Court Opinion

ID: 9869769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 19:39:39.68646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:46:04.336038
License: Public Domain

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the grant of a partial remand for reconsideration in light of Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1, 132 S.Ct. 1309, 182 L.Ed.2d 272 (2012). We held in Dickens v. Ryan, 740 F.3d 1302, 1320 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc), that Martinez may provide a path for a state defendant such as Gallegos “to demonstrate cause, if he can show the first two Martinez elements: (1) the claim is substantial and (2) that his PCR counsel was ineffective under Strickland [v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) ].” I do not think that Gallegos has made the minimal showing required for a remand.1
An Arizona jury found that in 1990 Gallegos “had anally raped and killed eight-year-old Kendall Wishon, a girl his brother had raised as a daughter.” Gallegos v. Ryan, 820 F.3d 1013, 1016 (9th Cir. 2016). The trial judge sentenced Gallegos to death. Id. The Arizona Supreme Court initially affirmed the. conviction but remanded for resentencing. State v. Gallegos, 178 Ariz. 1, 870 P.2d 1097 (1994). At resentencing, the trial judge again imposed the death penalty and on appeal the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the sentence. State v. Gallegos, 185 Ariz. 340, 916 P.2d 1056 (1996) (en banc), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 996, 117. S.Ct. 489, 136 L.Ed.2d 382 (1996). At the resentencing, Gallegos’ counsel presented evidence concerning Gallegos’ learning disabilities, that he was a follower, used drugs extensively, was an alcoholic, and was intoxicated at the time of the crime. . .
Gallegos filed a petition for post-conviction relief in state court in 1999, Athough the petition mentioned that counsel had failed to adequately investigate Gallegos’ mental health, the issue was not argued. In 2000, the state court, after holding an evi-dentiary hearing, determined that Gallegos’ claims regarding ineffective assistance of counsel lacked merit and denied Gallegos’ petition. ■
Gallegos filed his federal habeas petition in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona in 2001. In its 2008 order denying the petition, the District Court carefully reviewed the presentation of evidence in Gallegos’ resentencing and iii his state post-conviction proceeding, and concluded that “[i]t is difficult to envision how counsel could have presented a more complete picture of Petitioner’s impairment and history of substance abuse, as well as his passive personality and the dynamics of his relationship with Small-wood.”
The District Court did certify the question of ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing for appeal, and in our April 2016 opinion we basically affirmed the District Court’s decision. Gallegos, 820 F.3d 1013.
However, in 2011, while this appeal was pending, Gallegos’ counsel procured a new diagnosis of Gallegos’ mental health from a clinical neuro-psychologist. In part on the basis of Gallegos self-reporting of “what appear to be at least three significant head traumas when he was a youth,”2 the neu-*1125ro-psychologist opined that “[ojverall, considering the history, interview information, and neuropsychological profile elucidated above, it is my opinion that there is objective evidence of cognitive dysfunction reflecting brain-based disturbances in functioning” He further opined “that Mr. Gallegos’ brain damage was present at the time he committed the crimes.”
On the existing record, Gallegos has not made the minimal showing of ineffective assistance of counsel in regard to investigating his mental health. The record indicates that over the course of the first decade after the crime, Gallegos’ attorneys queried Gallegos, his friends, and family about his mental health. Considerable information was developed concerning his learning disabilities, his drug use, his alcoholism, and being a follower, but nobody suggested that he had “organic brain damage.” It is possible that, as Dr. Heilbron-ner opines, Gallegos has “organic brain damage.” But' this does not even suggest ineffective assistance of counsel at resen-tencing or on post-conviction review because the diagnosis is offered fpr the first time some 30 years after the crime and is based on Gallegos’ self reporting,- also some 30 years after the crime, of possible “significant head traumas” that occurred before the crime. Dr. Heilbronner’s report states that Gallegos did not go to a hospital for the most serious of his head traumas, and the implication is that he did not seek medical attention for either of the other traumas. Counsel can hardly be faulted when Gallegos, his friends, and his family all failed to relate the occurrence of head traumas (not medically reported) when asked about Gallegos’ mental health including his learning disabilities, use of drugs, and alcoholism.
This is not to suggest that the State’s other arguments for rejecting Gallegos’ “new claim” lack merit.3 Rather, I would hold that even assuming that Gallegos hurdled all the other obstacles to asserting an ineffective assistance of counsel claim some 30 years after the crime, he nonetheless has failed to make the minimal showing of ineffective assistance of counsel required for a remand and an evidentiary hearing in the district court. Accordingly, I dissent from the grant of a partial remand for reconsideration in light of Martinez, 566 U.S. 1, 132 S.Ct. 1309, 182 L.Ed.2d 272.

. In Martinez, 132 S.Ct. at 1318-19, the Su- . preme Court indicated that a defendant need only meet the standard for a .certificate of appealability.

. The alleged incidents are (1) when he had been drinking he tried to . jump over a flower bed, but fell backwards, hit his head on a concrete block, and' has no memory of what happened the rest of the night; (2) on an occasion when he was riding a 3-wheeler which crashed, “he recalls waking up on the living room floor the next day and the back of *1125his shirt was bloody"; and (3) another time when he was on a 3-wheeler he hit the back of at tree and "was out for awhile.”

. In opposing Gallegos’ petition for rehearing, the State raises a number of non-frivolous arguments including whether Gallegos' claim is new, whether it is timely, and whether, even if the claim is new, it is substantial.