In Henness v. Bagley, ___ F.3d ___, 2014 WL 4401252 (6th Cir. Sept. 8, 2014), the Sixth Circuit (Siler, with Boggs and Sutton) affirmed the denial of Ohio death row inmate Warren Henness’s Rule 60(b) motion which alleged that intervening changes in the law established cause to overcome the procedural default of his ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims. The panel found that “neither Martinez nor Trevino sufficiently changes the balance of the factors for consideration under Rule 60(b).” In addition, the Sixth Circuit has previously ruled that Martinez does not apply to Ohio and has questioned whether Trevino does. But even assuming that Trevino does apply to Ohio, the panel ruled that Henness was unable to meet the requirement of presenting a substantial claim as to both portions of the Strickland test.
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United States District Court Judge William K. Sessions, III of the District of Vermont granted relief to federal death row inmate Donald Fell on a claim of juror misconduct that was premised on the juror visiting the crime scenes during trial and reporting his observations to other jurors, conduct the juror denied at the post-conviction hearing. United States v. Fell, 2:01-cr-00012 (D. Vermont July, 24, 2014). Judge Sessions concluded that the juror’s hearing testimony was not credible and Fell had established the misconduct occurred. Judge Sessions found that not only did the government fail to rebut the presumption of prejudice that arose from the juror’s exposure to extra-record information, he also found that the juror’s investigation was not harmless in that it provided additional facts supporting certain aggravating factors and countered mitigation arguments. Judge Sessions further ruled that Fell was entitled to relief independently on the basis of juror bias. He explained: “Juror 143’s brazen disobedience, dishonesty, and unwillingness to decide the case based upon the evidence presented at trial demonstrate a partiality that would have resulted in his eviction from the panel during trial, and now invalidates Fell’s conviction.”
United States District Court Judge J. Leon Holmes of the Eastern District of Arkansas found that death row inmate Thomas Springs was “entitled to an evidentiary hearing on the question of whether he has a substantial claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at trial and during the penalty phase” on numerous claims related to Springs’ mental health and on the issue of whether state post-conviction counsel was ineffective in failing to pursue those claims. Springs v. Hobbs, 2014 WL 2815804 (E.D. Ark. June 23, 2014). Judge Holmes also included in the evidentiary hearing trial counsel’s failure to call Springs’ daughters at sentencing and state post-conviction counsel’s failure to call her at the post-conviction proceeding.
United States District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney of the Central District of California has ruled that “[i]nordinate and unpredictable delay” in California death penalty cases post-trial
has resulted in a death penalty system in which very few of the hundreds of individuals sentenced to death have been, or even will be, executed by the State. It has resulted in a system in which arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed. And it has resulted in a system that serves no penological purpose. Such a system is unconstitutional.
Therefore, Judge Carney vacated the death sentence of Ernest Jones. Jones v. Chappell, ___ F.Supp.2d ___, 2014 WL 3567365 (C.D. Cal. July 16, 2014).
In DeBruce v. Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, (11th Cir. July 15, 2014), a robbery-murder case, the Eleventh Circuit (Wilson; Martin concurring; Tjoflat dissenting) found that the attorney retained by DeBruce’s family some three to four weeks before the capital trial began was ineffective as to the sentencing phase. The panel majority found, inter alia, that even if it “accept[ed] the state court's factual determination that trial counsel made a strategic decision not to investigate mitigation evidence based on the results of the pre-trial report governing DeBruce's competency to stand trial, that decision could not have been reasonable as it would have been based on a failure to understand the law. Because no lawyer could reasonably have made a strategic decision to forego the pursuit of mitigation evidence based on the results of the pre-trial report governing competency to stand trial, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals' conclusion to the contrary constitutes an unreasonable application of Strickland's performance prong.” (Citations omitted.)