Court Opinion

ID: 9664365
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:16:08.581098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:05.211192
License: Public Domain

LIMBAUGH, Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority opinion reversing the penalty of death. The proposition that defense counsel’s failure to call Dr. Parwatikar, the psychiatrist, during penalty phase “falls short of the skill and diligence a reasonably competent attorney would exercise under similar circumstances” is tenuous, given the fact that the doctor’s testimony concerning the effects of defendant’s hardcore addiction would be as aggravating as it would be mitigating. Juries are not always sympathetic to evidence of substance abuse. That issue aside, there was no showing of prejudice as required under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). The record, which is to be reviewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, State v. Storey, 901 S.W.2d 886, 891 (Mo. banc 1995), and which has the benefit of the Rule 29.15 court’s findings and conclusions on the prejudice issue, wholly fails to support the majority’s extreme holding “that Dr. Par-watikar’s testimony would have altered the juror’s deliberations to the extent that a reasonable probability exists that they would have unanimously recommended life imprisonment.”
The evaluation of the prejudicial effect of Dr. Parwatikar’s failure to testify can best be made by asking three questions: 1) What was the purpose of Dr. Parwatikar’s testimony? 2) To what extent was other evidence introduced and argument allowed in furtherance *703of that purpose? 3) What would Dr. Parwati-kar have added?
Obviously, the purpose of Dr. Parwatikar’s testimony was to reinforce the point that defendant was intoxicated by cocaine and not in his right mind when he committed the three murders. Although defendant’s voluntary cocaine intoxication was no defense to his guilt, and his long-time addiction, as stated, could properly be seen as an aggravating factor, his atrocious conduct, according to defense counsel, was the unfortunate product of his addiction to cocaine, rather than some innate, sociopathic personality that would be more deserving of the death penalty.
This point, despite the absence of Dr. Par-watikar’s testimony, was highlighted time and again throughout the penalty phase proceedings and was the central focus of both the evidence and the argument. Defendant was repeatedly depicted as a hardcore, abject addict who had not had the benefit of treatment and who otherwise “was generally a soft-spoken, nonviolent person, dedicated to his family and friends....” In addition, evidence was presented that the defendant had an uncontrollable need for the drug, with the implication that he would do whatever was necessary to satisfy that need, regardless of the consequences. As Dr. Watson, the doctor of pharmacy called as a mitigation witness, so clearly explained: to cocaine addicts, “everything else becomes irrelevant, other than getting more drugs and continually trying to recapture that first high.” Pressing the point further, Dr. Watson then told the jury that there was a “positive association” between the use of crack cocaine (the defendant’s variation of the drug) and violent behavior -- violence that is usually secondary to the buying and selling of the drug. Beverly Johnson, defendant’s sister, was then called to give a first-person account of the effects of cocaine addiction:
I’ve been a three-time loser with crack cocaine.... I would go to the stores and steal stuff for crack... I pushed everybody away from me that I cared about and everything, and I just wanted to do away with myself because I didn’t know what to do. And I hurted so bad, so I started selling everything in my house, stealing from my kids and my grandbabies, and stealing from people for crack cocaine. But I took and started lying to my bosses at work... I told lies to anybody I could to get what I wanted. And when that started wearing thin, I started hanging in the streets all the time... Doing whatever I had to do to get, to get high again.... I didn’t care what I did to myself, so I didn’t care what happens to me, so I was willing to go any length I had to.
Having laid the evidentiary groundwork of the effects of cocaine addiction, defense counsel drove home the point in closing argument:
Mr. Crane [the prosecutor] apparently wants you to believe, and it may be he’ll speak about this again, but he apparently wants you to believe that crack cocaine played no part in the events of February 12th of 1994, that Ernest was, perhaps, just a casual user of crack cocaine.
But that position is really indefensible because we know that Ernest was trying on that very night to pawn his boots to Rod Grant, to pawn a CD player and other articles of clothing to Rod Grant to get more crack cocaine because Ernest didn’t have any more money. And he was already in debt to Rod for crack. These are not the acts of a casual user. It’s [sic] the acts of somebody who was desperate to get more drug, (Emphasis added.)
Tying this evidence to the appropriate statutory mitigating circumstance instruction given by the Court, defense counsel stated:
And the other mitigating circumstance that you can consider is whether Ernest Johnson was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance. And I think certainly you recognize that somebody who is desperate for drags is under such mental condition. Beverly Johnson talked to you about that.
Dr. Parwatikar’s proposed addition would have added very little to the evidence and argument reviewed above. The thrust of his testimony was to explain the technical, neurological bases behind the symptoms of cocaine intoxication and addiction -- to give scientific reasons for an addict’s conduct. But, the symptoms themselves -- inability to *704delay gratification, difficulty in relating to stressful situations, inappropriate judgments, and a skewed perception of reality — are the critical elements of the defendant’s proof in mitigation, and the term “cocaine intoxication delirium” is nothing more than scientific jargon for that set of symptoms. These symptoms, which are in large part a matter of common knowledge, were adequately explained to the jury by persons uniquely qualified to do so -- by Dr. Watson, a pharmacological expert, and by Beverly Johnson, an addict herself. Although Dr. Parwatikar would have added details and more elaborate explanations, his testimony was essentially cumulative to the evidence on the main point — that defendant’s conduct was the product of cocaine intoxication rather than a sane and sober mind. Because the testimony was essentially cumulative, the failure to present that testimony was not prejudicial. See, e.g., State v. Kenley, 952 S.W.2d 250, 266-68 (Mo. banc 1997) (defense counsel was not ineffective for failing to obtain additional expert testimony on the issue of the effect of substance abuse on defendant’s mental state on the night of the murder because the testimony would have been cumulative); State v. Nunley, 923 S.W.2d 911, 924 (Mo. banc 1996) (defense counsel was not ineffective for failing to obtain a mitigation expert to prepare a “psyeho-soeial” background investigation where other expert and lay testimony on the same subject had already been offered and additional evidence would have been cumulative).
Finally, it bears mention that defendant’s claim of prejudice is made in connection with the failure to give an instruction on the statutory mitigating circumstance that requires the jury to consider “Whether the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired.” Suffice it to say that Dr. Parwati-kar, who testified extensively at the Rule 29.15 hearing, made no attempt whatsoever to correlate his description of the symptoms of cocaine intoxication delirium and cocaine addiction to the defendant’s, or any other addict’s, capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. Absent that correlation, the instruction should not be given.
In short, the majority has ignored or mis-characterized the penalty phase record in order to justify its conclusion that defendant was prejudiced. From a fair review of the record, Dr. Parwatikar’s testimony does not give rise to a “reasonable probability” that the jury would have rejected the death penalty. For these reasons, I would affirm the judgment of conviction as well as the sentence of death.