Opinion ID: 3187889
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Overcoming Procedural Default

Text: In order for the Martinez/Trevino exception to excuse a prior procedural default, Ayestas must present a viable claim that his trial counsel was 8 Case: 15-70015 Document: 00513434126 Page: 9 Date Filed: 03/22/2016 No. 15-70015 ineffective and his state habeas attorneys were ineffective in failing to raise trial counsel’s errors. See Martinez, 132 S. Ct. at 1321. Ineffective assistance requires deficient performance and prejudice. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). An attorney’s performance is deficient if it falls “below an objective standard of reasonableness” based on “prevailing professional norms.” Id. at 687−88. “[C]ounsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations,” id. at 691, including an “obligation to conduct a thorough investigation of the defendant’s background,” Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30, 39 (2009). Nonetheless, there is “a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689. The specific deficiencies Ayestas raises concern his trial counsel’s alleged failure to investigate and present evidence about his drug use and possible mental illness. Such evidence allegedly would have been discoverable if counsel had contacted family and friends in Ayestas’s home country of Honduras. Ayestas also points out that his trial counsel, for 15 months, stopped pursuing mitigation evidence, only resuming his activities 10 days prior to jury selection. He also claims his counsel in the initial state habeas proceedings should have made an issue of this alleged ineffectiveness by trial counsel. The district court rejected the claim because Ayestas barred his attorneys from contacting his family, finally relenting around the time of jury selection for his sentencing. Trial counsel then pursued evidence from the family in Honduras and California by sending letters to them and finally seeking the assistance of the United States embassy in Honduras. A few days after Ayestas allowed contact, trial counsel also telephoned Ayestas’s mother in Honduras. As we have already discussed and as detailed in the district court’s opinion, the mother showed a lack of zeal in assisting the defense. The 9 Case: 15-70015 Document: 00513434126 Page: 10 Date Filed: 03/22/2016 No. 15-70015 district court relied on caselaw in which we held that an attorney is not ineffective for failing to present evidence in mitigation at sentencing if the defendant orders counsel not to do so. See Autry v. McKaskle, 727 F.2d 358, 362–63 (5th Cir. 1984). We conclude that an attorney’s compliance with a capital-case client’s demand that contact not be made with his family is similarly permitted. On appeal now, counsel argues that such interference by the defendant heightens the need for counsel to search for other sources of information about the defendant’s background. We do not agree with such a standard. Regardless of the specific problems that arise in the investigation for mitigation evidence, the issue is whether counsel made “reasonable investigations or . . . a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 521 (2003) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691). The district court pointed out trial counsel’s efforts and discoveries despite the limitations under which counsel worked. Counsel spoke by phone with Ayestas’s family. He acquired Ayestas’s school records and was aware of the substance abuse. Ayestas was also examined by a psychologist. The district court’s analysis of the argument about Ayestas’s mental illness relied in part on the absence of any evidence that medical records existed at the time of trial that would have shown Ayestas was suffering from any mental illness. Therefore, defense counsel were not on notice of the need to pursue this line of inquiry at his initial trial. This analysis injects the question of whether current counsel has shown a need for funding to pursue what evidence might have existed to alert trial counsel of Ayestas’s mental state in 1997. The briefing here discusses at great length the progression of schizophrenia, the mental disease with which Ayestas has now been diagnosed. The diagnosis was not made until 2000 while he was in prison after his conviction for this crime. Perhaps, counsel posits, a thorough investigation 10 Case: 15-70015 Document: 00513434126 Page: 11 Date Filed: 03/22/2016 No. 15-70015 now would uncover evidence that early-stage symptoms of this disease were exhibiting themselves in 1997, making trial counsel’s unawareness of those symptoms constitutionally ineffective representation. We find no error in the rejection of the claims about mental illness. Trial counsel in 1997 had Ayestas examined by a psychologist. The briefing does not suggest that the examination itself revealed a basis for further investigation. Whatever medical understandings could be applied now to evidence about Ayestas’s mental condition in 1997, with the benefit of hindsight and perhaps additional knowledge about this disease, does not undermine that trial counsel was not constitutionally ineffective in pursuing what appeared at that time to be unproductive lines of inquiry. Moreover, even if trial counsel had pursued such lines of inquiry, the results would not have been fruitful. A Strickland ineffective representation requires deficient performance and prejudice. Prejudice means “a reasonable probability . . . the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Hinton v. Alabama, 134 S. Ct. 1081, 1089 (2014). A reasonable probability is a “substantial, not just conceivable, likelihood of a different result.” Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 189 (2011) (quotation marks omitted). The district court held that regardless of any deficiencies in the investigation about substance abuse, no prejudice resulted because, in light of the brutality of the crime, it was “highly unlikely that evidence of substance abuse would have changed the outcome of the sentencing phase of trial or of the state habeas corpus proceeding.” That finding is valid. Further, even if Ayestas had entered the early stages of an as-yet undiagnosed mental illness, we find it at best to be conceivable, but not substantially likely, that the outcome may have been different. As to the district court’s refusal to fund an investigation into Ayestas’s mental condition as it existed almost 20 years ago, we find no abuse of 11 Case: 15-70015 Document: 00513434126 Page: 12 Date Filed: 03/22/2016 No. 15-70015 discretion. The arguments about what might be discovered still have to be examined from the perspective of what trial counsel reasonably should have known and done those many years ago. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689. The district court did not err in failing to allow this inquiry to proceed. Because we agree with the district court that there is no basis to hold trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to investigate further the possible questions of mental illness and substance abuse, Ayestas’s state habeas counsel were not ineffective for failing to pursue that line of investigation. Raising every conceivable claim is neither required nor beneficial. Ayestas’s state habeas counsel raised 16 claims for relief, including 10 ineffective assistance of counsel arguments. There was no shortage of claims, though mere numbers of claims do not dispel the possibility of constitutional ineffectiveness. Because we have already held that trial counsel was not ineffective in failing to raise these particular claims, at most, Ayestas’s arguments deal with the strategic choices the state habeas lawyers had to make. Such choices are not subject to second-guessing by a court. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689. In summary, the district court correctly rejected the assertion that Ayestas’s trial and state habeas attorneys were ineffective. As a result, because Ayestas cannot show that his claim is viable and that assistance was reasonably necessary, the district court properly determined that Ayestas was not entitled to a mitigation specialist under Section 3599(f). To the extent that Ayestas also appeals the district court’s November 18, 2014 memorandum opinion denying habeas relief on the merits, and the April 1, 2015 order denying his Rule 59(e) motion, these appeals are foreclosed. For these appeals, Ayestas requires a COA. As mentioned above, one requirement for the granting of a COA is a valid claim on the merits. For the same reasons 12 Case: 15-70015 Document: 00513434126 Page: 13 Date Filed: 03/22/2016 No. 15-70015 that we have explained above for why Ayestas is not entitled to a mitigation specialist, we also deny Ayestas a COA.