Opinion ID: 2763627
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Consideration of the Evidence in Context

Text: When the prosecution fails to turn over numerous pieces of favorable evidence, the proper focus of Brady’s materiality inquiry is on the cumulative effect of the unsuppressed evidence on the jury’s verdict. See Kyles, 514 U.S. at 436-37. “[T]he omission[s] must be evaluated in the context of the entire record.” United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 112 (1976). Considering the quality and quantity of the evidence that the state failed to disclose, the potential for that evidence to have affected the outcome of Petitioner’s trial is inescapable. Even armed with only the evidence implicating Roger Cordray, defense counsel would have easily constructed an alternative narrative of the crime. Defense counsel would have been able to establish through eyewitnesses that a group of people, which may have included Aaron Raines, was taunting Cordray near the abandoned building around 11:00 p.m. on the night of the murder. Witnesses place Aaron in the same area at approximately the same time. Cordray, who was known to sleep in the abandoned building, later confessed to numerous people that he had murdered Aaron. After the murder, a witness noticed that Cordray’s knuckles were scraped. Even though the police identified “some similarities” between Cordray’s palm print and the print found at the scene of the crime—a similarity they were unable to establish with Gumm’s print— they eliminated Cordray as a suspect because they simply believed him when he denied involvement in the crime. Taken together, these facts demonstrate that Cordray had the means, motive, and opportunity to murder Aaron. These facts, had they been disclosed, would have provided a compelling counter-narrative to the state’s theory of the case and would have called into question the thoroughness of the police investigation. The capacity for the undisclosed evidence to have affected the outcome of Petitioner’s trial becomes even clearer when viewed in light of the small amount of evidence that the state adduced at Petitioner’s trial. In fact, the prosecutor admitted in his opening statement to the jury that “the police had very little concrete evidence” and that the case came down to what neighbors had seen that night. (J.A. at 242-43.) The prosecutor framed the case as the neighbors No. 11-3363 Gumm v. Mitchell Page 28 coalescing around Petitioner as the murderer, but the evidence regarding Cordray and the holes that the neighbors could have poked in the police’s timeline would have been directly contradictory to the prosecutor’s view of the crime. The state never discovered any physical evidence linking Petitioner to the crime. Instead, the state focused on the fact that Petitioner was seen in a park near the abandoned building around 7:00 p.m. on the night of the murder. However, the relevance of this fact is clearly dubious given the numerous witnesses who saw Aaron much later that night—evidence which was admissible but never disclosed to the defense. Second, the state brought in inflammatory and prejudicial evidence, which this Court finds was unrelated to the crimes and was of questionable validity. Additionally, much of that inflammatory evidence was unreliable hearsay, hearsay upon hearsay, and hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay. Finally, and most importantly, the state relied on Petitioner’s own confession to the murder. Undoubtedly, a confession “is strong evidence of [] guilt,” Harbison v. Bell, 408 F.3d 823, 824 (6th Cir. 2005), but there are numerous reasons why a jury would have discounted Petitioner’s statements to the police, taking into account Petitioner’s diminished mental capacity, especially had it been presented with a compelling alternative theory of the crime based on this mountain of exculpatory evidence. In fact, the only defense witness at Petitioner’s trial testified regarding the weakness of Petitioner’s confession. Petitioner’s statements to the police were far from overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Petitioner had a questionable capacity to understand what was happening to him, and he likely could not distinguish between what he was told during his encounters with the police and what he actually remembered from the day of the murder. Although the jury was presented with Petitioner’s recorded confession, the jury also listened to extensive testimony by the defense’s expert witness, who provided strong reasons for discounting Petitioner’s confession. Some excerpts from the trial transcript are particularly telling of Petitioner’s capacity to provide a reliable confession in this case. Defense counsel asked Dr. Leland for his opinion regarding whether petitioner “would be able to relate the same set of facts accurately two times in a row or several times.” (J.A. Vol. II, at 284.) The following colloquy ensued: No. 11-3363 Gumm v. Mitchell Page 29 A. He could relate the same type – the same type of facts consistently as long as there was no other intrusion of new facts. Q. What would happen if there was an intrusion of new facts? A. Then he – then that would contaminate the original memory, and he wouldn’t be sure which he was remembering and which he wasn’t; that is, it would become jumbled sets of information because he at no time would have been able to synthesize them to make them into a real idea. Q. Do you have an opinion with reasonable psychological certainty as to whether or not he would confuse what he had witnessed, he would get them very confused. A. Well, it would – if what he had been told concerned what he had witnessed, he would get them very confused. (Id.) Although the expert witness did not view the recordings of Petitioner’s confessions, Dr. Leland did view a recording of Petitioner’s walk-through of the abandoned building in which Aaron Raines’ body was found. Dr. Leland was questioned regarding his opinion as to the reliability of the statement Petitioner made during that walk-through. He stated in response, “I think it’s even less reliable . . . . Because, after watching the tape and comparing the two programs, I find that Darryl primarily was agreeing with the policemen. As the policemen said things, Darryl would shake his head, meaning yes, and occasionally add things. But the things that he was asked and added had nothing to do with the testimony in this case.” (Id. at 285–86.) Finally, Petitioner’s counsel asked Dr. Leland whether, based on his examination of Petitioner and his review of the psychiatric reports, he had an opinion as to whether Petitioner had “the ability to accurately describe an event or facts which occurred ten weeks prior to the time he described them.” (Id. at 287.) In response, Dr. Leland responded, “I don’t think he has the ability to accurately describe any series of events. I, for example, asked him what he had been doing in jail for the last three, four days, and he couldn’t describe that.” (Id.) On crossexamination, Dr. Leland also stated that he did not believe Petitioner “understands what the truth is as you would define the word truth. You can’t judge a damaged brain the way you would judge a normal brain.” (R. 170-8, Leland Testimony, at 895.) Dr. Leland also testified on cross- examination that Petitioner “had difficulty synthesizing what he remembers. . . . [And t]he problem with depending on that is if you introduce other isolated facts that relate the same situation that he doesn’t know, he may remember them also, in which case he doesn’t know which the real facts are and which are the ones you’ve introduced.” (Id. at 895–96.) No. 11-3363 Gumm v. Mitchell Page 30 Upon his second petition for post-conviction relief, Petitioner was found to be mentally retarded by the Ohio state courts. According to a psychological evaluation performed by licensed psychologist Dr. David A. Ott, which was submitted to the district court during Petitioner’s second evidentiary hearing, mentally retarded individuals use a “cloak of competence” in an “attempt to present themselves as ‘normal’ (or at least more capable than they actually are) as a means of avoiding the stigma of being identified as mentally retarded.” (R. 170-18, Ott Psych. Eval., at 7.) Dr. Ott explained that Petitioner’s behavior in response to the officers’ questioning was consistent with this notion. (Id. (“Although the contact note indicates the officer’s perception that ‘most of the conversation’ was ‘macho talk,’ Mr. Gumm’s apparent efforts to present himself as a capable farmer and pool player despite the significant adaptive deficits he exhibited are consistent with the notion of the cloak of competence. . . . Mr. Gumm appeared to the officers as a follower, indicating the ineffectiveness with which he attempted to portray himself as more competent.”).) This observed behavior is very much consistent with the Supreme Court’s concerns expressed in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 320 (2002) about the heightened possibility of false confessions from mentally retarded individuals. The Court recognized that while mentally retarded individuals “frequently know the difference between right and wrong,” their impairments cause “diminished capacities to understand and process information, to communicate, to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand others’ reactions.” Id. at 318. Mentally retarded individuals are particularly “susceptible to the perceived wishes of authority figures.” Morgan Cloud et al., Words without Meaning: The Constitution, Confessions, and Mentally Retarded Suspects, 69 U. Chi. L. Rev. 495, 511 (2002). This is true “[e]ven when no direct pressure is exerted on them [because] they may be inclined to make false statements out of a desire to please perceived authority figures.” Id. “If an authority figure such as a police officer makes it clear to the individual that he wants a confession, even an innocent disabled person may confess so a law enforcement officer will not become angry with him.” Id. at 512. Additionally, “[w]hen faced with a coercive situation . . . mentally retarded persons generally have difficulty finding refuge even in silence, as often they feel compelled to answer – even when the questions are beyond their abilities.” Paul T. Hourihan, Earl Washington’s Confession: Mental No. 11-3363 Gumm v. Mitchell Page 31 Retardation and the Law of Confessions, 81 Va. L. Rev. 1471, 1493 (1995). This means that “mentally retarded defendants are more likely to confess when placed in an interrogational situation, less likely to give a truthful statement, and yet more likely to be found by a court to have voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently relinquished his or her constitutional right against self-incrimination.” Id. at 1494. In fact, as the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation recognized, numerous studies reveal that “the mentally retarded are disproportionately represented in ‘false confession’ cases.” Gumm, 2009 WL 7785750, at  (citing Brandon L. Garrett, Judging Innocence, 108 Colum. L. Rev. 55, 88-89 (2008); Steven A. Drizin & Richard A. Leo, The Problem of False Confessions in the Post-DNA World, 82 N.C. L. Rev. 891, 920, 971 (2008)). While a jury could have accepted (and did accept in this instance) that Petitioner’s confession was genuine, notwithstanding these problems, the jury was not presented with any counter narrative of the crime. Instead, what was placed before the jury was a confession of minimal reliability, inflammatory statements by the prosecutor, heavily prejudicial testimony from Petitioner’s former housemates, and hearsay statements lacking any indicia of reliability contained in the psychiatric reports. Although the jury likely viewed Petitioner’s confession with some skepticism following this testimony, without a counter narrative of the crime and with all of the egregious “bad acts” evidence that came into the record, the jury likely placed greater weight in the confession than was warranted. In this context, the state’s failure to turn over this evidence implicating other individuals in the murder and calling into question the state’s own account of the crime can “reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.” Kyles, 514 U.S. at 435.