Brown v. United States

Citation720 F.3d 1316
Decision Date10 July 2013
Docket NumberNo. 09–10142.,09–10142.
PartiesMeier Jason BROWN, Petitioner–Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent–Appellee.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Mark Evan Olive (Court–Appointed), Law Office of Mark Olive, P.A., Tallahassee, FL, Jeffrey Lyn Ertel, Fed. Pub. Def., Fed. Def. Program, Inc., Atlanta, GA, for PetitionerAppellant.

R. Brian Tanner, James C. Stuchell, U.S. Atty., U.S. Attorney's Office, Savannah, GA, for RespondentAppellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before DUBINA, Chief Judge, and BARKETT and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

In this death penalty case, Meier Jason Brown was found guilty of murder and robbery, and sentenced to death after trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. His convictions and sentence were affirmed by us in United States v. Brown, 441 F.3d 1330 (11th Cir.2006), cert. denied,549 U.S. 1182, 127 S.Ct. 1149, 166 L.Ed.2d 998 (2007). In this collateral action, the district court rejected Brown's motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, holding, among other things, that Brown had failed to establish the ineffective assistance of trial counsel in investigating and presenting evidence about his background and mental health at the penalty phase, that Brown was procedurally barred from claiming there was no record of voir dire of one of the jurors, and, finally, that he was not entitled to new, conflict-free § 2255 counsel. After careful review, we affirm.

I.
A. The facts and the guilt phase of trial

On direct appeal, we offered a detailed description of the facts of this tragic case based on the trial testimony and the last of Brown's three confessions, which was presented to the jury by audiotape. See Brown, 441 F.3d at 1337–38. The murder occurred during the course of a robbery of $1,175 in money orders at a Fleming, Georgia post office. As the robbery unfolded, Brown stabbed postmistress Sallie Gaglia ten times, while she tried to defend herself, and left her to die, alone and lying face down, on the floor.

Eyewitness and physical evidence led police to suspect Brown, who finally confessed to Sallie Gaglia's murder. In an interview conducted by Postal Inspector James Rushwin and Liberty County Sheriff's Department Detective Charles Woodall,Brown admitted that he had gone to the Fleming post office on the morning of November 30, 2002 to retrieve his family's mail from a post office box. Brown went home to distribute the mail. After telling police several different versions of what happened, Brown confessed that he then returned to the post office with a knife to rob Gaglia. At the post office, Brown asked for three money orders. When Gaglia turned to use an adding machine, Brown put socks on his hands, jumped over the counter, and—according to Brown—tripped, fell into her, and cut her with his knife. He told police that at this point he decided he had to kill Sallie Gaglia because she knew him. Thereafter, Brown grabbed Gaglia's wallet, crawled through the counter window, discarded the knife and the socks on his hands as he biked home, and threw his clothes into the washing machine. Brown then called his girlfriend, Diane Brown, to pick him up, and he gave her the money orders the next day. Brown was convicted of all three charges: 18 U.S.C. § 1111 (murder within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States); id. § 1114 (murder of a federal employee); and id. § 2114 (robbery of federal property).

B. Penalty phase

We recount the penalty phase of the trial at some length since it bears directly on the claim that counsel was ineffective in the investigation and presentation of mitigation evidence. The government referred to the evidence of Brown's guilt already before the jury and presented the testimony of six more witnesses. Brown's state probation officer testified that Brown had convictions stretching from 1990 to 2001 for multiple DUIs, multiple forgeries, financial card fraud, theft by taking, and robbery of a convenience store, along with violations of the probated sentences he received for some of those crimes. Corporal Randy Garman offered testimony about the convenience store robbery, after which Brown had denied his involvement to police until presented with overwhelming physical evidence tying him to the crime.

The last government witnesses were victim postal employee Gaglia's co-worker and three siblings. One sister testified about the damaging impact the murder had on Gaglia's family. Gaglia's younger son, a high school senior when his mother was murdered, was rendered emotionally incapable of going to college and joined the Army instead. Gaglia's husband was in therapy and could not manage to attend the court hearing. As the witnesses described her, Sallie Gaglia was more than willing to help anyone, was an active member of her church, took care of their mother, and was devoted to her sons. They echoed that Gaglia's murder was a great loss and that she could never be replaced. Her sister showed the jury pictures from Gaglia's life.

Brown then called fourteen witnesses in mitigation. According to several family members, Brown was a nice, quiet, loving, “true and good hearted” person, would do anything for anybody, cared deeply about his family, and as a child, never got into trouble. His brother begged the jury for mercy. His sister and brother-in-law added that the defendant had always loved and taken care of his mother, sleeping on the floor next to her because he “didn't want to get too far from her,” and accompanying her to doctor visits and regular dialysis treatments. Brown lost several jobs because he cared for her, telling one employer that “his mama c[a]me first.” That said, both Brown's friend Jimmy Wainwright, who had hired him to frame houses, and Steve Murray, Brown's former boss at McDonald's, testified that Brown was a good worker, honest and dependable. Brown was always the first to call Wainwright for available work.

Brown's father, Pelham Brown, testified that he left home and never returned when Brown was seven or eight years old, after Pelham shot one of Brown's older brothers who came at him with a razor. Brown's sister-in-law and Wainwright, who had known Brown since he was fifteen, described the chaotic and violent circumstances of life at the trailers owned by Brown's family (often referred to as “the Morgan compound”), and discussed fighting, shootings and stabbings that regularly occurred there. Wainwright called the compound a “crack house” and added that everyone “except the older people used drugs. In fact, Brown and his father Pelham used drugs; Pelham used drugs in Brown's presence; and Wainwright regularly drank with Brown.

A neighbor and retired Liberty County Assistant Jail Administrator, Alexis Andrews, testified that that she had lived near the Morgan compound for some twelve years, when Brown was a child. She too noted the poverty, drinking, fighting, and drugs on the compound. She said that gunshots were often heard, and she often called police herself because of the fighting. Indeed, Andrews was so worried about her family's safety from even stray bullets that she moved away. Andrews also offered that a child had drowned in a nearby septic tank, and that the children raised themselves. Despite all of this, Andrews testified that Brown always was “mannerful”. Andrews and another jail administrator, John Wilcher, both told the jury that they had known Brown in jail, he was a very good inmate, and he never had disciplinary problems. Andrews recounted that Brown had been made a prison trustee, a position reserved for clean inmates with good manners, and participated in prison church services.

Brown also presented the testimony of Liberty County Sheriff's Department Detective Charles Woodall, to whom Brown had confessed killing Gaglia. Woodall had known Brown because he often responded to calls about violence at the Morgan compound over the years. Those calls happened anywhere from once a week to ten times a week, and involved fights, domestic problems, shootings, stabbings, alcohol, drug sales, and robberies. As he put it: We were out there a lot.” Woodall said that Brown's home was [i]n a bad state or repair,” and that the defendant and his mother “lived a very poor life.” Detective Woodall also knew about the Morgan child who had drowned in the septic tank. Woodall added that when Brown confessed to the murder, he was remorseful—sobbing and crying during most of the confession. On cross-examination, Woodall described Brown as intelligent, having “good common sense,” and knowing right from wrong. And when pressed, Woodall admitted that while Brown was sobbing during the confession, he was saying that his own life—not the life of his victim—was over.

Linda Jones, a teacher, and Vanessa Parker, a school social worker, also testified that Brown was well mannered, polite, and never caused any problems. Jones said Brown had difficulty learning, failing every class except one in the ninth grade. Brown's mother evinced no interest in his education, never responding to any of Jones's repeated notes, and Brown had excessive absences from class that were the result of a fire that burned his house down. After Jones learned that Brown had been charged with murder, she surmised that he must have let an awful lot of anger out at that time that he had pinned up from all those years.” Parker confirmed that she thought he had a little “tenseness sort of anger” that may have been the result of “his situation,” and believed he was on some medication, but could not recall any details.

Several witnesses expressed shock upon learning about Brown's murder charges. Wainwright told the jury that he had initially thought that somebody set Brown up for the murder. Two church elders testified on Brown's behalf, and described his family as “God-fearing” and pled for Brown's life. Finally, Brown's...

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