concluding that even though appellant’s counsel was a former district attorney whose name “was listed on the [case action] sheets [for appellant’s earlier criminal proceedings] because [the counsel] was serving at the time as a deputy district attorney with supervisory responsibility for the attorneys who actually handled the prosecutions,” appellant made no showing that his counsel “had inconsistent interests simply because he worked in the district attorney’s office at a time when [appellant] was prosecuted years earlier”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that even though appellant’s counsel was a former district attorney whose name “was listed on the [case action] sheets [for appellant’s earlier criminal proceedings] because [the counsel] was serving at the time as a deputy district attorney with supervisory responsibility for the attorneys who actually handled the prosecutions,” appellant made no showing that his counsel “had inconsistent interests simply because he worked in the district attorney’s office at a time when [appellant] was prosecuted years earlier”
- determining that petitioner was entitled to habe-as relief as to his sentence for failing to present mitigating evidence at the sentencing phase, we noted that, among the mitigating factors not presented at sentencing, was petitioner's "extensive drug abuse, particularly on the night in question”
- holding that counsel was *1289 ineffective for failing to investigate, obtain, or present any mitigating evidence, including evidence of the petitioner’s borderline mental retardation and other serious psychiatric illnesses, but only after finding actual prejudice under Strickland
- recognizing that psychiatric expert testified that “[d]rug or alcohol use on the day of the crime would have substantially aggravated these pre-existing [psychiatric] limitations” and “substantially impaired” capital defendant’s ability to conform his conduct to law
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
EDMONDSON, Chief Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I concur in the judgment. I stress that the State, in the appeal, did not contest the district court’s determination that trial counsel performed deficiently at sentencing. So, the first element (the performance element) of Strickland was never put into controversy in this appeal. I also stress that I doubt — and do not understand today's opinion to say — that the failure to introduce evidence of mild or borderline mental retardation in a capital sentencing proceeding will be, or almost always will be, or even usually will be enough to satisfy the prejudice element of Strickland. We need to be cautious about applying what is said in the context of Eighth Amendment opinions in the materially different context of deciding ineffective-assistance-of-counsel cases.