Court Opinion

ID: 9782257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 18:14:16.780826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:33.836241
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, Acting C. J., Dissenting.
I disagree with the majority that petitioner’s attorneys competently represented him at the penalty phase of petitioner’s capital trial.
Petitioner’s attorneys did not call a single witness at the penalty phase. Why? The answer: They had done virtually no penalty phase investigation, so they had no witnesses to present. The two defense investigators had worked only on the guilt phase of trial; and counsel had consulted no psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, or other experts who might have been able to offer some insight as to why petitioner committed the three *1267murders in this case. The one potential witness interviewed by defense counsel was petitioner’s mother, but counsel knew beforehand that petitioner did not want her to testify.
An investigation into petitioner’s background would have revealed substantial mitigating evidence. For instance, in 1964, after a joyriding conviction at the age of 14, petitioner was sent to the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, which a federal judge testifying at the reference hearing described as a “penal colony for children.” An investigation would also have revealed that beginning in 1966 when petitioner was 16, he spent almost 10 years in the Alabama penal system. In the 1970’s, a federal court found prison conditions in Alabama to violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
This mitigating evidence could and should have been presented by defense counsel, and their faitee to do so may well have altered the outcome at the penalty phase of petitioner’s trial. Thus, unlike the majority, I would grant the petition for habeas corpus relief and vacate petitioner’s sentence of death.
I
The majority’s clinically cold and cursory recitation of the evidence petitioner presented at the reference hearing does not adequately portray the mitigating nature of that evidence, which I therefore discuss in detail below.
Petitioner was bom in 1950 to alcoholic parents who separated soon after his birth. Petitioner and his two siblings were left in the care of their grandparents and their aunt, who lived in a poor, segregated area in Mobile, Alabama.
When petitioner was about 10 years old, his mother, who had moved to Detroit, returned to Alabama with two children by another marriage and started living with petitioner and his grandparents. Less than a year later, petitioner’s grandfather, described by the referee in this case as a “pivotal figure” in petitioner’s life, died. Petitioner grieved for his grandfather. He felt rejected by his mother and was jealous of her new children. He became withdrawn and began skipping school. Based on his involvement in a car theft at the age of 14, a juvenile court committed him to the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a reform school known as Mount Meigs.
Federal District Court Judge Ira Dement, who in the late 1960’s (before he became a judge) had participated in litigation pertaining to the appalling *1268conditions at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school, testified at the reference hearing that the institution was a “penal colony for children.”
Denny Abbott was a juvenile probation officer in the early 1960’s when petitioner was at Mount Meigs, and he would visit Mount Meigs once or twice a month. Later he became Regional Director for the Bureau of Detention with the Florida Department of Youth Services, where he supervised six juvenile facilities. At the reference hearing, Abbott described Mount Meigs as “by far, by far . . . the worst facility I have ever seen,” a “slave camp for children” run by “illiterate overseers.” The children were beaten “all the time” with, among other things, broomsticks, mop handles, and fan belts. There were no vocational programs, no counseling, and virtually no education. Instead, the children were put to work in the fields, picking cotton and tending vegetables. There was little supervision of the children at night, and there was “a lot of sexual abuse of children.”
Thirteen of the witnesses who testified at the reference hearing were former inmates at Mount Meigs; seven of them were there at the same time as petitioner. They uniformly corroborated Probation Officer Abbott’s testimony about the horrific conditions at Mount Meigs. They mentioned getting beaten with sticks (sometimes lead-filled), bullwhips, and fan belts, often for trivial matters such as failing to pick their quota of cotton, hitting the wrong note in the band or chorus, talking too loudly, or starting to eat before everyone had sat down at the table. There were open sewage ditches next to the facility, and the children were periodically required to wade into the ditches to cut sprouting grass. When a boy failed to pick his quota of cotton or was disobedient in the fields, the overseer would poke a hole in the ground and order him to lie down, to pull down his pants, and to stick his penis into the hole. The overseer would then beat the boy’s thighs with a stick, often until the skin burst open. One witness remembered seeing petitioner beaten in this manner.
Chastain Raines, who was at Mount Meigs at the same time as petitioner, testified that after the nurse at Mount Meigs quit, he, at age 15, became the head nurse, giving injections, bandaging wounds, and stitching cuts.
The witnesses who knew petitioner at Mount Meigs described him as passive and avoiding violence whenever possible; they mentioned that he was subjected to substantial sexual pressure because of his youth, his slight build, and his good looks. Oliver Grigsby explained what was meant by “sexual pressure”: “Jesse was ... an attractive kid. And by having a lighter complexion and the way that he walked and the way that he carried his self, he was good for harems .... So, the dogs from another geographical *1269region [petitioner was from Mobile, and Mount Meigs was dominated by boys from Birmingham]. . . says, well, we’ll antagonize him any means we can.”
After petitioner’s release from Mount Meigs at the age of 16, he became withdrawn and uncommunicative. He began to associate with older, streetwise boys, including one Freddie Square. In September 1966, three months after petitioner’s release from Mount Meigs, Square and petitioner robbed a grocery store clerk, whom Square then shot and killed. While fleeing from the scene, they robbed a taxi driver. Freddie Reed, who was a friend of petitioner’s and was present when the grocery store robbery was planned, testified that the robbery was Square’s idea; Reed saw petitioner cry right after the robbery.
Based on these incidents, petitioner was convicted of murder and robbery, and he spent nearly a decade in the Alabama penal system. The referee in this case described the prison conditions as “abysmal,” based on, among other things, “severe overcrowding, racial segregation, substandard facilities, no separation of the tougher inmates from younger or smaller inmates, constant violence, the persistent threat of sexual assaults . . . the availability and necessity of weapons by all inmates, and degrading conditions in disciplinary modules.” In prison, petitioner suffered beatings and sexual assaults.
Reference witness Dr. Carl Clements had worked for two and a half years in the Alabama prison system before obtaining a doctorate in psychology and joining the faculty at the University of Alabama. As a consultant with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prisons Project, he visited Alabama prisons during the period of petitioner’s incarceration, and he testified as an expert witness in litigation in the 1970’s raising constitutional challenges to the conditions in those prisons. He later assisted the United States Department of Justice in prison litigation. Of the 10 to 15 prison systems he evaluated, all were found to have unconstitutional conditions; with the possible exception of prisons in Puerto Rico, the prisons in Alabama were the worst. When petitioner entered the prison system, it was newly integrated and many of the White prison guards resented the Black prisoners, whom they called “things” and “niggers.” The prevailing view among both staff and inmates was that an inmate who was raped “deserved” it because he was “not man enough to fight.”
Dr. Clements mentioned that inmates with disciplinary problems were put in cells called “doghouses.” At Atmore Prison, where petitioner served part of his sentence, the doghouses were five feet wide by nine feet long. Dr. *1270James Thomas, a physician at Atrnore, recalled seeing as many as 30 inmates in a doghouse cell, packed so tightly together that they had to sleep standing up. He described conditions at the overcrowded and rat-infested prisons as “so debilitating” that they deprived inmates of “any opportunity to rehabilitate themselves or even to maintain the skills already possessed.” Sexual assaults on younger inmates were common, and Dr. Thomas would treat two to three cases of badly tom rectums a week.
Theodore Gordon, who had worked with Dr. Clements in a class action suit on behalf of inmates of the Alabama State Prison system, and Father Thomas Weise, a Roman Catholic priest who visited Atrnore and the adjacent Holman Prison while petitioner was an inmate there, testified that the prisons were severely overcrowded and that most of the inmates carried weapons.
Witness Dr. Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an expert in evaluating prison systems, reviewed reports by corrections experts describing conditions in the Alabama prison system while petitioner was incarcerated there. Dr. Haney testified he had “not encountered anything that approximates what was described as existing in Alabama,” that the Alabama prison system was a “national disgrace,” and that it was either “the worst” or “among a handful of the worst” prison systems in the United States.
Twenty witnesses who had been in the Alabama prisons with petitioner described the prisons as terribly overcrowded, unsupervised, and incredibly violent, with prisoners carrying knives in full view of the guards. Whenever inmates at Atrnore Prison, where petitioner spent time, would complain about sexual assaults, the warden’s response was to “get you a knife” or “be a wife,” meaning that an inmate should either “fight for [his] manhood or submit.” Knife fights and killings were common (one inmate described six unrelated prison murders that he and petitioner had witnessed), and prisoners learned to live in a constant state of tension akin to that encountered by soldiers in combat.
The inmate witnesses described petitioner as passive and not a troublemaker. Petitioner was subject to constant sexual pressure because of his youth, his slight build, his good looks, and his desire to get along with others. As inmate Richard English put it, petitioner was “just like a little sheep among wolves, a baby among a bunch of grownups,” who was subject to sexual pressure because he was “young, good looking,” and “tender.” And in the words of Dr. James Thomas, a physician at Atrnore and Holman Prisons where petitioner was housed, “[a] single young fledgling like [petitioner] would be raped many times if he didn’t have some sponsor.”
*1271Petitioner also presented evidence that he was repeatedly raped in prison.
Inmate James White testified that in the late 1960’s he was in the Mobile County Jail in Alabama. In the cell next to his were petitioner and an inmate named Eugene Minifield. White heard the sounds of someone being thrown against the wall, and he heard Minifield threaten to kill petitioner unless petitioner had sex with him. White then heard moans and grunts characteristic of sexual activity, after which he heard Minifield ordering petitioner to “eat my ass.” A short time later, White heard petitioner crying.
Inmate Willie Spencer testified that while in Holman prison between 1970 and 1972, he saw several inmates, two of whom (“Blako” White and Sam Crayton) had a reputation for raping prisoners, carry petitioner, who was struggling, into a cell. When Spencer drew back a sheet the inmates had draped over the cell door to conceal their activities, he saw that petitioner, while still struggling, had been thrown on a bunk bed with his pants pulled off. Another prisoner, Bobby Lee Dubose also testified that he saw petitioner being dragged into the cell; although he did not look inside, he could hear petitioner struggling and asking the other prisoners to stop.
Yet another Holman prisoner, Eugene Simpson, testified that sometime between 1970 and 1972 he heard that a group of inmates planned to rape petitioner in the prison’s dental laboratory. He went to the laboratory, where he found petitioner, crying, fearful, and stripped to his shorts, surrounded by inmates with knives. Simpson persuaded them to let petitioner go.
And Holman prisoner Roosevelt Youngblood testified that in 1970 he saw “Flame” Seagers, who had a reputation for sexually assaulting young inmates, drag petitioner into a cell. A blanket was draped over the door, a method customarily used in the prison to conceal forcible sexual acts. Youngblood heard sounds of someone being pushed against a wall or a bed.
Based on the inmate witnesses’ testimony about petitioner’s conduct in prison, the referee here made this finding: “Although there were a number of inconsistencies concerning exactly what petitioner personally experienced, it was undisputed that he was rarely the instigator of violence. On the contrary, the evidence showed that he avoided violence and appeared to adjust well when the structure permitted and that he would continue to do so. His small stature made him the target of more violent inmates in virtually every institution in which he was housed. However, when circumstances permitted, he tended to hold positions of responsibility. To the extent that he was involved in prison violence personally, the evidence remains consistent that he was the prey rather than the predator.”
*1272In 1976, petitioner was released from prison in Alabama. Soon he was arrested for an attempted robbery of a laundromat, a crime the referee in this case described as “an unsophisticated, botched effort which involved taking a young woman hostage at gunpoint and threatening responding police officers.” Petitioner escaped from jail and fled to California, where he found a job and for a short time had a stable relationship with a woman named Debra Pickett, with whom he had a child. He then became a cocaine user and left Pickett. Shortly thereafter, he committed the three murders in this case.
At the reference hearing, expert witnesses testified about the psychological and neurological effects of petitioner’s childhood, his experiences at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school and in its prison system, and his abuse of controlled substances.
Dr. George Woods, a psychiatrist, expressed his opinion that petitioner might have suffered from fetal alcohol effect and in útero trauma; that organic brain damage hindered his academic development; and that he had posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), caused by his experiences at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school and in Alabama prisons. Dr. Woods noted from the police reports that during a confrontation between petitioner and victim Wheeler a short time before the three murders, Wheeler had called petitioner a “faggot.” In Dr. Woods’s view, petitioner’s PTSD would predispose him to overreact to the slur, and petitioner was affected by serious emotional disturbance when he committed the murders.
In the opinion of Dr. Craig Haney, a psychologist, the brutal conditions petitioner experienced as a teenager at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school had caused psychological damage. Having neither job skills nor social skills, it was inevitable that petitioner would get in trouble with the law.
According to Dr. James Park, a clinical psychologist, petitioner had behaved well in a structured setting, and he would make an above-average adjustment to a sentence of life in prison were he to receive such a term.
Dr. Dorcas Bowles, the Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington, testified that petitioner was adversely affected by parental abandonment, by the death of his grandfather (whom he regarded as a father figure) when he was 10 years old, by organic brain impairment, and by the brutal conditions at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school.
Dr. John Irwin was a retired sociology professor who, before going to college, had spent five years in prison for armed robbery. He mentioned the *1273difficulties encountered by former prisoners, particularly those who have been incarcerated for most of their adolescence, in adjusting to life outside of a penal institution. Such persons are “socially crippled” because the cultural values that allow them to survive in an institutional setting make it difficult for them to adapt to conditions in the outside world. Dr. Irwin contrasted California’s rehabilitative programs, which had enabled him to overcome his prison background, with the conditions petitioner experienced in Alabama, where nothing was done to prepare petitioner for reintegration into society. Dr. Irwin cited statistics showing that the recidivism rates for persons released from Alabama prisons in the 1970’s (when petitioner was released) were much higher than those in the country as a whole. The referee found Professor Irwin’s testimony “compelling” and said his “presentation and demeanor were impressive.”
In the opinion of Dr. Myla Young, a clinical psychologist employed by the State Department of Mental Health to review neuropsychological tests of prison inmates, petitioner had brain impairment that was “mild” in some areas and “moderate” in others. She found no indication that petitioner was a sociopath or psychopath. She mentioned that petitioner’s answers to a battery of evaluative tests showed that he was not malingering.
II
Had petitioner’s trial attorneys made the effort, they could easily have discovered the substantial and compelling mitigating evidence described above. The referee noted that the steps appellate counsel took to obtain the evidence presented at the postconviction reference hearing involved “standard investigative techniques,” which did not call for “any extraordinary efforts beyond simple persistence.” The referee explained: “Trial counsel could have contacted petitioner’s family to develop his background and childhood, including contacting his mother and other relatives either living in the same location or accessible through known family members. Evidence relating to the impact of the juvenile and adult correctional systems could have been developed by obtaining prison records and contacting inmates referenced in those records as well as conducting standard legal research of public records relating to lawsuits involving these institutions. Mental health experts could have been appointed to review the background material and to test petitioner in order to ascertain the viability of psychiatric mitigation.”
In rejecting petitioner’s contention that his trial attorneys were incompetent for not presenting mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of his capital trial, the majority points out that petitioner told counsel not to get his family involved in the trial. But petitioner did not ask his attorneys to do nothing at *1274the penalty phase. Petitioner’s attorneys did virtually no penalty phase preparation. They presented no expert witnesses. Nor did they ask their investigators to do any work on the penalty phase. The only potential witness they contacted was petitioner’s mother, even though petitioner had expressly told his counsel that he did not want his mother to testify. Although petitioner’s two California defense attorneys took two trips to Mobile, Alabama (one of which had a stopover in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras holiday), on each trip they were in Mobile for less than a day, and they appear to have spent their time just looking through court records.
In not faulting defense counsel for their lack of efforts to investigate petitioner’s background to uncover mitigating evidence, the majority asserts that it was up to petitioner to tell his trial attorneys about his reform school and prison experiences. But petitioner did not withhold that information. His attorneys never raised the subject. The determination of what evidence to present on petitioner’s behalf at the penalty phase of his capital trial was counsel’s to make. Reasonably competent counsel would have asked a mental health professional or an investigator to prepare a social history of petitioner’s life, based on information from petitioner and other available sources. There is no evidence that petitioner, described by one of his trial attorneys as “very cooperative,” would have refused to discuss his reform school and prison experiences in Alabama had he been asked about them.
The majority claims that “whatever mitigating evidence may have been disclosed by pursuing the conditions of incarceration petitioner experienced, counsel knew such evidence would come primarily from the testimony of petitioner’s fellow prisoners, many of whom were hardened criminals with serious felony records.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1255.) The majority mischaracterizes the record. As discussed earlier, in addition to petitioner’s fellow prisoners, those testifying at the reference hearing included a federal district judge, a priest, a college dean, a clinical psychologist, a longtime prison doctor, and the regional director for the Florida Bureau of Detention, all of whom gave powerfully effective testimony about the shocking conditions at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school and in that state’s prison system which corroborated the evidence of the inmate witnesses.
In defending trial counsel’s inaction, the majority asserts that counsel must have been concerned that testimony about Alabama’s prison conditions “could well open the door to petitioner’s own extensive criminal background.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1255.) In making that assumption, the majority resorts to mixing petitioner’s experiences as a young teenager at Alabama’s Mount Meigs reform school with his later incarceration in Alabama prisons. As to the reform school confinement, the majority’s claim that *1275the evidence would have opened the door to rebuttal by the prosecution is unfounded. Only the joyriding incident that led to his commitment to Mount Meigs would have been admissible in the prosecution’s rebuttal if petitioner had presented testimony about life at Mount Meigs. It is unlikely that this insignificant offense, committed when petitioner was only 14 years old, would have affected the jury’s penalty determination.
With respect to petitioner’s Alabama prison experience, the majority fails to identify any significant evidence that the prosecution could have presented in rebuttal. True, the prosecution could have presented details of petitioner’s Alabama convictions for murder, robbery, and escape. But the jury already knew of the convictions, and any details of those crimes would not have substantially strengthened the prosecution’s case in aggravation. Indeed, at the reference hearing the prosecutor, now a superior court judge, testified that if the defense had presented evidence of the Alabama prison conditions he probably would not have called rebuttal witnesses to give details about petitioner’s Alabama crimes.
In asserting that petitioner’s attorneys had a tactically reasonable strategy that was so good as to obviate any need to investigate his past, the majority points out that counsel tried to “minimize petitioner’s culpability by . . . portraying him as a follower rather than violently antisocial.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1256.) But that was a disastrous strategy, one no reasonably competent attorney would have used. This is why: Petitioner was convicted of murdering three people, one of whom was raped. The sole eyewitness to the killings was accomplice Charles Sanders. He testified that petitioner was the leader and Sanders the follower, and that petitioner personally committed all of these crimes. The defense did not rebut that testimony. Thus, the only evidence before the jury was that petitioner was the instigator rather than a follower.
This case is not at all like Burger v. Kemp (1987) 483 U.S. 776 [107 S.Ct. 3114, 97 L.Ed.2d 638], which the majority cites in support of its assertion that the defense “strategy” just described was reasonable. In Burger, the defense attorney could credibly argue that the defendant in that case was a follower because his accomplice had committed the sexual assault that provided the motive for the murder the two of them later committed, and there was evidence that the accomplice had instigated the killing. (Id. at pp. 778-779 [107 S.Ct. at pp. 3117-3118].) Here there was no such evidence.
Insisting that the defense “strategy” at the penalty phase of petitioner’s capital trial obviated the need to investigate petitioner’s background to determine the existence of mitigating evidence, the majority points to counsel’s argument that the jury should spare petitioner’s life because Sanders, *1276his accomplice, had received a lighter sentence. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1256.) That argument was futile: As just explained, the evidence showed that petitioner was the leader and the perpetrator of the crimes while Sanders was the follower; thus, jurors were not likely to be troubled by Sanders’s lighter sentence. Moreover, the defense argument was improper: This court has repeatedly held that evidence about the punishment given to codefendants or accomplices in a capital crime is irrelevant and inadmissible at the penalty phase, because it has no bearing on such issues as the defendant’s conduct, character, or record, on which the jury must base its penalty determination. (People v. Morris (1991) 53 Cal.3d 152, 225 [279 Cal.Rptr. 720, 807 P.2d 949]; People v. Beardslee (1991) 53 Cal.3d 68, 112 [279 Cal.Rptr. 276, 806 P.2d 1311]; People v. Carrera (1989) 49 Cal.3d 291, 343 [261 Cal.Rptr. 348, 777 P.2d 121]; People v. Malone (1988) 47 Cal.3d 1, 53-54 [252 Cal.Rptr. 525, 762 P.2d 1249]; People v. Dyer (1988) 45 Cal.3d 26, 69-71 [246 Cal.Rptr. 209, 753 P.2d 1]; People v. Belmontes (1988) 45 Cal.3d 744, 810-813 [248 Cal.Rptr. 126, 755 P.2d 310].)
According to the majority, its conclusion that petitioner’s trial counsel competently investigated this case is “consistent with” this court’s “assessment of comparable facts in other decisions.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1260.) It relies on four cases: People v. Gonzalez (1990) 51 Cal.3d 1179 [275 Cal.Rptr. 729, 800 P.2d 1159], In re Jackson (1992) 3 Cal.4th 578 [11 Cal.Rptr.2d 531, 835 P.2d 371], In re Ross (1995) 10 Cal.4th 184 [40 Cal.Rptr.2d 544, 892 P.2d 1287], and People v. Mayfield (1993) 5 Cal.4th 142 [19 Cal.Rptr.2d 836, 852 P.2d 331]. None is on point, as discussed below.
In Gonzalez, defense counsel conducted a penalty phase investigation but decided not to present mitigating character evidence for fear it would lead to damaging rebuttal. That decision was tactically reasonable because (1) counsel had a viable alternative strategy, namely, a lingering doubt argument (People v. Gonzalez, supra, 51 Cal.3d at p. 1250); (2) “family members had not given [defense counsel] any exceptionally sympathetic information about defendant’s background” (id. at p. 1251); and (3) the potential- rebuttal pertained to the defendant’s involvement in a drive-by shooting and a gang rape, which could have been highly damaging (id. at pp. 1248-1253). Here, by contrast, (1) petitioner’s attorneys conducted virtually no penalty phase investigation and they had no viable alternative strategy; (2) investigation would have uncovered strong mitigating evidence about petitioner’s background; and (3) as previously explained (see ante, at p. 1275), the prosecution could not have presented highly damaging rebuttal evidence.
In Jackson, this court held, unlike the majority here, that the defendant’s trial counsel acted incompetently by “failing to conduct a reasonable investigation of defendant’s background and childhood to enable him to make an *1277informed decision as to the best manner of proceeding at the penalty phase . . . .” (In re Jackson, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 612.)1 Thus, Jackson is inconsistent with the majority’s conclusion here that petitioner’s trial attorneys acted competently when they barely made an effort to investigate petitioner’s background.
In Ross, as here, the defendant’s lead counsel was Gerald Lenoir. There, as here, Lenoir presented no mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of Ross’s capital trial. A majority of this court, declining to address whether Lenoir had competently represented Ross, concluded that any inadequacy was harmless. (In re Ross, supra, 10 Cal.4th at p. 204.) That conclusion was wrong, as I explained in my dissenting opinion in Ross. (Id. at pp. 216-233.) Because the majority in Ross never decided whether defense counsel had acted competently in that case, Ross does not support the majority’s holding that counsel acted competently in this case. Similarly, in Mayfield, which the majority cites but does not discuss, this court did not decide whether the defendant’s trial counsel was competent, because it concluded that any inadequacy was harmless. (People v. Mayfield, supra, 5 Cal.4th at pp. 207, 208, fn. 15.)
In short, the cases cited by the majority do not support its conclusion that the minimal investigation conducted by petitioner’s trial attorneys satisfied their “obligation to conduct a thorough investigation of the defendant’s background.” (Williams v. Taylor (2000) 529 U.S. 362, 396 [120 S.Ct. 1495, 1515, 146 L.Ed.2d 389].) This court held in In re Marquez (1992) 1 Cal.4th 584, 606 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 727, 822 P.2d 435]: “In some cases, counsel may reasonably decide not to put on mitigating evidence, but to make that decision counsel must understand what mitigating evidence is available . . . .” Failure to conduct a complete investigation “cannot be supported as a tactical choice.” (Ibid.) This court and others have consistently found that penalty phase investigations comparable to the minimal efforts expended here do not meet the standard required of a reasonably competent defense attorney in a capital case. (See, e.g., Williams v. Taylor, supra, 529 U.S. at pp. 395-396 [120 S.Ct. at pp. 1514-1515]; In re Jackson, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 612; In re Marquez, supra, 1 Cal.4th at pp. 605-606; Karis v. Calderon (9th Cir. 2002) 283 F.3d 1117, 1133-1139; Caro v. Woodford (9th Cir. 2002) 280 F.3d 1247, 1255-1256; Silva v. Woodford (9th Cir. 2002) 279 F.3d 825, 838-847; Mayfield v. Woodford (9th Cir. 2001) 270 F.3d 915, 927-928; Ainsworth v. Woodford (9th Cir. 2001) 268 F.3d 868, 873-877; Jackson v. Calderon (9th Cir. 2000) 211 F.3d 1148, 1162-1163.)
*1278III
Having concluded that petitioner’s trial attorneys rendered ineffective assistance at the penalty phase of his capital trial, I now turn to the issue of whether counsel’s incompetence prejudiced petitioner.
The only evidence before the jury at petitioner’s penalty trial was that he had killed three people in this case, and that he had four prior felony convictions, including a robbery murder when he was 16 years old. The jury knew nothing about the inhumane conditions at Alabama’s Mount Meigs Industrial School for Negro Children, a reform school to which petitioner was committed after stealing a car in the early 1960’s at the age of 14, and from which he was released at age 16. A juvenile probation officer familiar with Mount Meigs called it a “slave camp for children” that was run by “illiterate overseers.” And a federal judge testified at the reference hearing that the facility was a “penal colony for children.” (See pp. 1267-1268, ante, for detailed description of conditions at Mount Meigs.) The institution offered no vocational programs and virtually no education. The children had to work in the fields, picking cotton or tending vegetables. Sexual abuse was common. There were constant beatings with broomsticks and fan belts. Periodically, the children had to wade in open sewers outside the facility to remove sprouting grass.
Nor did the jury learn of what the referee here described as “abysmal” conditions in the Alabama penal system, where from the age of 16 petitioner spent almost 10 years for the murder of a grocery clerk killed by petitioner’s companion in the course of a robbery, and for the robbery of a cab driver whose taxi petitioner and his companion used as a getaway car.
The referee described all of this evidence as “compelling,” and the expert witnesses at the reference hearing testified that in their view petitioner’s experiences helped to explain, although they did not justify, the three murders he committed in this case.
Had petitioner’s counsel at trial discovered the evidence in mitigation that petitioner’s habeas corpus counsel later presented at the reference hearing, and had trial counsel presented such evidence to the jury at the penalty phase of petitioner’s capital trial, the jury might still have returned a verdict of death, because the three murders petitioner committed were strong evidence in aggravation. But to obtain relief on the ground that trial counsel was ineffective, petitioner need not show that it is more likely than not that a different result would have occurred had trial counsel provided effective representation. (Strickland v. Washington (1984) 466 U.S. 668, 693 [104 *1279S.Ct. 2052, 2067-2068, 80 L.Ed.2d 674].) He need show only a “reasonable probability,” that is, a probability “sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome,” that the result would not have been the same without counsel’s ineffective representation. (Id. at p. 694 [104 S.Ct. at p. 2068].)
In Williams v. Taylor, supra, 529 U.S. 362, the United States Supreme Court granted a defendant’s habeas corpus petition and vacated his sentence of death, holding that his trial counsel’s incompetent failure to discover and present evidence of his childhood, which was “filled with abuse and privation” {id. at p. 398 [120 S.Ct. at p. 1515]), was prejudicial because that evidence “might well have influenced the jury’s appraisal of his moral culpability” (ibid). Here, because of the incompetent investigation of petitioner’s trial counsel, his penalty jury did not hear mitigating evidence comparable to that not presented in Williams. Thus, I “cannot put confidence in the verdict of a jury that decided the case without hearing the substantial mitigating evidence that competent counsel could and should have presented.” (In re Marquez, supra, 1 Cal.4th 584, 609.)
I would therefore grant the petition for habeas corpus and vacate the judgment of death.
Moreno, J., concurred.
Petitioner’s petition for a rehearing was denied November 13, 2002. George, C. J., did not participate therein. Kennard, J, was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

The majority in Jackson went on to hold that trial counsel’s failure to investigate the defendant’s background was harmless. This holding was wrong for the reasons explained in the dissenting opinion, which I joined. (In re Jackson, supra, 3 Cal.4th 578, 616-678 (dis. opn. of Mosk, J.).)