James Willie Brown v. Frederick Head

272 F.3d 1308, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 24505
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit·Decided November 15, 2001·No. 00-15886·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinions

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Just over a quarter of a century ago, in 1975, James Willie Brown and Brenda Watson went on a date to the Mark Inn Lounge in Stone Mountain, Georgia. They ate a steak and potato dinner and spent several hours drinking and dancing. Brown v. State, 250 Ga. 66, 66, 295 S.E.2d 727, 729 (1982). Afterwards Brown took Watson to an old logging road in a heavily wooded area, tied her up with a nylon cord, raped and orally sodomized her, and suffocated her by forcing her panties so far down her throat that they were not discovered until the autopsy. Id. She was the third woman Brown had attacked, but the other two were fortunate enough to have escaped with their lives. Id. at 73, 295 S.E.2d at 734. Because Watson did not, Brown was charged with capital murder.

The trial of the case was delayed for six years because of concerns about Brown’s mental competency. When the case did go to trial in 1981, a jury convicted Brown and sentenced him to death. That conviction and death sentence were affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court, id., state collateral relief was denied, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review. Brown v. Dodd, 484 U.S. 874, 108 S.Ct. 33, 98 L.Ed.2d 164 (1987). Brown was more successful in seeking federal ha-beas relief. In 1988 the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued the writ, effectively requiring a new trial, on Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815 (1966), and related Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), grounds. After conducting proceedings to ensure that Brown was competent, the State retried him in 1990. The evidence at the retrial, like that at the initial trial, was overwhelming, and the jury convicted Brown and sentenced him to death again. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed that new conviction and sentence. Brown v. State, 261 Ga. 66, 401 S.E.2d 492, cert. denied, 502 U.S. 906, 112 [1311]*1311S.Ct. 296, 116 L.Ed.2d 240 (1991). State collateral relief was denied as well. After the Supreme Court denied certiorari, Brown v. Turpin, 519 U.S. 1098, 117 S.Ct. 781, 136 L.Ed.2d 725 (1997), Brown sought federal habeas review which was denied in November 2000. This is the appeal from that denial. Brown raises a number of issues, several of which deserve discussion.1

I. THE INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE CLAIMS

Brown raises ineffective assistance claims relating to two witnesses who testified at the sentence stage, Carl “White and Anita Tucker. We hold that even assuming that Brown’s trial counsel should have discovered and used certain impeachment evidence to attack the testimony of these witnesses, the state habeas court’s conclusion that counsel’s failure to do so did not prejudice Brown’s sentence is objectively reasonable.

A. Witness White

During the sentence phase, "White testified that he was the officer who booked Brown on the murder charge on May 15, 1975, and that he did not notice anything unusual about Brown’s demeanor or ability to communicate. White also testified about something Brown said: “"When I got through taking the information, as I recall, he made a statement that he wasn’t worried about this charge, that he would plead insanity and be out in a few years.”

Brown contends that his trial counsel should have discovered and used other evidence to impeach the testimony of "White. The other evidence consists of documents in the State’s files indicating that White did not report Brown’s statement until six years after it was made, and that he did so then only after an investigator, at the prosecutor’s direction, questioned White about whether Brown had made any statements while being booked that might shed some light on his mental state at that time. Brown argues that delay in reporting the statement could have been used to impeach "White’s testimony that Brown made the statement, because if such a statement really had been made, White would not have kept quiet about it for six years.

Since White had testified at Brown’s competency hearing about the statement made at booking, Brown argues that his trial counsel should have anticipated that testimony would be repeated at trial and set about to find a way to impeach it. If counsel had looked, Brown says, he could have discovered the documents indicating "White’s six-year silence about the statement. The failure to discover and use that evidence to impeach White’s testimony at trial was ineffective assistance of counsel, Brown argues. He asserts this ineffective assistance claim as to sentencing, not as to the guilt stage.

The state habeas court concluded that trial counsel performed deficiently in not discovering and using the fact that White had not reported to the prosecutor Brown’s statement at booking soon after it was made. The court denied relief, however, on the ground that no reasonable [1312]*1312probability existed that Brown’s sentence would have been different had counsel discovered and used the fact of the delay in reporting to attack White’s testimony.

In this federal habeas proceeding, the district court agreed with the state habeas court that Brown had not established prejudice from his trial counsel’s failure to discover the information and use it to impeach White. Like the state court, the district court reasoned that even apart from White’s testimony, the other evidence supporting the death sentence was overwhelming. It followed that the state habe-as court’s decision was not an unreasonable application of federal law, and federal habeas relief was due to be denied.

B. Witness Tucker

Anita Tucker also testified during the sentence phase. She told how she had met Brown while both of them were incarcerated in the Gwinnett County Jail. On one occasion, she and Brown were transported from that jail to the courthouse in the same car. During that trip, Brown had told her she “should play crazy and that [she] would not do any more than two years.” Tucker said that Brown knew of her because he had been incarcerated with her co-defendants in an unrelated case.

Tucker also testified about another meeting with Brown which had taken place after her conviction, when she was incarcerated at Hardwick Correctional Institution. This meeting occurred when Tucker was transported to Central State Hospital for a dental evaluation. While she was there, Tucker testified, Brown had asked her “what happened to you in Gwinnett County?” Tucker told Brown she “was found guilty and given a sentence of life plus sixty years,” to which Brown replied, “Well, I told you.” Tucker explained to the jury that his statement referred to their earlier conversation about “playing crazy.”

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

James Willie Brown v. Frederick Head, 272 F.3d 1308, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 24505 (11th Cir. 2001).

272 F.3d 1308 (James Willie Brown v. Frederick Head) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

James Willie Brown v. Frederick Head
272 F.3d 1308 (Eleventh Circuit, 2001)