# Virgil Lee Brownlee v. Michael Haley

> Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit · September 16, 2002 · 306 F.3d 1043

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9415719

## Case

- **Full name:** Virgil Lee BROWNLEE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Michael HALEY, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, Respondent-Appellee
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- **Decided:** September 16, 2002
- **Citations:** 306 F.3d 1043; 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 19069; 2002 WL 31050882
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Edmondson
- **Judges:** Edmondson, Marcus, Wilson
- **Cited by:** 171 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9415719

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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 respons…
- 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 Strick…
- 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
- recognizing that mental retardation generally requires a showing of an IQ of 70 or below, significant limitations in adaptive skills, and the manifestation of these two deficits during the developmental years

## Opinion text

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.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9415719. Public record. Not legal advice.