Mayfield v. Woodford

• Decision Date: 07 November 2001
• Docket Number: RESPONDENT-APPELLEE,PETITIONER-APPELLANT,No. 97-99031,97-99031
• Citation: 270 F.3d 915
• Parties: (9th Cir. 2001) DEMETRIE LADON MAYFIELD,v. JEANNE WOODFORD, WARDEN,
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 915

270 F.3d 915 (9th Cir. 2001)

DEMETRIE LADON MAYFIELD, PETITIONER-APPELLANT v. JEANNE WOODFORD, WARDEN, RESPONDENT-APPELLEE

No. 97-99031

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Argued and Submitted June 19, 2001

Filed November 7, 2001

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Michael M. Crain, Klein & Crain, Santa Monica, California, and Michael T. Shannon, Pasadena, California, for the petitioner-appellant.

Garrett Beaumont, Deputy Attorney General, San Diego, California, for the respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Edward Rafeedie, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-94-6011-ER

Before: Schroeder, Chief Judge, and O'Scannlain, Rymer, Kleinfeld, Hawkins, Silverman, Graber, Gould, Berzon, Tallman, and Rawlinson, Circuit Judges.

Richard C. Tallman, Circuit Judge:

Demetrie Ladon Mayfield murdered Ora Mae Pope on February 2, 1983, to exact revenge from Ms. Pope and her son, Byron, who had sworn out a complaint against Mayfield for auto theft. He then killed John Moreno to eliminate the only eyewitness to the crime. A San Bernardino County jury convicted Mayfield of two counts of first degree murder and found a multiple murder special circumstance to be true. After a separate penalty hearing the jury recommended that Mayfield be put to death.

Every court that has reviewed this case has upheld the conviction and sentence. The California Supreme Court affirmed Mayfield's death sentence on direct appeal and, after referring several questions to a superior court judge who served as a referee at an extensive evidentiary hearing, it denied Mayfield's state habeas corpus petition. People v. Mayfield, 852 P.2d 331 (Cal. 1993). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. Mayfield v. California, 512 U.S. 1253 (1994). Mayfield then filed a federal habeas corpus petition in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. The district court denied Mayfield's petition, and a three-judge panel of this Court affirmed. Mayfield v. Calderon, 229 F.3d 895 (9th Cir. 2000).

We voted to reconsider en banc the claims raised by Mayfield in his federal habeas corpus petition. Mayfield raises seven claims, but ineffective assistance of counsel at the guilt and penalty phases are the predominant ones. He claims that the jury instructions improperly prevented the jury from considering (1) sympathy for Mayfield, (2) the consequences of their verdict, and (3) mitigating evidence not related to the crime. He also asserts that (4) the 1978 California death penalty statute under which he was convicted and sentenced is unconstitutional. Finally, he alleges that his attorney provided ineffective assistance (5) due to conflicts of interest arising out of racial prejudice and concern for reputation, (6) at the guilt phase, and (7) at the penalty phase. With regard to each claim, we must determine whether to grant a certificate of appealability ("COA"). If we grant COAs for any of Mayfield's claims, we must then address the merits of those claims.

We deny COAs as to claims one through five. We grant COAs as to claims six and seven, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel at the guilt and penalty phases of trial. We agree with the courts that have already reviewed this case that, regardless of whether the performance of Mayfield's counsel at the guilt phase was deficient, Mayfield suffered no prejudice at the guilt phase. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's denial of Mayfield's claim for ineffective assistance at the guilt phase and leave undisturbed the jury's verdict convicting Mayfield of two counts of first degree murder with special circumstances.

We disagree, however, with those courts' determinations that Mayfield received effective assistance of counsel at the penalty phase. We hold that the performance of Mayfield's counsel at the penalty phase was deficient and that Mayfield suffered prejudice as a result. We reverse the district court's denial of Mayfield's claim for ineffective assistance at the penalty phase and remand to the district court to grant Mayfield's habeas corpus petition on this ground. The state court shall conduct a new sentencing proceeding to determine whether Mayfield is to be sentenced to death or to life without parole.

I.

To understand the events surrounding Mayfield's crime and punishment, we provide an overview of the events which led to the murders in 1983.¹

Demetrie Mayfield lived with Robert Wafer next door to the Pope family in the San Bernardino housing projects during much of 1982. He borrowed Wafer's 1968 Pontiac so frequently that he had his own key. Wafer left town, abandoning his house and car.

In December 1982, the car was repossessed because of delinquent payments. Ora Mae Pope arranged to take over the payments and to purchase the car for her son, Byron. Byron was in possession of the car for only three days before it disappeared from the Popes' driveway. Byron reported the car stolen.

Mayfield and two of his friends were arrested in the car a day later. Mayfield pled guilty to one count of unlawful taking of a vehicle and was released pending a sentencing hearing. He was told that he would be sentenced to one year in jail. He did not appear for his sentencing hearing on the scheduled date.

On the evening of February 2, 1983, Mayfield was at Pat Harper's house, less than a block from the Pope residence. He had stayed with Harper sporadically since his mother had ordered him out of her house. About 11:00 p.m. he walked over to the Pope residence. He stood outside the living room window, where he overheard Ms. Pope and John Moreno talking about him. He returned to Harper's house and told her that he did not like what they were saying about him and that "he was going to show them."

Mayfield armed himself with a .12-gauge, sawed-off, single-shot shotgun,² and two shotgun shells, and went back to the Pope residence. Using a screw driver he also carried from Harper's house, he removed a screen window from the back of the Pope residence, climbed into the house, and loaded the first shell into the shotgun. He crept down the hall and turned into a small living room, confronting Ms. Pope and Moreno, who were sitting on the couch drinking, smoking, and talking. Mayfield sat on the arm of another couch, approximately five feet from Ms. Pope, with the shotgun leveled at her.

During a fifteen-to twenty-minute verbal confrontation regarding the auto theft charges, Mayfield kept his finger resting on the trigger. According to his audiotaped confession and videotaped re-enactment of the crime, Mayfield claimed that Ms. Pope suddenly stood up from the couch to light a cigarette. Mayfield insisted he "thought she was coming at [him]" and jerked back reflexively, accidentally pulling the shotgun's "hair" trigger³ and shooting her. Mayfield broke open and reloaded the shotgun. He then shot Moreno because he had witnessed the crime.

Mayfield retrieved the spent shotgun shells from the floor, took the keys to the Pope residence from a table in the back hall, locked the back door, and returned to Harper's house. He told Harper, "I did it. I didn't mean to. It slipped. It was an accident. And then I had to do the second one." He concealed the shotgun in a torn couch cushion in a storage room off the side of her house. Then he returned to the Pope residence.

Mayfield replaced the screen window. He dragged the bodies of Ms. Pope and Moreno from the living room, out the back door, across a short cement walk, and into a storage closet accessible from outside. He used a garden hose to wash their blood from the walk. After retrieving a kitchen knife, which he wrapped hidden in a towel, Mayfield locked the door and waited outside for Byron to come home.

When Byron arrived, Mayfield confronted him, and the two wrestled.⁴ Mayfield refused to let Byron into his house. He demanded to know why Byron and his mother had pressed charges against him for the car theft and why Byron had been bad-mouthing him around the neighborhood. A mutual friend drove by during the confrontation and stopped to intercede. The friend suggested that Byron simply drop the charges, but Mayfield said it was too late for that. At an impasse and unable to get into his house, Byron and his friend left. Mayfield went to his mother's home, where he slept in the garage.

The police arrested him there the next morning. After providing blood and urine samples at the hospital, Mayfield was taken to the San Bernardino police station for questioning. After administering Miranda warnings and obtaining a waiver of his constitutional rights, two detectives interviewed Mayfield on audiotape. Mayfield initially denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, the crime. When confronted with the evidence that police had already gathered against him, Mayfield confessed. Following his confession, Mayfield explained the circumstances of his crime in detail.

After the audiotaped interview, the police asked Mayfield to participate in a videotaped re-enactment of the crime. He agreed. The video shows Mayfield at the crime scene the following day, clad in orange jail coveralls, approaching the house with the shotgun, removing the screen window, confronting Ms. Pope and Moreno (played by plain-clothes police officers), pretending to shoot them, positioning them face down on the sofa, pretending to drag them out the door and across the walk, and placing them atop one another in the storage closet.

On February 10, 1983, Donald S. Ames was appointed to represent Mayfield. After a three-day trial (exclusive of jury selection), the jury deliberated for two and one-half hours before convicting Mayfield of two counts of murder in the first degree with the special circumstance of committing multiple murders. A separate penalty hearing commenced three days later and, after a day and a half, the jury recommended that...