concluding that, while the defendant’s conduct was not as extreme as the conduct of the defendant in Landrigan, the court still followed Landrigan by “drawing a distinction between a defendant’s passive non-cooperation and his active instruction to counsel not to engage in certain conduct”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that, while the defendant’s conduct was not as extreme as the conduct of the defendant in Landrigan, the court still followed Landrigan by “drawing a distinction between a defendant’s passive non-cooperation and his active instruction to counsel not to engage in certain conduct”
- holding that attorney was not ineffective for failing to challenge voluntariness of confes sion when police had probable cause to arrest the defendant’s girlfriend at the time they threatened him with her arrest
- finding no deficient performance in counsel’s failure to hire independent mental health expert after (1) court-appointed competency experts evaluated defendant and reported he was not suffering from psychological defect at time of murder, and (2) counsel’s observations of defendant showed nothing indicating mental illness
- holding that a petitioner had not been prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to present child abuse evidence and noting that several decades had elapsed between the murder and the abuse
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WILSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. Newland makes a persuasive argument that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel cannot be fulfilled when his lawyer conducts virtually no investigation into his client’s background before defending him in a death case. Some semblance of an investigation should be necessary before counsel is in a position to settle upon a reasonable sentencing phase strategy. Newland’s lawyer, of course, was hampered by the instruction of his client to not investigate his background. Without Supreme Court guidance addressing a lawyer’s obligation to conduct an investigation into his client’s background when the client instructs otherwise, 1 1 concur in the ultimate conclusion that the decision by the Georgia courts regarding counsel’s penalty phase representation is not “contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d)(1).
. See ABA Guideline for the Appointment and Performance of Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, 11.4.1(C) (1989) ("The investigation for preparation of the sentencing phase should be conducted regardless of any initial assertion by the client that mitigation is not to be offered.").