Opinion ID: 2975252
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cone’s Brady Claim

Text: In 1980, Gary Cone, who has a high IQ and a college education, committed an unprovoked brutal murder in Memphis. Before that, he fought in the Viet Nam conflict, received a bronze star for bravery in combat, and came home with a mental illness. He returned addicted to drugs and suffering from a serious post-traumatic, wartime stress disorder. The State prosecutor decided to seek the death penalty despite the mitigating evidence and needed to undermine any possible feelings of sympathy that a juror might have for such a mentally ill man guilty of a brutal murder. The prosecutor wanted the jury to feel a strong sense that it should seek retribution for the murder by imposing a sentence of death. In final argument at the guilt phase of the trial, the prosecutor falsely dismissed Cone’s mental illness and argued that Cone “says he’s a drug addict,” but “I say baloney.” During the final argument, the prosecutor flatly told the jury that there was no evidence of drug addiction and, therefore, no mitigating evidence. He reminded them that the State’s medical experts “saw no evidence of any kind, any extent of mental disease or defect” from drug use or any other form of post-traumatic stress syndrome. (App. 150.) The prosecutor repeated the testimony of a witness, Ilene Blankman, that there was no such evidence of drug abuse. (App. 158.) The prosecutor did not want evidence inconsistent with this theory of the case to come before the jury. So far as the prosecutor was concerned, Cone was a perfectly intelligent and normal but evil man who should be executed for the good of society. The prosecutor did not answer Cone’s motion for exculpatory evidence of drug addiction or mental illness by turning over the substantial mitigating evidence that the State had in its files. The prosecutor was successful in undermining any feelings that Cone’s mental illness and drug addiction were mitigating reasons for sparing his life. In rejecting what it called Cone’s “tenuous defense, at best,” and affirming the death sentence in 1984, the Tennessee Supreme Court explained that the only evidence of drug addiction and mental illness that the jury heard was “based purely on his [Cone’s] personal recitation,” and that his “known pattern of conduct” and “the testimony of several witnesses” “raised serious doubts” that he “was under the influence of or experiencing withdrawal from drugs” about his mental illness and drug addiction, the Tennessee Supreme Court said: The only defense interposed on his behalf was that of insanity, or lack of mental capacity, due to drug abuse and to stress arising out of his previous service in the Vietnamese war, some eleven years prior to the events involved in this case. This proved to be a tenuous defense, at best, since neither of the expert witnesses who testified on his behalf had ever seen or heard of him until a few weeks prior to the trial. Neither was a medical doctor or psychiatrist, and neither had purported to treat him as a patient. Their testimony that he lacked mental capacity was based purely upon his personal recitation to them of his history of military service and drug abuse. Cone v. Bell, 665 S.W.2d 87, 90 (Tenn. 1984) (emphasis added). The prosecutors, trial and appellate, convinced both the jury and the Supreme Court that there was no mitigating evidence. No. 99-5279 Cone v. Bell Page 14 (In Tennessee, the trial prosecutor comes from the local district attorney’s office, and appellate and habeas counsel come from the Tennessee Attorney General’s staff.) The exculpatory evidence of drug addiction and mental illness lay in the files of the State police and prosecutor’s offices undiscovered by Cone’s lawyers. Then, eight years after the opinion of the Tennessee Supreme Court, over the strong, persistent objection of State prosecutors in the State Attorney General’s Office, these files became available for the first time as a result of a decision by Judge Cantrell in the Tennessee Court of Appeals, Capital Case Resource Center of Tennessee, Inc. v. Woodall, No. 01-A-019104CH00150, 1992 WL 12217 (Jan. 29, 1992), holding that such police records must be made available under the Tennessee Public Records Act. Based on this decision, Cone’s lawyers searched through these records and found for the first time mitigating evidence that the State prosecutor had refused to disclose in response to the motion for exculpatory evidence. When Sergeant Roby of the Memphis Police Department testified at the trial that he knew of no evidence of drug addiction or abuse, he also knew that he had sent out on August 10 and 11, 1980, detailed teletype all-points-bulletins to police departments around the country saying that Cone was armed, extremely dangerous and a drug user whose car contained “a large quantity of drugs.” (App. 513, 515.) On August 12, he sent out a more detailed bulletin to selected police departments saying that Cone was “believed [to be a] heavy drug user.” (App. 517-26.) These three police bulletins could have been used by defense counsel during trial to undermine Sergeant Roby’s credibility, as well as to establish that it was not “baloney” that Cone had the reputation for “heavy drug use.” The undisclosed evidence supported the testimony of Cone’s two experts concerning his heavy drug use and his mental illness. The documents tended to undermine the State’s two expert witnesses who denied extensive drug use and mental illness. I do not agree with the majority that these documents containing mitigating evidence of drug addiction are not Brady material. Police records also reflect that on August 11, 1980, the police chief of the town where Cone previously lived, Chief Daniels of the Lake Village, Arkansas, police department, advised the Memphis police investigators that Cone “was a heavy drug user.” (App. 450.) Three other witnesses to events advised the police investigators that Cone appeared “weird” and on drugs or “looked wild-eyed” the day before the murders. (App. 449.) The same problem exists with FBI Agent Flynn’s testimony. He also testified that he found no evidence of drug addiction. Later-disclosed FBI documents contained teletypes sent around the country prior to Cone’s arrest that refer to him as an “armed and dangerous drug user” and “subject believed heavy drug user.” Cone has now produced ten such teletypes or letters. (App. 450-52.) I do not agree with the majority that these documents are not Brady material. Flynn, as the agent investigating the case, had to know that Cone had a reputation as a heavy drug user and that FBI documents so described him. Cone believes that this long string of FBI documents would have undermined Flynn’s trial testimony, as well as the testimony of the State’s two medical experts, and would have supported the testimony of Cone’s medical experts. If one or more jurors had believed that Cone was suffering from a post-traumatic combat stress mental illness and drug addiction — instead of believing it was just “baloney,” as the trial prosecutor and the Attorney General’s office insist — it is unlikely that the jury would have reached a verdict of death.