Chandler v. United States: Does the Defense Attorney Have a Legal Obligation to Present Mitigation Evidence in Eleventh Circuit Death Penalty Cases?

• Publication year: 2010

Chandler v. United States: Does the Defense Attorney Have a Legal Obligation to Present Mitigation Evidence in Eleventh Circuit Death Penalty Cases?

Bill Cristman

Introduction

In 1991, a jury in the Northern District of Alabama convicted Ronnie Chandler of running a large marijuana operation and procuring the murder of a police informant.[1] Subsequently, the same jury sentenced Chandler to death.[2] The jury heard the details of Chandler's crimes at the guilt phase of his trial.[3] However, at the penalty phase of the trial, because Chandler's lawyer did not seek out or produce witnesses who would have testified,[4] the jury never heard that Chandler, without accepting repayment or recompense, had bought shoes for barefoot children; built a wheelchair-accessible porch for an elderly man; helped friends and family members to build houses; paid the funeral expenses for a neighbor's child because he knew the family had no money; given food and money to needy neighbors; provided jobs in his construction firm to unemployed people who wanted to work; helped a widow, and later a woman fleeing her abusive husband, by taking them into his home, and supporting each, until they could get on their feet; contributed generously to his church; and faithfully supported a long-time alcoholic friend in quitting drinking.[5] Five years after the trial, at an evidentiary hearing on Chandler's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, forty of Ronnie Chandler's friends and neighbors drove two hours from Piedmont, Alabama to the United States Court for the Northern District of Alabama, in Birmingham. There, they testified that Ronnie Chandler's trial lawyer never contacted any of them to testify at the penalty phase of Chandler's trial, when their stories of his generosity and compassion might have saved Chandler from receiving a death sentence.[6]

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in affirming the district court's denial of relief in Chandler v. United States,[7] has arguably so narrowed the analysis of ineffective assistance of counsel claims arising from the penalty phase of capital trials as to make that claim virtually nonexistent.[8] The decision, announced on July 21, 2000, seemingly eviscerates ineffective assistance of counsel analysis under the standard previously announced in Strickland v. Washington.[9] The new standard widens the definition of acceptable defense lawyering in capital cases so far that, according to one of the dissenting judges, it "virtually forecloses any future Strickland claim of ineffective assistance during the penalty phase of a capital proceeding."[10] Such a development bodes ill not just for the poor, the retarded, the mentally ill, and members of racial minority groups—the classes of people that have historically received the death penalty[11]—but for any death penalty defendant whose counsel provided inadequate representation.[12]

Quite often, even in an age of guided discretion and bifurcated trials, appellate courts find counsel in capital cases ineffective in terms of the Sixth Amendment.[13] Cases have shown that lawyers defending "death-eligible" clients are often inexperienced, underpaid, incompetent, drunk, asleep, or some combination thereof.[14] At the same time, representing a client in a capital trial may demand more strategic and tactical skill from an attorney than any other criminal defense undertaking.[15] Effective counsel will organize a death penalty trial around a "theme for life" that is conceived during the pretrial investigation and presented from voir dire through the closing argument of the penalty phase.[16]

Ronnie Chandler asserted a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in the federal habeas corpus petition that gave rise to the appeal heard by the Eleventh Circuit in Chandler v. United States.[17] This Comment discusses the disposition of that appeal, which almost resulted in Chandler's becoming the first federal prisoner executed in over thirty years.[18] Part I of this Comment briefly reviews and discusses the history of ineffective assistance of counsel in capital cases, as well as the modern history of capital punishment in the United States, with special reference to Georgia and the Eleventh Circuit. Part II examines the Supreme Court's recent treatment of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim arising from the penalty phase of a capital trial in Williams v. Taylor,[19] where the Court overturned the Fourth Circuit's denial of relief to Terry Wayne Williams after his attorney failed to discover and present crucial mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of Williams' trial.[20] Part III discusses the facts of the case in Chandler v. United States and analyzes Judge Edmondson's majority opinion. Part IV analyzes Judges Tjoflat and Barkett's dissenting opinions and discusses the apparent conflict between the Supreme Court's decision in Williams v. Taylor and the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Chandler v. United States. Part V examines the early jurisprudence in the wake of Chandler. Finally, this Comment concludes with a prediction as to the implications of Chandler for death penalty and ineffective assistance of counsel jurisprudence in the Eleventh Circuit.

I. A Short History of the Right to Counsel and Modern
Capital Punishment Jurisprudence in the United States

A. Incorporation of the Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides, inter alia, that a criminal defendant has the right to assistance of an attorney at trial.[21] Early in American history, the Supreme Court held that the right to counsel, as well as the Bill of Rights in general, applied only in the context of federal law, not to the states or under state law.[22] In 1932, in Powell v. Alabama,[23] the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the Sixth Amendment right to counsel be applied to indigent defendants in state law capital cases.[24] In Johnson v. Zerbst,[25] the Court subsequently held that the Sixth Amendment extends the right to counsel to all federal criminal defendants.[26] Nonetheless, ten years after Powell, in Betts v. Brady,[27] the Court refused to recognize any Due Process requirement extending the right to counsel to all state law criminal defendants.[28] It was not until 1963, in Gideon v. Wainwright,[29] that the Court fully extended the right to counsel to all state law criminal defendants, including indigents represented by appointed counsel.[30]

More recent Court decisions have arguably blunted the holdings of Powell and Gideon. For example, in Pennsylvania v. Finley,[31] the Court held that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to counsel in post-conviction proceedings.[32] In Murray v. Giarratano,[33] the Court held that the right to counsel does not attach even to post-conviction proceedings in capital cases, where it is arguably most needed.[34] Because criminal defense lawyers trying death penalty cases are often woefully under compensated, they are often inexperienced or incompetent, a fact that helps perpetuate the steady supply of ineffective assistance of counsel claims in capital cases.[35]

B. Modern Death Penalty Jurisprudence

The modern history of the death penalty in the United States is inextricably tied to the modern history of the death penalty in Georgia.[36] In 1972 the Supreme Court held, in Furman v. Georgia,[37] that the death penalty sentences in that case "constitute[d] cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."[38] The Court did not say that the death penalty was cruel and unusual per se, only that "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cruel and unusual punishment."[39]

The reaction to Furman was both immediate and sweeping. Between 1972 and 1976, slightly more than two-thirds of state legislatures revised their death penalty statutes to comport with the Furman decision.[40] The Supreme Court approved the revised Georgia, Florida, and Texas death penalty laws through separate decisions handed down on the same day in 1976.[41] In Gregg v. Georgia,[42] the Court held that the new death penalty statutes, made rationally sound by guided discretion, would eradicate the "capricious or arbitrary" decisions that had characterized pre-Furman jurisprudence.[43] The Court's decision in McCleskey v. Kemp,[44] a 1987 case that arose in Georgia, further disheartened death penalty critics challenging the punishment as racist and classist. McClesky held that while sociological studies are generally valuable academic tools which support the theoretical conclusion that the death penalty might be applied disproportionately based on race, a defendant must point to a specific racist application in his individual trial before the Court could grant relief.[45] Despite the methodological soundness of the study McCleskey proffered and the validity of its conclusion that the application of the Georgia death penalty statute was itself "pregnant with racism," the Court affirmed McCleskey's death sentence.[46]

C. Ineffectiveness of Counsel Litigation After Gregg v. Georgia

The Gregg decision has significantly impacted ineffective assistance of counsel claims in capital cases primarily because of the Court's ratification of bifurcated capital trials, where a guilty verdict triggers what is essentially a second sentencing trial.[47] The Georgia statute that the Supreme Court approved in Gregg provided a blueprint for many of the forty states with death penalty statutes.[48] Under the bifurcated system, the defense attorney's primary duty at the sentencing trial is to present mitigating evidence sufficient to persuade the sentencer that the convicted defendant's life should be spared.[49] Both the Georgia and the federal statutes are silent as to what constitutes sufficient mitigating evidence.[50] In 1978 the Supreme Court in Lockett v. Ohio[51]...