Court Opinion

ID: 9497839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:01:30.058599+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:27.120569
License: Public Domain

GREGORY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With new information can come new duties to investigate. The issue here is not whether Walker’s counsel conducted an appropriate initial investigation. Rath*585er, it is whether, once this investigation uncovered some evidence of organic brain dysfunction, Walker’s attorney pursued this lead as would a reasonably competent and diligent attorney. She did not, so I respectfully dissent.
One passage of the majority opinion succinctly captures the five fundamental flaws in the purported reasoning of Ms. Norris, Walker’s lead counsel. It states that she
(1) concluded that the evidence in favor of organic brain deficiency was not likely to be persuasive, because there was only a single suggestion of such a problem in all of Walker’s records, and (2) neither her court-appointed expert, (3) nor the facts of the crime, (4) nor the testimony of witnesses supported that Walker suffered from such a problem. In addition, (5) Norris believed that arguing organic dysfunction would undermine the remainder of her mitigation strategy by supporting the government’s argument that Walker would be a future danger in prison.
Ante at 577-78 (citations omitted, numbers added). Close analysis of these five claims (which are simply unquestioned restatements of Norris’s version of things) reveals why Walker’s counsel’s conduct was both deficient and prejudicial under Strickland and Wiggins.
First, Walker’s counsel could not have reasonably concluded that an organic brain dysfunction argument was not likely to be persuasive unless she had first fully investigated and diligently developed that evidence. See Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 521, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003) (rejecting counsel’s “attempt to justify their limited investigation as reflecting a tactical judgment not to present mitigating evidence at sentencing and to pursue an alternative strategy instead”). Norris was put on notice of Walker’s mental deficiencies by his school records, which contained a psychiatric evaluation stating that he committed errors that revealed “significant delays in perceptual motor development,” J.A. 167, and that his visual-motor errors were “most commonly found in protocols of individuals who are mentally retarded or who have some type of organic deficiency.” J.A. 168. This report also revealed that Walker showed signs of “either psychological regression with grossly impaired reality contact or organic involvement,” and recommended that Walker be tested again for organic or psychotic disturbances. J.A. 169. Yet these were not the only references to organic mental deficiencies. When Walker was in third grade, an educational diagnostician presaged the psychiatrist’s findings by noting Walker’s inability to exercise fine motor-integration skills and copy simple shapes and words. J.A. 150. A psychological examination administered in 1982 revealed that Walker
• had a “severe deficit” in visual perception,
• exhibited “considerable difficulty differentiating essential from nonessential details in pictures (visual discrimination) as well as copying simple marks with speed and accuracy,”
• “had a great deal of difficulty reproducing abstract block designs,” and, in fact, failed to complete a single design,
• “made numerous integration and rotation errors,” and
• rendered “extremely poor” drawings.
J.A. 152.
Once Norris received the school records, a new duty to investigate arose. Purported time pressure — whoever caused it — can be no excuse; a reasonable attorney would have at least asked for a continuance. Instead, she scuttled an investigation that, according to Dr. Scott W. Sautter, the neuropsychologist retained by Walker’s *586habeas counsel to examine Walker, revealed that Walker suffers from
chronic and severely impaired right hemisphere mediated skills, observed in childhood and manifested as impaired complex attention required to shift problem solving strategies as task demands changed, constructional and drawing skills, non-verbal reasoning and social judgement leading to emotional maladjustment and dysfunctional interpersonal relationship.
J.A. 233. Specifically, Walker’s severe impairment resulted in: “grossly intact” visual and auditory acuity, “severely deficient” visuo-motor tracking, visual-spatial and constructional function, design reproduction, writing skills, factual knowledge, and non-verbal abstract reasoning and non-verbal visual learning. J.A. 231-32. Sautter also diagnosed Walker with “chronic attention and learning disabilities” and “impaired social reasoning and judgement.” J.A. 234. He stated that Walker’s “impaired non-verbal reasoning and judgement certainly contributed to the sequence of events that led up to his actions.” J.A. 233; see generally J.A. 227-35. The capability and will to follow new leads as they arise, even at a late date, are part of the irreducible minimum for a constitutionally acceptable defense lawyer. Norris failed to meet this minimum.
Second, Walker’s counsel cannot know whether her court-appointed expert would have supported the existence of organic brain dysfunction because he never tested for it and she never gave him the evidence that would raise this probability.1 Dr. Thomas stated that he “really need[ed] the school records,” J.A. 136, and noted that his conclusions were subject to change “if further relevant information becomes available to me.” J.A. 221. Thomas also took care to include in his report that, “[i]t should be noted that the defendant’s school records have been requested, but not received at the present time.” J.A. 222. He never received them. In the face of this, the majority states that by the time Norris received these records, she had already determined that Dr. Thomas would not be a good witness. This is, of course, just the kind of premature foreclosure of investigation that Wiggins found inappropriate. Especially given Dr. Thomas’s request for Walker’s school records and clear statement that his opinion was subject to change, it was objectively unreasonable for Norris to believe that Dr. Thomas could not have changed his opinion.
Third, the suggestion that “the facts of the crime” did not support the idea that Walker suffered from organic brain damage can only be called a red herring that distracts from the issue before us. Walk*587er’s crimes, while undeniably horrible, were certainly not intricate frauds, sophisticated bank heists, or anything else that necessitated consistently unclouded high-level thinking. They were simply brutal, inexplicable murders. I have no idea how kicking in two apartment doors and shooting people — “the particular manner in which Walker committed his crimes,” ante at 581 — could possibly constitute any evidence for the proposition that Walker was not brain damaged. If this indeed formed a basis for Norris’s decision not to investigate, it was unreasonable.
Fourth, Norris and the majority would have us believe that it is relevant that the witnesses Norris interviewed evidently did not diagnose Walker with organic brain damage. But these people were not experts and neither was Norris. Even severe mental diseases can be both crippling (and thus mitigating) and hidden from, or misdiagnosed by, lay observers; that is why we have experts to test for these things.2 Here, one such expert explained that Walker exhibited signs of organic brain damage that required further testing while another told Norris that he “really need[ed]” the very records that contained the first expert’s opinion. It was patently unreasonable for Norris to ignore their opinions, particularly when a third expert — Dr. Sautter, who did have the information Thomas requested — tested for and found extensive brain damage.
Finally, the majority tells us that “Norris believed that arguing organic dysfunction would undermine the remainder of her mitigation strategy by supporting the government’s argument that Walker would be a future danger in prison.” Ante at 5778. As the majority recognizes, ante at 580-81, and Norris admits, J.A. 296, the defense had and presented evidence indicating that Walker responded well to structured environments and had a good prison record. Of course a man can both suffer from organic brain dysfunction and respond well to structure; Dr. Sautter, in fact, found just this. He recommended that “Mr. Walker would benefit from a highly structured and routine environment, so that he is not permitted complete independent decision-making in daily living,” and noted that Walker had worked well and would likely continue to do so in the structured environment of the prison laundry. J.A. 234.
I am perfectly aware that Strickland precludes us from second-guessing all of an attorney’s strategic decisions with hindsight’s aid. Rather, we defer to the tactical choices of the people we presume are in the best position to make such decisions. But Wiggins rightly recognized that we can only put such significant faith in a lawyer’s strategic choices if these decisions are undergirded with reasonably thorough investigations.
These choices were not. Here, an attorney received a good lead from her client’s records — which her expert demanded but did not receive — that her client may suffer from organic brain dysfunction. She flatly admitted that “[t]he defense was aware, of course, that if Walker had some sort of organic brain problem this potentially could be ‘mitigating.’ ” J.A. 294. Yet rather than properly pursue this informa*588tion, she offered the precise kind of post-hoc “tactical choices” excuse the Supreme Court rejected in Wiggins. The majority commends all this as good enough for a capital case. I respectfully disagree. Accordingly, I would grant the writ to have Walker resentenced with the effective assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Constitution.

. Dr. Thomas interviewed Walker and administered an IQ test. Dr. Sautter, however, noted that:
It is well known in the neuropsychological literature that IQ testing alone is insufficient to evaluate brain dysfunction, because one could have a normal IQ and yet be severely brain damaged. Without a complete history of Mr. Walker’s school records, that clearly document attention and learning disabilities that suggest neurologic compromise in normal development, Dr. Thomas may not have been able to fully appreciate the extent of probable brain dysfunction and its contribution as mitigating factors.
J.A. 227.
Indeed, the absence of school records undermines Thomas’s purportedly unalterable diagnosis that Walker was a "sociopath.” Dr. Sautter found "no evidence of antisocial personality disorder, or attempts to manipulate the examiner,” and notes that "[wjithout documentation of a conduct disorder as a child a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder cannot be made. Further, when brain dysfunction is present this becomes the prominent diagnosis from which other problems are attributed.” J.A. 233.

. Dr. Sautter’s report reveals that Walker himself "demonstrate[d] an over-rating of his abilities and an unawareness of the extent of his cognitive deficits.” J.A. 233. He went on to note that
Because Mr. Walker’s verbal abilities are better developed he superficially appears to others as being far more capable socially than he is able to demonstrate. His glib, self-assuredness is a means to compensate for severely impaired skills in interpersonal relationships, constructional skills, non-verbal reasoning, and non-verbal memory.
J.A. 233.