“Section 2254(e)(2) continues to have force where § 2254(d)(1) does not bar federal habeas relief. . . . At a minimum, therefore, § 2254(e)(2) still restricts the discretion of federal habeas courts to consider new evidence when deciding claims that were not adjudicated on the merits in state court.”). But even assuming that § 2254(e)(2) permits us to consider the new evidence that Petitioner produced at the district court,16 we see no prejudice. 16 Even under review de novo and § 2254(e)(2), however, we do not consider the new evidence produced on appeal in connection with the supplemental briefing on the Martinez issue discussed below. See United States v. Waters, 627 F.3d 345, 355 n.3 (9th Cir. 2010) (“Facts not presented to the district court are not part of the record on appeal.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 32 MILES V . RYAN First, as discussed above, Petitioner received a capital sentence primarily on account of three aggravating factors—previous convictions for three armed robberies, committing the car-jacking in pursuit of pecuniary gain, and committing the murder in an especially cruel manner—and the sentencing judge observed that the aggravators were unlikely to be outweighed by anything less than substantial mitigation. Petitioner’s additional social history is, as the district court noted, largely cumulative of what was already before the sentencing judge in the PSR, meaning that its mitigating value would be marginal. More significantly, the additional social history is equivocal, and not as alarming as that of the defendants in other failure-to-investigate cases. See, e.g., James v. Ryan, 679 F.3d 780 (9th Cir. 2012), petition for cert. filed, 81 U.S.L.W. 3047 (U.S. June 28, 2012) (No. 11A1119). Petitioner’s mother was a prostitute during his early years, though she turned to legitimate employment when he was about 11 years old. He may have observed—but did not experience—violence in connection with his mother’s prostitution. But, however problematic were the circumstances of Petitioner’s mother’s lifestyle, she did not neglect him, and there was no evidence that he was ever abused. To the contrary, Petitioner’s mother was clearly quite devoted to him. Moreover, whatever other problems existed in Petitioner’s hometown, he had a community of friends and a support system there, with responsible adults who took an interest in him. He developed healthy relationships that continued into adulthood. Finally, by all objective indications, he was socially well adjusted in high school. MILES V . RYAN 33 Petitioner’s background was far more stable than, say, the background of the defendant in James, in which we granted habeas relief from a capital sentence.17 The defendant in that case, James, grew up in a household with a father who shot heroin in front of James and was a violent alcoholic who beat James’ mother. James, 679 F.3d at 811. James grew up on welfare and was both neglected and verbally abused by his mother. Id. Later, his mother took up with another violent alcoholic, but this one abused James as well as his mother. Id. Growing up, James was frequently visited by an uncle known to have sexually abused other children in his family. Id. at 811–12. At one point, James’ mother tried to smother him with a pillow but relented at the last moment. Id. at 812. After living in various foster homes and an adoption center for six to nine months, James was given up for adoption at age 4. Id. He was eventually adopted by an older couple who physically abused him when he misbehaved.18 Id. at 812–13. Similarly, the Arizona Supreme Court reversed a death sentence in State v. Trostle, 951 P.2d 869 (Ariz. 1997). Unlike Petitioner here, Trostle had been neglected as a baby. 17 James is distinguishable on the deficiency-of-performance prong of Strickland because, in James, the state did not dispute deficient performance. 679 F.3d at 807. Also, the state court in James had denied the ineffective assistance of counsel claim for procedural reasons, rather than on the merits, meaning that AEDPA deference did not apply. Id. at 802. 18 The dissent asserts, “[C]ontrary to the majority’s account, James did not ‘grow up’ in the abusive circumstances described. Instead, at age four, James was adopted by parents who were strict but loving, and his life circumstances from thence forward took a dramatic turn for the better.” Dissent at 49. But James’ adoptive father was so “strict” that, “[o]n one occasion, [he] whipped James so severely with a rope that he raised bloody welts all over James’s back.” James, 679 F.3d at 813. 34 MILES V . RYAN Child Protective Services received numerous reports about him, starting with a report that he was found, at the age of 2 or 3 months old, sleeping in his own vomit while wearing a soiled diaper. Id. at 884. “His grandmother beat him regularly and once severely burned him with hot water for wetting his pants. His grandfather was convicted of sexually molesting him over a substantial period of time beginning at age 11.” Id. After Trostle began acting out in sexually inappropriate ways, juvenile authorities placed him in a residential treatment and educational program when he was 14 years old. Id. The newly uncovered portion of Petitioner’s social history simply does not have significant mitigating value in view of what was already available to the sentencing judge. Thus, even if Sattler had been professionally deficient in failing to investigate and present these additional facts, it is not reasonably probable that the outcome of the aggravation/mitigation balancing would have been different. Indeed, the new evidence does little to dispel Petitioner’s later social history, in which he acted as a functioning member of society for a number of years, demonstrating a capacity to overcome the hardships that had burdened his youth. Accordingly, the failure-to-investigate portion of Petitioner’s ineffective assistance claims fails on the first prong of Strickland, applying AEDPA deference. We note, however, that Petitioner’s claim would fail on the first prong even under de novo review. Further, as discussed above, even if Petitioner could prevail on the first prong, thereby MILES V . RYAN 35 requiring us to review de novo on the second prong, he would fail.19