Brooks v. Comm'r, Ala. Dep't of Corr.

• Citation: 719 F.3d 1292
• Decision Date: 27 June 2013
• Docket Number: No. 10–12073.,10–12073.
• Parties: Christopher Eugene BROOKS, Petitioner–Appellant, v. COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of the State of Alabama, Respondents–Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

719 F.3d 1292

Christopher Eugene BROOKS, Petitioner–Appellant,
v.
COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of the State of Alabama, Respondents–Appellees.

No. 10–12073.

United States Court of Appeals,
Eleventh Circuit.

June 27, 2013.

[719 F.3d 1293]

Charles A. Flowers, III (Court–Appointed), Birmingham, AL, for Petitioner–Appellant.

James Clayton Crenshaw, Anne Cole Adams, Pamela L. Casey, Attorney General's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Respondents–Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Before BARKETT, HULL and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Christopher Brooks was convicted of murdering a female acquaintance in the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary and was sentenced to death in Alabama state court. The issue presented by this appeal is whether Brooks's direct appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance by inadequately litigating his trial counsel's ineffective assistance at the penalty phase of his trial. Trial counsel presented only one witness—Brooks's mother—in mitigation. Brooks says that trial counsel should have sought out and presented more mitigation evidence: in particular, witnesses testifying to his good character, evidence of his moderate alcoholism, and the fact that he was intoxicated on the night of the crime. He faults his direct appellate counsel for two alleged deficiencies. First, his direct appellate counsel raised the ineffectiveness-of-trial-counsel claim with regard to the failure to introduce good-character evidence, but she did not seek out and failed to present any character witnesses herself. This meant that Brooks was unable to show that his trial counsel's decision not to present character witnesses prejudiced him at trial. Second, his direct appellate counsel did not even raise the claim that his trial counsel should have discovered and presented evidence of his alcoholism and intoxication on the night of the murder.

[719 F.3d 1294]

The district court denied Brooks's 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition, finding that the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reasonably applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), in rejecting this claim. The Court of Criminal Appeals held, in relevant part, that Brooks's trial counsel's failings did not prejudice him during the penalty phase because there was no reasonable probability that the balance of aggravating and mitigating factors, even including all of the mitigating evidence Brooks now says should have been presented, would have weighed in favor of life imprisonment rather than death. Consequently, his appellate counsel could not have prejudiced Brooks during his direct appeal. After thorough review, we conclude that this determination was reasonable and, therefore, affirm.

I. A.

In 1993, Brooks was convicted of murder during the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary, seeAla.Code § 13A–5–40(a)(2)–(4), for killing Jo Campbell. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals summarized the underlying facts of the case:

The evidence at trial showed that the appellant and the victim met while working as counselors at a camp in New York state. On December 31, 1992, the victim's body was found under the bed in the bedroom of her apartment in Birmingham, Alabama. She had been bludgeoned to death, and she was naked from the waist down.

On the night before the victim's body was found, a co-worker of the victim's saw the appellant enter the restaurant where they worked and saw the victim talking to the appellant. Later that night, the victim spoke with another friend by telephone; that friend heard a male voice in the background and the victim told her friend that a friend was sleeping on her living room floor.

A DNA analysis was performed on semen found in the victim's vagina. The results were compared with the appellant's blood. There was testimony that the odds of finding another person with the same DNA as the appellant's and as found in the semen taken from the victim's body would be 1 in 69,349,000 among white persons.... A latent print of the appellant's palm was found on the victim's left ankle. A bloody fingerprint matching the appellant's was found on a doorknob in the victim's bedroom, as were two other matching latent fingerprints. The appellant's thumbprints were also found on a note in the victim's apartment.

The evidence further showed that the appellant was seen driving the victim's car on the night of December 31 and that he told a witness that he “had to fuck that girl to get that car.” The car was found in Columbus, Georgia, where the appellant resided. Inside the car was a package of photographs with the name “Brooks, C.” on the package. When the appellant was arrested, he had in his possession the victim's car keys and her Shell Oil Company credit card, which he had used on several occasions. He had also cashed the victim's paycheck and one of her personal checks. Several items were missing from the victim's apartment and the evidence showed that the appellant had pawned these items at various pawnshops in Columbus.

Brooks v. State, 695 So.2d 176, 178–79 (Ala.Crim.App.1996) (“Brooks I”) (footnote omitted). “The record also reflects that after searching Brooks's apartment, the police recovered the keys to the victim's automobile; pawn tickets; the victim's AT & T answering machine; and receipts from purchases that had been made with

[719 F.3d 1295]

the victim's Shell Oil Company credit card.” Ex parte Brooks, 695 So.2d 184, 187 (Ala.1997) (“Brooks II”).

At trial, the state also established several other facts. Another man, Robert Leeper, a friend of Brooks who had traveled with him to Birmingham, was with Brooks and the victim at the time. The police officer who found Campbell's body testified that he found both a portion of a baseball bat and a barbell with one end broken off in the apartment. Dr. Gary Simmons, the medical examiner who had performed the victim's autopsy, also testified. He said that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and neck. In addition, his examination revealed an abrasion on the victim's vagina. The prosecution's theory of the case was that Brooks, not Leeper, committed the murder, since the evidence demonstrated that he had intercourse with Campbell and his bloody fingerprint was found on the doorknob. The jury convicted Brooks of three counts of capital murder for killing the victim during the course of a rape, during the course of a robbery, and during the course of a burglary. Brooks v. State, 929 So.2d 491, 494 (Ala.Crim.App.2005) ( “Brooks III”).

At the penalty phase of the trial, the state put on several witnesses to establish the aggravating circumstance that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. SeeAla.Code § 13A–5–49(8). The main witness was Simmons, who returned to the stand to describe the severe injuries to Campbell's body. In addition, the state admitted into evidence photographs of those injuries. Campbell had several lacerations and bruises to her face, extensive fractures at the base of her skull, evidence of internal bleeding into her lungs, contusions to the brain, hemorrhaging in the eye, injuries to the neck either from blunt force trauma or strangulation, a broken nose, a fractured jawbone, and several missing teeth, some of which had lodged in her windpipe. In Simmons's opinion, the injuries resulted from being struck five to eight times with a heavy blunt object. Simmons also testified that the hemorrhaging and brain swelling indicated that the victim was alive throughout at least part of the attack, and that she could have lived for anywhere from five minutes up to several hours after the attack, although he could not know whether or for how long she remained conscious.

Brooks's trial counsel put on only one witness in mitigation, Brooks's mother, Norma Silva. Her testimony consisted mostly of basic, biographical information, including the fact that Brooks was twenty at the time of the murder, that Brooks's father had no role in raising him, and that he had only one prior criminal conviction, a petty larceny misdemeanor.¹

In closing argument, defense counsel argued that there was enough residual doubt

[719 F.3d 1296]

so that, even though the jury had convicted Brooks, it should not recommend sentencing him to death. As counsel put it, “[W]e can't come back in a month or six years, ten years, when you read about an electrocution in the paper and say, ‘I lie awake at night and I wonder what happened.’ It will be too late.” Counsel repeatedly stressed that no one could definitively know what had occurred on the night of the murder. Finally, he emphasized that Brooks had no serious criminal history, which was a mitigating circumstance that favored sentencing Brooks to life imprisonment.

The jury recommended the death sentence by a vote of eleven to one. Brooks III, 929 So.2d at 494. The trial court found two aggravating circumstances applied: first, the commission of the murder occurred during the course of a rape, robbery, burglary, or kidnapping, Ala.Code § 13A–5–49(4); and, second, the crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel compared to other capital offenses, Ala.Code § 13A–5–49(8). As for mitigating circumstances, the trial court found, based in part on Silva's testimony, that: Brooks had no significant history of prior criminal activity, Ala.Code § 13A–5–51(1); and he was only twenty at the time of the crime, Ala.Code § 13A–5–51(7). The court found no nonstatutory mitigating circumstances. The trial court weighed the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, found that the former outweighed the latter, and sentenced Brooks to death.

B.

A new lawyer—Virginia Vinson—was appointed to replace trial counsel. Vinson is the attorney whose alleged ineffectiveness is the subject of the current appeal. Vinson moved for a new trial, in part based on trial counsel's ineffectiveness at adequately investigating...