Court Opinion

ID: 9694463
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:42:25.457102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:33.162561
License: Public Domain

Justice CASTILLE,
concurring.
I join the Majority Opinion, subject to the following qualifications concerning the Majority’s finding of counsel ineffectiveness in failing to present evidence of appellant’s head injury and the relevance of that injury to establishing two separate and additional mitigating circumstances.
First, contrary to the suggestion by the Majority, I am not entirely convinced that there was any serious deficiency in counsel’s investigation of mitigation evidence in this case— particularly given that the passage of time appears to have made it difficult for counsel to recall the precise circumstances and exact contours of that investigation. Counsel here did conduct an investigation and did discover the prison records which documented the head injury appellant suffered three years before he committed the two murders that were the subject of the instant prosecution. However, the PCRA court noted that the evidence was equivocal concerning whether counsel actually forwarded the records at issue to his mental health experts: the experts thought not and, while counsel *41could not specifically recall, he noted that he would have had no reason not to have forwarded the records after going to the trouble of securing them. In a circumstance such as this, where the proof made it only as likely as not that counsel failed to forward the records, I think it was eminently reasonable for the PCRA court to conclude that the party with the burden of rebutting the presumption of effectiveness failed in his proof. I would not discount so quickly, as the Majority does, the PCRA court’s logical conclusion.
Accordingly, I am not convinced that this case involves a failure of investigation. But, what seems to have been proven is that counsel made nothing of the fact of the documented brain injury, its potential effect upon appellant, and its relationship to specific, potential mental health-based mitigating circumstances which were not otherwise pursued before the sentencing jury. And so, while counsel’s investigation may have been diligent, it appears there was a lapse in the followup and in the presentation to the jury, there was no specific, reasonable explanation proffered to explain that failure, and no objective reason is otherwise apparent. For this reason, I agree that the performance prong of the Strickland1 test has been satisfied.
On the question of prejudice, I recognize that this is a case where counsel presented a cogent case in mitigation, attempting to portray appellant in a positive light. In addition, I think that it is unrealistic in the extreme ever to discount the difficult uphill battle any capital defense lawyer faces where, as here, one of the aggravating circumstances involves the fact that his client elected to commit multiple first degree murders. This is a mark of distinction that seems different in kind from other statutory aggravators. Thus, if the foregone additional mitigation evidence in this case were mere catchall “I had a bad childhood” evidence, I doubt that this Court could find *42that appellant sustained his burden to prove prejudice.2 Similarly, the mere fact that appellant suffered a head injury alone would not be a fact that would convince me that counsel was ineffective. But, here, the undisputed proof is of documented brain damage and the proffer, also apparently unrebutted, is that the evidence at least would have supported a juror in finding additional statutory mitigators. In these circumstances, I agree that prejudice has been established, and I concur in the award of a new penalty hearing.

. See Commonwealth v. Moore, 580 Pa. 279, 860 A.2d 88, 99 (2004) (noting that evidence of traumatic childhood "may or may not be perceived as mitigating (one juror might see this as reason for sympathy; another might see it as assuring [the defendant] his violence permanently ingrained in him”).

. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 690, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) (holding that to establish the performance prong of an ineffectiveness claim, a defendant must show that given the circumstances of a particular case, counsel’s conduct fell outside of the "range of professionally competent assistance").