Court Opinion

ID: 9564086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:54:11.854116+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:13.565613
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
After we remanded to give the condemned exactly what he asked for, an ev-identiary hearing before a federal district judge, the learned trial judge carefully reviewed the evidence presented and correctly applied the relevant federal law under AEDPA and Strickland v. Washington. Today our court continues a distressing trend of finely parsing defense counsel judgments, based on the most charitable (to the condemned) or malevolent (to the defense counsel) view of facts and holds that counsel was constitutionally ineffective. I emphasize constitutionally because in a common-sense way, counsel was of course ineffective — his *786client was sentenced to death. However, that is not the standard that we are to apply, and I therefore dissent.
I. Ineffectiveness
“[T]he crux of [Mason’s] challenge is that his counsel provided ineffective assistance because they failed to investigate his background and conduct any in-depth interviews of his family members prior to the decision on June 22, 1994, to limit the mitigation presentation to appeals for mercy and claims of residual doubt.” Op. at 773 (emphasis added). The emphasized portions of the above quote illustrate the two principal bases on which today’s opinion rests: the adequacy and the timing of the interviews defense counsel Ted Coulter conducted with Mason’s family members. Coulter’s decision not to present any evidence related to Mason’s family background at the sentencing phase was a strategic one, but today’s opinion argues that the investigation supporting this decision was itself unreasonable.
First, with regard to the timing, the opinion places considerable emphasis on the fact that Coulter did not verifiably conduct any interviews with Mason’s family members prior to June 22, 1994, the date on which Coulter, in consultation with the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, made the strategic decision not to present any evidence related to Mason’s family background at the sentencing phase (for fear that it would open the door to damaging rebuttal evidence). See Op. at 777-79. It states “Coulter’s records and testimony did demonstrate that he talked very briefly to some, but not all, of Mason’s family members, but the only conversations with family members for which Coulter’s notes establish a known date took place after June 22. Thus, what little information Coulter learned from these brief conversations also could not have supported his strategic decision.... ” Ibid. While Coulter’s contemporaneous notes do not establish a date for most of the interviews he conducted with Mason’s family members,1 it is incorrect to state categorically that “Coulter’s extensive testimony at the evi-dentiary hearing demonstrates that prior to selecting his mitigation strategy on June 22 Coulter did not interview members of Mason’s family.” Op. at 776. Note Coulter’s testimony:
Q. Now, your decision then to forego the presentation of the family history and to forego Dr. Spare’s deposition—
A. Yes, sir.
Q. —at trial was based on the rebuttal that was going to come in, correct?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And it was based on, in your opinion, the rebuttal being stronger than any mitigation that you were to get out of this, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, this was based on what you have stated is brief interviews with Mason’s family, is that correct?
A. Correct.
Q. And that’s the information that you based your decision on correct?
A. Yes, sir.
*787J.A. 1736. Coulter unequivocally testified that his strategic decision was based on the interviews he conducted with Mason’s family, which leads one to believe that he must have conducted at least some of the interviews before making that decision. Nevertheless, Coulter could not remember — testifying ten years later — the exact dates of those interviews, and he would commit only to having conducted them pri- or to the mitigation hearing itself. J.A. 1655. Thus, the best that can be said for the opinion is that Coulter’s testimony fails to establish whether (or which of) the interviews were conducted before June 22. But Mason bears the burden of establishing the inadequacy of Coulter’s investigation — Coulter is not responsible for proving the opposite, ten years after the fact. Moreover, there is no dispute that Coulter addressed mitigation matters to some extent with Maurice Mason himself during jail visits that indisputably occurred long before June 22. Op. at 778; J.A. 1593-94. He also spoke with Mason’s wife, Terry Mason, on numerous occasions long before June 22, and she was often present during Coulter’s jail visits with her husband, some of which addressed mitigation matters. J.A. 1303-05, 1586, 1588, 1598.
Second, perhaps anticipating this argument, the opinion notes that, even if Coulter had conducted the interviews prior to June 22, his investigation was still inadequate. Op. at 779. It is asserted that the evidence that Coulter’s investigation did uncover was too limited to make a reasonable decision regarding strategy, and, in fact, triggered a duty to investigate further. Ibid, (citing Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 519, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003)). The opinion places great weight on Coulter’s admissions that the interviews with the family members were not “in-depth” or “extensive.” Op. at 776, 780.2 And it faults him for failing to question the family members about an apparent discrepancy between what Mason’s father and older brother said about family life in the Mason household (that there was physical discipline but no abuse) and what was contained in the state documents reviewed by Coulter (detailing significant physical injuries that Mason sustained, allegedly at the hands of his father). Op. at 777-79, 780.
Yet, the record makes clear that Coulter was already aware of virtually all of the details of Mason’s background necessary to make a strategic decision whether to pursue a mitigation defense based on family history. That is to say, the opinion does not point to a single significant piece of evidence in the record of which Coulter was unaware due to his failure to investigate further3 Rather, the record establishes that Coulter knew that there was significant domestic violence in the house*788hold, including (1) that Mason was physically abused, (2) that his father would beat his mother, (3) that the children would be tied up and whipped, (4) that his father once stabbed his brother, (5) that Mason’s father “beat him with sticks while in the backseat of the ear,” and (6) that Mason ran away from home because his father beat him often. J.A. 1672, 1678-79, 1696-97, 2186. Coulter was similarly aware of the extensive drug abuse in Mason’s home, including (1) that Mason’s parents had “been selling dope before [he] was born,” J.A. 1236, 1672, (2) that they started selling cocaine by the mid-1980s, J.A. 1672, (3) that they had drug-trafficking convictions, J.A. 1679, (4) that Mason started using drugs himself “in the middle elementary grades,” J.A. 1179, (5) that he would steal his parents’ drugs (for which he would be punished), J.A. 1180-81, 2277, and (6) that Mason “got into cocaine at age 14,” J.A. 2240.
Thus, even if Coulter had done everything that the opinion would require of him (e.g., contacting every single family member, or conducting more interviews of “greater depth”), he would have learned virtually nothing that he did not already know. This stands in stark contrast to Wiggins, in which trial counsel’s failure to investigate left a litany of horrific details of Wiggins’s childhood undiscovered.4 Indeed, compared to trial counsel’s investigation in Wiggins — which was limited to the review of a one-page pre-sentence report and some rudimentary social services documents5 — Coulter’s investigation was extraordinarily thorough: he reviewed Mason’s criminal records, juvenile records, Children’s Services records, counseling records, and educational records (described by the opinion as “voluminous,” op. at 777); he spoke with Mason’s probation officer, Lowell Titus, who was also Mason’s father’s probation officer; he arranged for a psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Spare, to do an evaluation of Mason’s mental health, including some exploration of Mason’s troubled childhood;6 he spoke with the deputy *789sheriffs who encountered Mason in jail; he talked with Mike Ring, a Children’s Services worker who was familiar with Mason’s case; he interviewed Mason himself and Mason’s wife about Mason’s background and family life; and he interviewed (however briefly) Mason’s father, mother, brother, sister, and aunt.7 J.A. 1585-98, 1654-57,1680-81.
Although one might argue that Coulter’s decision to forego a mitigation defense based on family history was a foolish one, it was not the product of a constitutionally deficient investigation. There is nothing that any further investigation would have revealed that would have led Coulter to weigh his options differently and come to a different conclusion. He possessed all of the essential facts regarding Mason’s background necessary to make a reasonable strategic choice. The opinion basically second-guesses that choice, and in so doing, applies the very hindsight that Strickland forbids.
II. Prejudice
Because Mason fails to carry his burden of demonstrating that Coulter’s investigation was constitutionally inadequate under Strickland’s first prong, there is no need to address prejudice. The opinion is quite clear in holding that counsel was ineffective, not for making the strategic choice to rely on residual doubt at sentencing, but for failing to conduct a sufficiently thorough investigation to support that choice. Thus, in order for there to be prejudice resulting from this error, it must be because a competent defense attorney, having conducted a more thorough mitigation investigation, would instead have made the opposite strategic choice — electing to present a mitigation defense based on Mason’s troubled upbringing rather than relying on residual doubt. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that any competent defense counsel would ever have made this choice, no matter the extent of the mitigation investigation, because the trial judge (according to Coulter) would have allowed the prosecution to introduce damning rebuttal evidence, including, inter alia, the testimony of an eighteen-year-old woman who had previously been raped by Mason — a crime “eerily similar” to the one for which the jury had just convicted him. See Mason v. Mitchell, 320 F.3d 604, 646 (6th Cir.2003) (Boggs, J., dissenting in part).
The opinion argues that the trial court was prepared to permit the prosecution’s rebuttal evidence if defense counsel sought to admit Dr. Spare’s deposition testimony, but that it never specifically addressed the potential rebuttal evidence, which remains a “hypothetical question.” Op. at 782, 783. It also argues that the state of evidence law in Ohio as it existed when Mason was tried was that, so long as none of the defense witnesses misrepresented Mason’s criminal history or likelihood for future dangerousness, the prosecution would not have been permitted to introduce any rebuttal evidence. Op. at 781-83. While the opinion’s views on these matters could be thoroughly controverted, I have not done so because, in a correct analysis, they are irrelevant.
Even if the opinion’s analyses of Ohio evidence law and DePew were correct as a matter of prediction of ultimate resolution *790by courts of last resort, Coulter’s estimation of the trial judge was that he would have permitted the introduction of the rebuttal evidence regardless. To be sure, as I stated before our remand,
[djefense counsel ... could have ... appealed a district court decision to admit Mason’s negative history as rebuttal evidence. Yet we have never held that defense counsel is constitutionally obligated to take such a risk, especially when the trial court’s ruling is far from clearly the abuse of discretion that would be required to overturn its evi-dentiary determination.
Mason, 320 F.3d at 645 (Boggs, J., dissenting in part). And it is entirely possible that, had defense counsel pursued a mitigation strategy that relied on extensively describing Mason’s character and background, one of the family members might accidentally have commented in some way on Mason’s criminal history, which would have opened the door to the disastrous rebuttal evidence even under the court’s reading of DePew. (In which case, no doubt, Coulter would be accused of ineffectiveness for failing to rely solely on residual doubt.)
It is also notable, and remarkable, that the opinion waves off the likely, or plausible, outcome had the “poor me” defense been presented at trial as merely hypothetical, and never flatly states that there is a reasonable probability, in that courtroom, at that time, that petitioner would not have been sentenced to death, in light of the actual likelihood of the devastating rebuttal.
III. Conclusion
This opinion sets an almost impossibly high bar for defense counsel in capital cases. Defense counsel is now required “to locate and interview the client’s family members ... and virtually everyone else who knew the client and his family, including neighbors, teachers, clergy, case workers, doctors, correctional, probation or parole officers, and others,” Van Hook v. Anderson, 535 F.3d 458, 463 (6th Cir.2008) (quoting the ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Counsel in Death Penalty Cases ¶ 10.7, at 83); he must interview them long enough so that those interviews can be characterized as “extensive” and “in-depth,” op. at 776; every conceivable family member must be contacted, no matter that defense counsel has spoken with the defendant, his wife, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, and cousin (along with several non-family members), op. at 778-81; and he must do all this even if he reasonably believes (based on the trial court’s rulings and his own reasonable interpretation of state law) that the introduction of any evidence regarding the defendant’s family background could open the door to truly disastrous rebuttal evidence by the prosecution. Nothing in Strickland or its progeny requires defense counsel to go to such extreme lengths in order to meet the (relatively low) threshold of “reasonably effective assistance.”
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. Coulter interviewed Michelle Floyd (Maurice Mason’s sister), J.A. 1657, 1680; James Mason, Jr. (his brother), J.A. 1654, 1680; Ruby Mason (his mother), J.A. 1680; James Mason, Sr. (his father), J.A. 1656, 1680; and Wilma Jones (his aunt), J.A. 1681. Coulter must also have spoken at some point with Tara Dyer (Mason's cousin), because he called her as a witness during the sentencing phase. J.A. 724. Coulter's notes indicate that he conducted phone interviews with Michelle Floyd and Ruby Mason on June 26 (though it is not clear that this was the only time he ever spoke with them). J.A. 1334. There is no indication when the other interviews may have taken place. Coulter could not remember whether he had ever interviewed four other of Maurice Mason’s siblings, and there was no evidence to suggest that he had.

. Coulter testified that these interviews were "very brief[].” J.A. 1680. Nevertheless, at least one of the interviews (with Mason’s older brother) was long enough for Coulter to compile a page of notes. J.A. 1450. The notes demonstrate that Coulter learned important details regarding Mason’s upbringing, including that Mason was the "wild one,” that there “was a drug problem in the home,” and that Mason was whipped. Ibid.

. To be sure, there are some details that might have emerged from exhaustive further investigation. For example, there is an instance in which Mason witnessed his mother shoot his father (non-fatally). There is also evidence that Mason's father ran a prostitution ring, but, as the district court stated,
the duty to investigate further is triggered only when the information that trial counsel already reviews warrants further investigation. Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 527, 123 S.Ct. 2527. Neither defense trial counsel here encountered any information in either their interviews with family members or their review of documents that suggested that the Petitioner’s father was involved with prostitution. Thus, counsel could not have reasonably known about it nor were *788they constitutionally required to discover its existence.
J.A. 405.

.These include that Wiggins’s mother
frequently left Wiggins and his siblings home alone for days, forcing them to beg for food and to eat paint chips and garbage. Mrs. Wiggins' abusive behavior included beating the children for breaking into the kitchen, which she often kept locked. She had sex with men while her children slept in the same bed and, on one occasion, forced petitioner’s hand against a hot stove burner — an incident that led to petitioner’s hospitalization. At the age of six, the State placed Wiggins in foster care. Petitioner’s first and second foster mothers abused him physically, and ... the father in his second foster home repeatedly molested and raped him. At age 16, petitioner ran away from his foster home and began living on the streets. He returned intermittently to additional foster homes, including one in which the foster mother's sons allegedly gang-raped him on more than one occasion. After leaving the foster care system, Wiggins entered a Job Corps program and was allegedly sexually abused by his supervisor.
Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 516-17, 123 S.Ct. 2527 (citations omitted).

. Wiggins’s defense counsel also arranged for a psychological evaluation, but, unlike Mason's psychiatric evaluation, the evaluation of Wiggins “revealed nothing ... of [his] life history.” Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 523, 123 S.Ct. 2527.

. The opinion describes the evaluation as "limited ... solely to determining Mason’s potential for rehabilitation and the likelihood of future dangerousness; Dr. Spare did not cover Mason’s background or childhood in any great detail.” Op. at 777. Although Coulter did describe the evaluation as "very limited,” J.A. 1637, Dr. Spare described it as a "more in-depth evaluation of [Mason’s] situation and background, including some personality evaluation,” J.A. 1178. However one chooses to characterize it, Dr. Spare clearly did go into some depth on the issues of drug *789abuse and physical violence in the Mason household. See J.A. 1178-83. As previously noted, Dr. Spare took a "relatively extensive oral history from Mason” that “recounted essentially all of the facts that, according to [the] court, were not discovered by defense counsel.” Mason v. Mitchell, 320 F.3d 604, 644 (6th Cir.2003) (Boggs, J., dissenting in part).

. Coulter also presumably spoke with Mason's cousin, Tara Dyer. See n. 1 supra. The opinion describes this entire group as a "small subset” of Mason’s family, op. at 780.