Court Opinion

ID: 9495194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:57:05.727061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:52.963775
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority’s opinion affirming the district court’s Solomonic decision to deny Robert St. Pierre’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, insofar as it related to his conviction (and to grant the petition insofar as it related to his death sentence) does the best that can be done with the facts surrounding the quality of the legal assistance St. Pierre received from his attorney throughout the proceedings. Unfortunately, in my opinion it is not enough to warrant the affirmance of the denial of the petition with respect to St. Pierre’s guilty plea. As has been the case throughout the legal proceedings in St. Pierre’s case, see, e.g., St. Pierre v. Cowan, 217 F.3d 939 (7th Cir.2000), St. Pierre’s mental illness — its nature, its severity, its effect on his crime, its effect on his ability to assist in his own defense, and its impact on his sentence — is a central problem. In a case where mental illness is or may be present, we must set aside our normal assumptions about human behavior and rationality of deci-sionmaking, and instead consider what occurred in light of the effects of any illness on the defendant’s actions. When one does so in St. Pierre’s case, I believe we are left with no choice but to grant the petition in its entirety.
I
Although the majority has given a full account of the facts of St. Pierre’s crime, it has omitted certain information about the course of proceedings in the state courts that I find highly pertinent. We begin, however, on common ground: shortly after the two murders were committed, the police arrested St. Pierre, and he was charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of armed robbery, and two counts of concealing a homicidal death. He went to trial before a jury on these charges, upon the conclusion of which the jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed that conviction and remanded the case for a new trial, on the ground that inculpatory statements St. Pierre made at the Skokie (Illinois) police station following his arrest were improper*637ly admitted into evidence after St. Pierre had invoked his right to counsel.
The majority has also recounted most of the pertinent details about St. Pierre’s retrial, which took place in 1988 before Circuit Judge Richard Neville, but it is here that I believe additional information helps to throw light on the problem before us. Judge Neville appointed Robert Barasa to represent St. Pierre. The majority characterizes Barasa as a “seasoned” trial attorney and former Cook County Public Defender, but neglects to mention that, no matter how seasoned an attorney Barasa was for ordinary criminal cases, he had never before had primary responsibility for a capital case. It is telling in that regard that the Report of the Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment, April 2002,1 includes among its recommendations several pertaining to the qualifications for counsel in capital cases, including an endorsement of new rules from the Illinois Supreme Court that creates a specialized Capital Litigation Trial Bar (membership in which requires prior experience as lead or co-counsel in at least two murder prosecutions) and further requires that lead counsel in all capital cases be a member of that bar. See Ill. S.Ct. Rules 416(d), 714(b). My point here is certainly not that these rules are retroactive; it is only that thoughtful people throughout the State of Illinois, including the members of the state Supreme Court and the members of the Governor’s Commission, have recognized the importance of prior experience for defense counsel in capital cases. Someone like Barasa who lacks such experience is thus a novice to the capital area, no matter how much he has done elsewhere.
Very shortly after these new proceedings began, to everyone’s astonishment, St. Pierre announced that he intended to enter a blind plea of guilty to all charges. With commendable caution, Judge Neville decided that this rather bizarre decision (especially considering the fact that St. Pierre’s inculpatory statements could no longer be used) warranted a competency hearing. Judge Neville found further reason for a hearing when he learned from Barasa that St. Pierre’s motivation for his planned guilty plea lay in his abhorrence of the conditions at Cook County jail and his desire to return to the state prison. In connection with the competency proceedings, the court ordered that St. Pierre be examined by Dr. Albert Stipes, a staff psychiatrist at the Cook County Psychiatric Institute; Dr. Stipes was to look into St. Pierre’s fitness to plead guilty, to be tried, and to be sentenced. As the court put it, he wanted to be sure that “Mr. St. Pierre [was] hitting on all eight” when he entered his blind plea. That same day, August 8, 1988, Dr. Stipes conducted a one-hour interview of St. Pierre and reviewed the records of a psychiatric examination from March 1981, in which St. Pierre’s mental fitness had been assessed for purposes of a theft charge. Nothing else was brought to Dr. Stipes’s attention, although records documenting St. Pierre’s mental health existed dating back as far as St. Pierre’s childhood. (The majority speculates that Dr. Stipes may have seen these particular “old” records, ante at 622 n. 8, but there is nothing at all in the record to support this conjecture.) Dr. Stipes concluded that St. Pierre was fit for pleading, trial, and sentencing, yet at the same time he acknowledged that St. Pierre was pleading guilty to escape the intolerable conditions at Cook County jail.
*638Upon hearing Dr. Stipes’s opinion, Bara-sa did nothing to discredit the ultimate finding of fitness. He did not mention to the court, for example, that he knew that St. Pierre had attempted suicide in the Cook County jail, nor did he otherwise alert the court to the fact that there were serious questions about St. Pierre’s mental and emotional health. Furthermore, even though Dr. Stipes’s opinion was unfavorable to his client, Barasa did not seek permission to have another mental health professional evaluate St. Pierre. All he did was highlight St. Pierre’s desire to leave the Cook County jail, but he failed to link-this desire to any mental illness. After hearing all this, Judge Neville pointed out that his only reason for ordering the examination was the oddness of St. Pierre’s sudden desire to plead guilty. The judge ruled that St. Pierre was indeed competent to proceed.
Even then, however, Judge Neville’s concern is apparent in the record. He decided to engage in a colloquy with St. Pierre himself, to ensure that the plea was not motivated solely by the jail problem. The judge reminded St. Pierre of his right to a trial before a jury or the court and stated that he would not accept a guilty plea if St. Pierre had not in fact committed the crimes with which he was charged. St. Pierre then acknowledged that he was pleading guilty against the advice of his lawyer, but he said that as long as he was at Cook County jail it was not worth fighting the case. At that point, the following statements were made:
Barasa: [I]t is the defendant’s wish to plead guilty because of his inability to deal with his incarceration at County Jail where he is right now, and that if he could be transferred to a location within County Jail, anywhere where he could be away from some of the, apparently he’s told me that there’s gangs, there’s homosexuality, there’s drugs, there’s weapons, and that these factors upset him so much that he cannot, to him it is not worth it to fight this case ....
St. Pierre: [I]f it were possible that I could spend my time, okay, during the proceedings of this case in the penitentiary, maximum security penitentiary, and I would be more than willing, okay, to assist my attorney, okay?
The trial court rejected these requests and told St. Pierre that his only option was Cook County jail; at the same time, the judge again reiterated that he would not accept a plea of guilty unless St. Pierre was really admitting he was guilty of the crimes.
During these discussions, it is at best disputed whether anyone told St. Pierre that one of the rights he would be giving up if he pleaded guilty was the right to raise an insanity defense, and that if he raised that defense, the state would have the burden of proving his sanity beyond a reasonable doubt. In his deposition, Bara-sa claims that he did so, but nothing on the record reveals this. In the end, however, this is not an important dispute. If St. Pierre is really mentally ill, it is hard to say how valuable such advice would have been in any event — how reliable are the decisions of someone who is operating within a delusional system? If St. Pierre is not really mentally ill, then the analysis suggested by the majority might be applicable. But the key question is the way Barasa was handling the issue of mental illness, not the way St. Pierre might have been responding to questions posed to him. As the majority notes, in the end the court *639accepted the blind plea, and St. Pierre waived his right to a sentencing jury.
The very next day, August 9, 1988, Bar-asa filed a motion on St. Pierre’s behalf seeking to withdraw the guilty plea. The stated grounds related, not surprisingly, to St. Pierre’s motivation for the plea: it argued that his only reason for pleading was to obtain release from Cook County jail. St. Pierre himself indicated to the court that he did not agree with Barasa’s motion and that he did not want to withdraw the plea, because withdrawal would mean more time in Cook County jail. The court denied Barasa’s motion because of St. Pierre’s opposition to it. The state then presented evidence in aggravation without any objection from Barasa. That evidence included his prior theft convictions, an attempt to escape confinement in 1983, and the grisly manner in which the Gibons murders were carried out. The court was then prepared to schedule a date for St. Pierre to present mitigating evidence. Initially, St. Pierre objected, but he ultimately agreed upon a hearing date within three weeks (later extended slightly to September 12).
At the September 12 mitigation hearing, Barasa filed a motion to have St. Pierre examined to determine his sanity at the time of the crime; he explained to the court that his motion was based in part on a discussion he had with Monte Williams, an employee of the Illinois Department of Corrections who held a master’s degree in psychology but was not a licensed psychologist. Barasa had Williams with him to serve as a witness on the question of St. Pierre’s sanity. Despite the majority’s effort to portray Williams as a credible witness, it is clear that he was not. Judge Neville, on the record, branded Williams’s testimony as “ridiculous,” noting that Williams did not seem to understand the legal standard for insanity:
[Wjhen he was asked what the issues of insanity were ...' he said that it had to do with whether the defendant was a danger to himself and whether he was a danger to society. That, of course, is a self-commitment issue, which is what [Williams] says he’s been doing for years, and what he’s most familiar with, and has nothing to do with the issues before me in this courtroom.
This was no surprise to anyone who had been listening to Williams’s description of his own credentials. When asked what he did, Williams claimed that he specialized in “forensic psychology and the area where psychology comes together with anthropology and archaeology.” (One wonders how he managed to combine these three rather different disciplines;' perhaps he assessed sanity by using ancient Native American artifacts in some kind of tribal ceremony, while he observed the patient’s affective response.) Before the St. Pierre proceeding, Williams had never before testified on the issue of sanity at the time of a criminal offense. Moreover, he did not try to compensate for his lack of background by unusual preparation for the hearing.2 To the contrary, he did not bring St. Pierre’s file to the court and he had never formally examined St. Pierre. Instead, according to him, he had chatted with St. Pierre from time to time while St. Pierre was incareer-*640ated at Illinois’s Menard prison, discussing common interests such as Egyptology! Tellingly, Barasa had also made no effort to procure the file.
As already noted, Judge Neville was unimpressed with Williams’s contribution. The judge told Barasa that it was the obligation of the defense to raise the issue of insanity with enough evidence to convince the court that there was something substantial to address. Even so, the judge was willing to listen to Williams insofar as his testimony might bear on mitigation. Williams opined that St. Pierre was not responsible for his actions based on vague psychological problems and an unhappy background. Finally, and rather remarkably, Williams concluded his testimony by analogizing St. Pierre’s mental condition to the mental condition of the “entire nation of Germany” prior to the rise of Adolph Hitler, who was a person (according to Williams) “who most people think was insane, and whom we know wasn’t.” At one point in this unsatisfactory proceeding, Barasa openly admitted to the court that he was not prepared for the hearing and that he had not realized how severe the burden was for someone introducing a defense based upon sanity. Judge Neville appropriately chastised Barasa for being woefully unprepared. In the end, as the majority has noted, the court denied Bara-sa’s motion to determine St. Pierre’s sanity at the time of the offense.
That left very little in the way of mitigation evidence. Barasa introduced a transcript from St. Pierre’s half brother, and testimony from Father John Smyth of the Maryville Academy, where St. Pierre had spent a significant part of his childhood. Father Smyth testified about some of St. Pierre’s school and family experiences. The court also admitted by stipulation a report filed in 1983 by the Associated Mental Health group on St. Pierre’s fitness to stand trial. Last, St. Pierre took the stand to describe his background, including his father’s alcoholism, his mother’s inability to set boundaries, and his ultimate shipment to a group home. The court found that none of the mitigating factors sufficed to lessen St. Pierre’s culpability; it also explicitly found that “there has been no testimony that St. Pierre ever suffered from mental disease or defect”; and it sentenced him to death.
In February 1989, in post-trial proceedings, the court agreed to revisit the issue of St. Pierre’s sanity. St. Pierre agreed to be re-examined by Dr. Stipes, who once again reviewed the same records he had looked at earlier, to which he added the Williams testimony. Once again, even after the passage of this much time, Barasa had never conducted a background investigation, he never subpoenaed records from institutions like Maryville, nor had he tried to have St. Pierre examined by another qualified expert.
On direct review, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed St. Pierre’s conviction and death sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari. Now represented by new counsel, St. Pierre began state post-conviction proceedings. These proceedings were disrupted, as we explained in detail in St. Pierre v. Cowan, supra, by St. Pierre’s inability to decide whether or not he wished to pursue them or to waive all further review. Eventually, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the circuit court of Cook County to conduct a hearing on St. Pierre’s competence to waive further appeals. Only then did his psychological record begin to come into focus. New counsel introduced school records that identified St. Pierre as hyperactive, noted his destructive behavior, and described his “negative” home environment. In this context, “negative” was if anything a euphemism: one of the records stated that St. Pierre’s *641father encouraged St. Pierre to kill his mother. Early psychological testing at Maryville indicated that St. Pierre had uncontrolled destructive behavior, that he suffered from depression, anxiety, and that he had a “phobic nature.” Most importantly, counsel introduced testimony of several psychologists who all diagnosed him as afflicted with bipolar disorder.3 Dr. Louis Hemmerich, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist affiliated with Great Lakes Psychological Services, was of this opinion; Dr. Hemmerich also determined that St. Pierre “may not have been fully able to conform his conduct to the requirement of the law at the time of the commission of the crimes with which he had been charged.” Dr. Henry Lahmeyer (professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University), Dr. Henry Conroe (board-certified forensic psychiatrist), and Dr. Jonathan Kelly, also all concluded that St. Pierre had bipolar disorder. Unlike Dr. Stipes, or even the “ridiculous” Williams, these doctors all had access to the full record of St. Pierre’s history, including the documents from his time at Maryville. Dr. Stipes testified again that he thought St. Pierre was capable of waiving his right to further legal proceedings, but on cross-examination he admitted that he had never, at any time over the years, looked, into the question whether St. Pierre had bipolar disorder.
St. Pierre’s new counsel, who continue to represent him before this court, made it clear that they had béen able to obtain the important background information about St. Pierre from “garden-variety” subpoenas issued to' the schools and institutions at which St. Pierre had spent time.
Because of the confusion over the question whether St. Pierre.was waiving post: conviction remedies, Judge Neville never ruled on the post-conviction petition.4 After our remand, however, the district court reviewed the claims that St. Pierre had not procedurally defaulted. It granted his petition only with respect to Claim VI, which was the one in which St. Pierre claimed that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel during his capital sentencing proceeding. Claim VII had dropped out of the case after we affirmed the district court’s earlier dismissal of that claim. The other claim on which I wish to focus at this point is Claim IV, which argued that St. Pierre was also denied his right to effective assistance of counsel at the guilty plea stage.
II
’St. Pierre’s original petition for a writ of habeas corpus was filed prior to the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), and thus this *642appeal is governed by the standards applied prior to AEDPA’s enactment. St. Pierre v. Cowan, 217 F.3d at 940. Although, as the majority emphasizes, our review of facts found by the state courts is deferential, we review issues of law de novo, including the critical questions whether he received ineffective assistance of counsel during his guilty plea proceedings and the adequacy of that plea. Cabello v. United States, 188 F.3d 871 (7th Cir.1999). Here, of course, the state court never had the chance to make any findings of fact on the underlying issue of St. Pierre’s mental illness because of the way Barasa was handling the proceedings. In any event, it is the Sixth Amendment issue (as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment) that is properly before us. That question, as the majority notes, is governed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).
Under Strickland, St. Pierre has the burden of showing both that his counsel’s performance fell below the minimum level that the Constitution tolerates and that he was prejudiced by the inadequate performance. In the context of a guilty plea, this means that he must prove that the .assistance he received leading up to the plea fell below the constitutional minimum and that he would not have entered the plea had he been adequately represented. See Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 56, 106 S.Ct. 366, 88 L.Ed.2d 203 (1985). The majority finds St. Pierre’s case insufficient, largely because it has assumed that St. Pierre was in fact competent to participate actively in the court proceedings that led to his guilty plea. It finds significant the fact that St. Pierre himself never mentioned his mental health problems. But there is a troubling circularity to this logic: a mentally ill person may not have the capacity to self-diagnose a problem of mental illness; he may be operating within a delusional system; he may believe himself to be some kind of superman; and so on. No one would expect a blind person to give a vivid description of a painting she is near, nor would one expect a person with a severe hearing impairment to discuss knowledgeably the performance on a particular evening of the cello section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Everything St. Pierre did and said in the trial proceedings leading up to, and following, his guilty plea, is suspect because of the compelling evidence of mental illness that post-conviction counsel have uncovered. What we must consider is whether Bara-sa’s failure to find the same information amounted to inadequate performance, and then, if so, whether that inadequate performance prejudiced St. Pierre.
St. Pierre’s current lawyers point to Barasa’s failure to conduct even a rudimentary background investigation of his client as one of his primary errors. As the Fifth Circuit put it in a case decided under the pre-AEDPA standards, “[wjhere counsel (1) makes some exploration of the insanity defense but fails to take an obvious and readily available investigatory step which would have made the defense viable, (2) does not produce reasonable tactical reasons for not pursuing further investigation, and (3) raises no other plausible defense, courts may find ineffective assistance of counsel.” Profitt v. Waldron, 831 F.2d 1245, 1248 (5th Cir.1987). (This court later observed that Profitt’s conclusion, as something developed under pre-AEDPA standards, did not apply in the post-AED-PA context, because the Supreme Court has never had occasion to consider this issue. See Long v. Krenke, 138 F.3d 1160, 1164 (7th Cir.1998). As St. Pierre’s case is governed by pre-AEDPA law, however, the constraint that the Long court found does not apply here.)
*643In my opinion, the record overwhelmingly shows that Barasa’s performance was constitutionally insufficient during the course of the proceedings that led to St. Pierre’s guilty plea, as well as in the proceedings before the trial court after the guilty plea. He admitted at the first sanity hearing that he was unprepared and unaware of what it took to put into play a serious sanity defense. By the time of the second hearing, which Judge Neville conscientiously offered, Barasa was still grossly unprepared. He had not issued so much as a single subpoena to find out what St. Pierre’s mental health history really was. He chose to rely on the “ridiculous” Williams as his only witness — and we have no reason to second-guess Judge Neville’s impression of Williams’s testimony. The utter failure to look into pertinent information cannot be accepted as a strategic choice. The Supreme Court noted in Strickland itself that “strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation.” 466 U.S. at 691, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Here, the issue of St. Pierre’s mental functioning had been called into question by the trial court judge himself; it is hard to imagine a better clue to defense counsel that this is a topic he too ought to exert at least some effort to explore.
The state' argues that Barasa’s actions fell within the range of acceptable professional competence because St. Pierre was so eager to plead guilty. But, once again, that argument suffers from the fallacy of assuming the answer to the very question presented; could St. Pierre make such an important décision? Just because a child is eager to cross the street when a traffic light is still red does not mean that a parent relents and gives her permission for the child to step out into on-coming traffic. If a mentally ill person persistently asked for a rope in his cell, the custodian obviously would not furnish one. It was up to Barasa, St. Pierre’s representative, to make some inquiry into his mental health and the potential for either defenses or mitigation arguments based on that health, without uncritical deference to St. Pierre’s demands. Although the majority insists there wás no evidence that St. Pierre had a mental disorder,5 as our earlier opinion made clear, St. Pierre was displaying precisely the kind of erratic, irrational behavior that accompanies bipolar disorder.6 If what the state really means *644to argue is that there was nothing about St. Pierre to tip Barasa off to the fact that there might be a problem, the record convincingly refutes such a position.
Barasa knew that St. Pierre had won his first appeal and had succeeded in obtaining an order from the Illinois Supreme Court requiring suppression of his jailhouse confession; he knew that St. Pierre was willing to be sentenced to death rather than to await trial in the Cook County jail; he knew that St. Pierre had attempted suicide; and he knew that the trial judge felt that St. Pierre’s decisions were troubling enough that someone needed to make sure he was “hitting on all eight.” If one wanted to take Williams into account (which I think is unnecessary), Barasa also knew that Williams thought St. Pierre was mentally ill. This is ample knowledge on his part to take routine investigatory steps such as gathering together readily available records and seeking permission to have his own expert psychiatrist, with full access to St. Pierre’s mental health history, conduct a thorough examination of St. Pierre. Barasa’s failure to do so constituted ineffective performance, in my opinion.
Before a writ can be granted on the basis of a Sixth Amendment violation, it is of course also necessary to consider the question of prejudice. In my opinion, St. Pierre has also demonstrated this. First, had his bipolar disorder come to light before Judge Neville (whose own decisions were certainly hampered by Barasa’s failure to develop the record properly), it is possible Judge Neville might have appointed a guardian to act for St. Pierre, rather than permitting him to make his own decisions. Such a guardian might have thought St. Pierre ought to have a full trial, rather than pleading guilty. Even if St. Pierre had remained in charge and had pleaded guilty, it is also quite likely that the evidence of the bipolar disorder that was eventually developed (and never considered by the state trial court because of the procedural mix-ups that have plagued this case) would have influenced the court’s decision on the penalty phase. These cases are fact-specific, and for that reason I am not persuaded that the Eighth Circuit’s decision in Antwine v. Delo, 54 F.3d 1357 (8th Cir.1995), based on a situation with many similarities to St. Pierre’s, is dispositive on the prejudice question. The (probable) severity of each man’s disorder, the knowledge counsel had of the probable existence of mental abnormalities, the effect the disorder may have had on the commission of the offense, the effect it was having on the defendant’s ability to assist in his own defense, and many other factors are different in the two cases. In any event, Antwine had insisted that he was interested only in the kind of defense that would produce an acquittal, whereas St. Pierre might also have benefitted at the penalty phase.
To the extent that we should listen to St. Pierre, it is also notable that St. Pierre never rejected Barasa’s efforts to argue that he was insane at the time of the offense. Twice Barasa tried to make this argument, and St. Pierre raised no objection at either point. He even permitted a second evaluation by Dr. Stipes after Bar-asa filed the post-trial motion. This too *645suggests that it was not St. Pierre who was preventing the competent exploration of this topic; it was Barasa.
The district court in St. Pierre’s federal habeas corpus proceedings also concluded that Barasa’s failures were irrelevant because “under Illinois law, St. Pierre’s sanity at' the time of the crime was not an essential element of the crime.” While correct as far as it goes — sanity at the time was an affirmative defense, as codified by Section 6-2(a) of the Criminal Code of 1961 — the ultimate conclusion of no prejudice is mistaken. In 1982, when St. Pierre committed this crime, the law pertaining to insanity defenses was as follows: the defendant had the initial burden of introducing evidence on the question of sanity; if he did so, the defendant was no longer presumed to be sane, and the state had the burden of proving sanity beyond a reasonable doubt. See People v. Hollins, 136 Ill.App.3d 1, 90 Ill.Dec. 770, 482 N.E.2d 1053, 1055 (1985). Although by 1988 Illinois had changed that rule, and now imposes the burden on the defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that she was not guilty by reason of insanity, see Pub. Act 83-288, Ill.Rev.Stat. 1983, ch. 38, par. 6-2(e); People v. Hickman, 143 Ill.App.3d 195, 97 Ill.Dec. 382, 492 N.E.2d 1041 (1986), St. Pierre was plainly entitled to have the 1982 version of the law applied to his case. As the Illinois courts themselves have recognized, to do otherwise would amount to an ex post facto application of the new statute. People v. Ramsey, 192 Ill.2d 154, 248 Ill.Dec. 882, 735 N.E.2d 533, 535 (2000). In the end, therefore, it does not matter whether St. Pierre’s sanity was formally an “essential element” of the case or an affirmative defense. What does matter is the fact that the state would have borne the burden of proving his sanity beyond a reasonable doubt, had Barasa properly raised the defense. This in turn shows once again that Barasa’s shortcomings were prejudicial to St. Pierre at the guilt phase of his case.
Last, there is a problem in the state’s argument that St. Pierre cannot show prejudice because (it predicts) the insanity defense would not have prevailed at trial. If all the jury had heard was the testimony of Dr. Stipes, who never even looked to see whether St. Pierre had bipolar disorder, or worse yet, the testimony of both Dr. Stipes and Williams, that may be correct. But that really is another way of providing prejudice from Barasa’s failure to create a proper record,, not a way of showing lack of prejudice. If the trier of fact had seen everything that post-conviction counsel have uncovered, there is a reasonable probability that the result at trial would have been different.
For all these- reasons, I would reverse the district court’s decision denying St. Pierre’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus with respect to the guilt phase of his case, and I would find that St. Pierre is entitled to a full new trial. As the state has not contested the district court’s grant of the writ with respect to the sentencing phase of the proceedings, like the majority I make no separate comment on that aside from the observation that all the shortcomings I have documented provide firm support for the district court’s ruling.
I respectfully dissent.

. This report has received wide national attention and has been disseminated throughout the country. It is available electronically at http://www.idoc.state.il.us/ccp/ccp/re-ports/commission_reports.html.

. The majority has made a Herculean effort to rehabilitate Williams and to paint him in a credible light, ante at 623-24 n. 12, but the facts speak for themselves. Specifically, it remains true that Williams was not a licensed psychologist, that he had never conducted a professional examination of St. Pierre, and that he had never before testified on the issue of a defendant’s sanity, as opposed to the question whether a person should be committed. It is hard in light of all that to question Judge Neville's evaluation of Williams's contribution.

. The National Institute of Mental Health gives the following definition of bipolar disorder: "Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. They can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide.... Bipolar disorder typically develops in late adolescence or early adulthood. However, some people have their first symptoms during childhood, and some develop them late in life. It is often not recognized as an illness, and people may suffer for years before it is properly diagnosed and treated. Like diabetes or heart disease, bipolar disorder is a long-term illness that must be carefully managed throughout a person’s life.” National Institute of Health Publication No. 01-3679 (updated Mar. 7, 2002), at http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicai/bipo-lar.cfm.

. That means, despite the fact that St. Pierre’s mental health had received consideration in the earlier state court proceedings, that it was never evaluated in the light of the full record we now have before us.

. It is unclear to me why the majority believes that it has the expertise to make a definitive conclusion (a) about St. Pierre's mental health, and (b) about the effect it may have had on his proceedings (two issues that I certainly recognize to be distinguishable). We are not expert psychiatrists or psychologists; all we can do is to ensure that the proceedings that led to a result are worthy of confidence. Here, I cannot say that they were, because of the ineffective assistance of counsel St. Pierre received. As this dissent explains, I believe that the case should be retried with proper assistance of counsel, through which the trier of fact would have full information from qualified experts about St. Pierre's mental condition and its consequences for the crime and the proceedings. Once the experts have made such a judgment, I would be happy to abide by whatever conclusion they reached.

. The NIMH pamphlet on bipolar disorder lists the following signs or symptoms of mania, or a manic episode;
• Increased energy, activity, and restlessness
• Excessively "high,” overly good, euphoric mood
• Extreme irritability
• Racing thoughts and talking very fast, jumping from one idea to another
• Distractibility, can't concentrate well
• Little sleep needed
• Unrealistic beliefs in one's abilities and powers
• Poor judgment
• Spending sprees
*644• A lasting period of behavior that is different from usual
• Increased sexual drive
• Abuse of drugs, particularly cocaine, alcohol, and sleeping medications
• Provocative, intrusive, or .aggressive behavior
• Denial that anything is wrong
NIMH report, supra note 2, page 2. The report goes on to note that delusions can accompany severe episodes of mania or depression. Id.