Opinion ID: 2743618
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: “Observation Evidence”

Text: On appeal, Clark relies on the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding that his trial counsel did not preserve observation evidence as to mens rea. Clark, 598 U.S. at 763. Clark argues that reasonable counsel would have preserved the issue through an offer of proof when the trial court offered, and failing to do so prejudiced Clark. The State argues that Clark’s tripartite evidence distinctions and its narrow interpretation of Mott created new law that Clark’s counsel could not have reasonably been expected to anticipate. Appellee’s Opening Brief 14 (citing Smith v. Murray, 477 U.S. 527, 536 (1986)). With regard to prejudice, the State argues that there was no evidence to suggest that Clark did not know the victim was a police officer, so even if observation evidence were considered on the subject of mens rea, Clark’s claim would fail. CLARK V. ARNOLD 27
We conclude that it was not contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, Strickland for the state court to determine that Clark’s trial counsel did not provide ineffective assistance by failing to preserve explicitly the issue of observation evidence. See Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 786. First, it was unclear what evidence Mott excluded before the Supreme Court established the definitive interpretation in Clark. Mott concerned the testimony of an expert on BWS, but its language swept broadly: “Arizona does not allow evidence of a defendant’s mental disorder short of insanity either as an affirmative defense or to negate the mens rea element of a crime.” Mott, 931 P.2d at 1051 (first emphasis added). The Arizona Supreme Court wrote of “evidence,” not merely expert evidence that could speak to a defendant’s mental disorder, and it held that such evidence offered to “negate[] specific intent” was “not admissible for this purpose.” Id. at 1054. Subsequent Arizona cases did not clarify the ambiguity. See State v. McKeon, 38 P.3d 1236, 1240 n.2 (Ariz. 2002) (distinguishing Mott on the ground that Mott concerned a mental disorder, unlike the involuntary intoxication defense at issue). Even the magistrate judge, who recommended granting the petition, noted that, “prior to Clark there was no jurisprudence holding that Mott was limited to expert testimony and did not include ‘observational evidence.’” During Clark’s direct appeal, the State argued that Mott barred “any evidence reflecting upon a mentally ill criminal defendant’s ability to form the necessary mens rea,” which was the interpretation the Arizona Court of Appeals adopted. Accordingly, as the Supreme Court itself debated, it was not clear before Clark whether Mott announced an “expansive rule of exclusion . . . without any suggestion of a limitation depending on the kind of evidence,” or one 28 CLARK V. ARNOLD “limited to expert testimony.” Clark, 548 U.S. at 786 (Kennedy, J., dissenting); see id. at 762 (majority opinion) (“[W]e understand that Mott is meant to confine to the insanity defense any consideration of characteristic behavior associated with mental disease.”) (citations omitted). In light of the ambiguities within Mott itself, the paucity of other relevant case law interpreting it, and the overlapping, inexact boundaries between the categories of observation, mental-disease, and capacity evidence within the Supreme Court’s own formulation, see id. at 759, it was not an unreasonable application of Strickland for the state court to determine that Clark’s trial counsel was not ineffective when it interpreted Mott more broadly than the Court did. Doing so did not fall “outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance,” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690, especially where “‘[a] fair assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to . . . evaluate the conduct from counsel’s perspective at the time.’” Smith v. Murray, 477 U.S. 527, 536 (1986) (first alteration in original) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689). That is all the more true here, since “[w]e do not expect counsel to be prescient about the direction the law will take.” Hoffman v. Arave, 455 F.3d 926, 940 (9th Cir. 2006), vacated in part on other grounds, 552 U.S. 117, 128 (2008) (per curiam); see also Lowry v. Lewis, 21 F.3d 344, 346 (9th Cir. 1994) (holding that a lawyer is not ineffective for failing to anticipate a decision in a later case). Second, while the U.S. Supreme Court and the Arizona Court of Appeals referred to Clark’s counsel’s failure to make an offer of proof, the record shows that all of the evidence that could have negated Clark’s mens rea was admitted and it is, at best, unclear what evidence the trial court considered CLARK V. ARNOLD 29 and what it excluded. With regard to evidence of Clark’s delusions, the trial court said it was bound by Mott and would focus on the evidence’s relevance to the insanity defense, but it would let counsel “get all that stuff in because it goes to the insanity issue and because [the trial was] not in front of a jury.” Middlebrook, one of Clark’s trial lawyers, later said that, following the court’s ruling on the Mott issues, he thought he “had preserved” the issue of “being able to bring in lay people to discuss mens rea and, in effect, to negate [Clark’s] ability to premeditate and/or perceive that Officer Moritz was in fact a police officer versus an alien.” And, during trial, Clark presented significant evidence from expert and lay witnesses who spoke of Clark’s odd behaviors and his expressed beliefs that aliens were taking the form of government agents in Flagstaff. Clark’s trial counsel believed that they had introduced “all the evidence” that they thought was needed. “It wasn’t like we left out a piece of evidence,” Middlebrook later said. In Clark, the U.S. Supreme Court noted that the trial judge did not “specify any particular evidence that he refused to consider on the mens rea issue.” Clark, 548 U.S. at 763. And, while holding that Clark’s counsel did not preserve the observation evidence claim, the Court hedged, concluding that the trial court “may have restricted observation evidence admissible on mens rea to the insanity defense alone, but we cannot be sure.” Id. at 764–65 (first emphasis added). And if the Supreme Court itself was uncertain what the state court had considered, it was not deficient performance for Clark’s counsel to believe that the state court had considered all of the relevant evidence going to Clark’s mens rea consistent with the then-prevailing interpretation of Mott. See Bell v. Cone, 543 U.S. 447, 455 (2005) (“We do not think 30 CLARK V. ARNOLD that a federal court can presume so lightly that a state court failed to apply its own law.”); Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 653 (1990) (“Trial judges are presumed to know the law and to apply it in making their decisions.”), overruled on other grounds by Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002). Accordingly, we hold that the state court did not unreasonably apply Strickland when it held that Clark’s trial counsel did not fall below an objective standard of reasonableness. See Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 521 (2003); see also Mancuso v. Olivarez, 292 F.3d 939, 954 (9th Cir. 2002) (“We will not second-guess such decisions or use hindsight to reconstruct the circumstances of counsel’s challenged conduct.”).
Because a defendant must show both that his counsel was deficient and that he was prejudiced by the counsel’s actions, our finding on performance would end our analysis. See Murtishaw v. Woodford, 255 F.3d 926, 940 (9th Cir. 2001). However, even if Clark could show that the trial court did not consider observation evidence, he cannot show that he was prejudiced because he cannot show that there was a “substantial, not just conceivable” likelihood of a different result if the court had considered such evidence. Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 792. Since “the state courts found the representation adequate, they never reached the issue of prejudice, and so we examine this element of the Strickland claim de novo.” Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 390 (2005) (internal citation omitted). “[I]n order to determine whether counsel’s errors prejudiced the outcome of the trial, ‘it is essential to compare CLARK V. ARNOLD 31 the evidence that actually was presented to the jury with the evidence that might have been presented had counsel acted differently.’” Murtishaw, 255 F.3d at 940 (quoting Bonin v. Calderon, 59 F.3d 815, 834 (9th Cir. 1995)). In the instant case, the state presented substantial evidence that Clark had the required mens rea—of “knowing[ly] . . . caus[ing] the death of a law enforcement officer.” Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-1105(A)(3). Specifically, the state presented evidence of: Clark’s professed anger toward the police and his fantasies of retaliating against them; his efforts to attract a police officer the night of the killing by circling a residential block with loud music blaring; the use of a weapon at close range from behind, showing an intent to kill; Clark’s recognition of and response to police indicia (i.e., Mortiz wore a uniform and Clark pulled over in response to emergency lights and sirens); and Clark’s flight from the scene and attempt to dispose of the murder weapon. The magistrate judge wrote that such evidence was “not inconsistent with a paranoid delusion that the officer was an alien intent on killing him. . . . A malevolent alien in a police uniform, driving a squad car with lights and sirens, is still a malevolent alien.” Such conclusions draw us too deeply into the shadowy details of Clark’s hallucinations. The statute requires proving that Clark intentionally or knowingly killed a police officer—that Clark might have thought the officer was possessed by an alien does not otherwise negate the mens rea needed to violate the statute. And, more to the point, the substantial evidence the State presented that showed Clark’s intent to kill a police officer, regardless of whether Clark believed that the police officer was otherwise possessed, means that Clark cannot show, as he must, “that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors,” if they occurred, “the result of the proceeding would 32 CLARK V. ARNOLD have been different.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. Accordingly, because we conclude that the result of the proceeding would not have been different even if Clark’s counsel’s was deficient, Clark was not prejudiced. See Hurles v. Ryan, 752 F.3d 768, 782 (9th Cir. 2014) (holding petitioner did not establish prejudice even where counsel’s performance likely proved deficient).