Opinion ID: 1737862
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Postconviction Evidentiary Hearing Record

Text: The record of the postconviction evidentiary hearing before the circuit court reflects the following. With the assistance of Chalu, defense counsel Alldredge represented Brown during the penalty phase. We have previously set forth the relevant legal experience of Chalu and Alldredge. Chalu testified that he was initially appointed to handle Brown's case, and about three months before the trial, Alldredge was appointed solely to handle the penalty phase. Both Chalu and Alldredge worked with the investigator who was assigned to assist them. Immediately after his appointment to Brown's case, Chalu hired Dr. Berland and later Dr. Afield to assess Brown's mental status for purposes of planning both the guilt and penalty-phase defense strategies. After Alldredge became involved in the case, both Chalu and Alldredge helped Dr. Berland and Dr. Afield with data collection, including retrieval of reports as to Brown's prior psychological testing. When these mental health experts informed Chalu and Alldredge that no mental health defense was available for the guilt phase, Alldredge began working with the experts in preparing for the penalty phase. Chalu testified that he, Alldredge, and Dr. Berland interviewed family and friends of Brown in preparation for the penalty phase. Chalu testified that, by the time the trial began, he believed he and Alldredge and their investigator and experts had gathered pretty much all the data that was available to us concerning Brown's history. Alldredge testified that after he was assigned to Brown's case, he first read the depositions and discussed the case with Chalu and Drs. Berland and Afield. He then met with Brown and interviewed the penalty-phase witnesses. He requested that his investigator retrieve [e]verything and anything as to Brown's childhood, his past criminal records, any prior mental health evaluations, and school records. Alldredge testified that finding information as to Brown's history and locating witnesses was particularly difficult and that he was not satisfied with the level of investigation provided for the penalty phase. Alldredge testified that he did not recall reviewing any of Brown's school records but that such records could have been useful during the penalty phase. Upon cross-examination, Alldredge conceded that Brown had begun school sometime after age six and had dropped out at age fourteen so that the extent of his school records would have been limited. Alldredge also testified that Dr. Berland, the most thoroughly prepared forensic psychologist he knew, did not indicate the need for further data in order to render his opinion of Brown's mental status. Alldredge testified that he did not request further neurological testing to confirm organic brain damage. [13] During the postconviction evidentiary hearing, Brown also presented the testimony of Dr. Szabo, the psychiatrist who evaluated Brown in the Hillsborough County Jail where Brown was awaiting trial in March 1986; Dr. Henry L. Dee, a psychologist who evaluated Brown in 1992 as part of an earlier postconviction effort; Dr. Jerry J. Fleischaker, a psychiatrist who evaluated Brown at a child guidance clinic in Tampa when Brown was a teenager; Dr. Fay Ellen Sultan, a clinical psychologist who evaluated Brown's mental status in 1996 for postconviction evidentiary purposes; and Dr. Berland, one of the two mental health experts who had testified at Brown's penalty phase. Dr. Szabo testified that he diagnosed Brown as having schizophrenia, a form of psychosis, and prescribed Mellaril, an antipsychotic drug, to prevent Brown from deteriorating into a state in which he might harm others or himself while incarcerated at the jail. Dr. Fleischaker testified that he performed a psychiatric evaluation on Brown at the request of a court when Brown was about fifteen years of age, but Dr. Fleischaker did not testify as to the contents of the report. Dr. Dee testified as to his conclusion that, consistent with the opinions of Drs. Berland and Afield, Brown suffered organic brain syndrome and a longstanding major emotional disturbance manifested as schizophrenia. Dr. Sultan testified that she interviewed Brown as well as his father, stepmother, brother, and Dr. Dee, and reviewed the historical records as to Brown that were not available to Dr. Berland at the time of the trial. Dr. Sultan concluded that Brown was operating under severe and extreme psychiatric and organic mental conditions at the time of the murder. Dr. Berland testified that Brown was probably exaggerating but not malingering during his conversations with the psychologist and in his answers to test questions. Dr. Berland testified that nothing in Dr. Dee's report or Brown's 1967 presentence investigation report, neither of which were in his possession at the time of the trial, convinced him to change his findings as to Brown. Dr. Berland stated that he would not have presented the 1967 presentence investigation report to the jury because it would have documented Brown's history as a sex offender. Dr. Berland testified that access to additional collateral information would not have changed his opinion at trial that Brown was disturbed but not under extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the murder. Dr. Berland testified that additional historical information such as school records showing that Brown was a nervous child who beat his head against a table would have been helpful in conveying to the jury the nature of Brown's psychosis for purposes of the jury's weighing process during the penalty phase. Brown also presented during the postconviction hearing the testimony of Bessie Conway, who was related by marriage to Brown and lived next door to him when he was a child in Tampa; Daniel Jackson, Brown's stepbrother; and Jimmy Lee Brown, Brown's brother. Conway testified that Brown's father once beat him with a belt. Jackson testified that Brown's father often beat Brown as well as his brother, stepbrother, sister, and mother. Jackson testified that he was contacted by an investigator prior to Brown's trial and told the investigator of the beatings and that, as a child, Brown was accused of messing with other little kids in the neighborhood. Jackson stated that the investigator said he was not interested in finding out what Jackson meant by messing around and that he was not interested in pursuing Jackson as a witness. Jackson also stated that Brown's stepmother cooked for the children, helped them with their homework, and saw that they went to school. Jimmy Lee Brown testified, as he did at trial, that all the children in the family were abused. He testified that Paul Brown was beaten by his father, baby-sitters, relatives, and other children in the children's homes where the Brown children stayed when Brown's father was out driving a truck and his stepmother was incapacitated with a nervous breakdown. After considering this evidence and argument based on this evidence, the circuit court denied Brown the relief he requested in his penalty-phase ineffective assistance claims, concluding that Brown failed to meet the prejudice prong of the Strickland test. The circuit court order states in relevant part: Most of the evidence presented addressed this [ineffective assistance] issue, but it boils down to defense counsel failing to discover an earlier presentence investigation report, and some school records. While Mr. Alldredge expressed dissatisfaction with the level of investigation provided by his office, the records eventually located by the Defendant did not in any way change the opinion of the mental health experts and the opinion of the defense's mental health experts at the evidentiary hearing did not differ from the opinions offered at trial. The essence of the Defendant's allegation seems to be that the experts' opinions would have been given greater weight if they had additional records upon which to base their opinions at trial, but the psychologist who testified at the hearing stated that although the additional information might have been helpful, his opinion was unchanged. Counsel for the defense further claims that penalty phase counsel was ineffective for failing to call as lay witnesses family members and friends to testify concerning the Defendant's abuse as a child and low intelligence, but, in fact, two family members did testify to neglect and abuse and low intelligence.... No reasonable probability has been shown that but for deficient performance by counsel at the guilt or penalty phase, the result would have differed. Order II at 4-5.