Carter v. Bogan

• Decision Date: 20 August 2018
• Docket Number: No. 16-3474,16-3474
• Citation: 900 F.3d 754
• Parties: Sean CARTER, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Bobby BOGAN, Jr., Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

900 F.3d 754

Sean CARTER, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.Bobby BOGAN, Jr., Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 16-3474

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: July 24, 2018

Decided and Filed: August 20, 2018

COUNSEL ARGUED: Rachel Troutman, Office of the Ohio Public Defender, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Christopher S. Ross, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Rachel Troutman, Kandra Roberts, Office of the Ohio Public Defender, Columbus, Ohio, John P. Parker, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant. Charles L. Wille, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before: COLE, Chief Judge; BOGGS and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

BOGGS, Circuit Judge.

In September 1997, Sean Carter raped and killed Veader Prince, his adoptive grandmother. State v. Carter , 89 Ohio St.3d 593, 734 N.E.2d 345, 347 (2000). Prior to trial, Carter's competency twice became a topic of controversy, leading to two hearings on the matter. Id. at 355–56. Both times, Carter was deemed competent to stand trial. Ibid. Carter was subsequently found guilty of aggravated murder and of two capital specifications and was sentenced to death. Id. at 350. Having exhausted his state-court appeals, Carter now brings this habeas corpus petition, alleging that he was incompetent at both the guilt and penalty phases of his trial and that his counsel were constitutionally ineffective. The district court denied the petition, Carter v. Bradshaw , No. 3:02CV524, 2015 WL 5752139, at *1 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 30, 2015), and for the following reasons, we affirm.

I

A

In 1981, when he was 18 months old, Sean Carter ("Carter") was removed from his birth mother following a referral to a children service's agency in Trumbull County, Ohio. Carter , 734 N.E.2d at 347, 359. When a caseworker investigated, she found Carter's mother—who suffered from schizophrenia—to be incoherent and Carter to be dirty, suffering from an enlarged stomach, and tied by his ankle to the leg of a couch. Id. at 359. After passing through several foster homes, Carter was eventually adopted by Evely Prince Carter when he was ten years old. Id. at 347, 359. However, in February 1997, just shy of Carter's eighteenth birthday, Evely Prince Carter threw him out of her home, leading Carter to go live with her mother, Veader Prince ("Prince"). Id. at 347. And there he stayed until his incarceration in July for theft. Ibid.

On September 13, 1997, Prince returned home to an unwelcome surprise. Unbeknownst to her, Carter had been released from jail and had let himself into her home. Id. at 347. Upon discovering him, Prince directed her son, who was with her at the time, to give Carter the keys and title to his car; she then told Carter not to come back. Id. at 348–49. The Supreme Court of Ohio summarized the subsequent events:

According to Carter's confession, after he obtained the car keys from [the victim's son], he left Prince's house and drove around for a while. He attempted to stay at his aunt's house, but could not. He returned to Prince's house and, since the door was locked, climbed through the bedroom window. He had called out to Prince, hoping to convince her to allow him to stay there for a week. They got into an argument and Prince told him to leave. He kept telling her that he had nowhere to go.

She tried to push him out the door and he started to beat her. At some point, he got a knife from the kitchen and started stabbing her. He described it as just "going off" and could not provide exact details of what happened during the assault, although he did remember hitting her in the face and stabbing her in the neck.

The next thing Carter remembered was being in the kitchen and washing his hands and the knife. He walked downstairs and saw Prince on the basement floor and then started to cover things up. He covered her with some clothes, moved the couch in her bedroom to cover up blood on the carpet, turned the water on in her bathroom and closed the door, and put a chicken in a pot on the stove and turned the stove on. He left a note on the kitchen table saying, "Took Sean to the hospital" in case someone saw blood in the house. He changed his clothes, since they were bloody. He then took about $150 from her purse and left.

He originally took her keys, thinking he would take one of her vans, and actually put his bag of clothes in the van, but could not get the van started. He got into [the victim's son's] car and drove off. Since he did not have a license plate, he stopped to steal a plate from a car in Garrettsville. To remove and transfer the plates to his car, he used the knife that he had stabbed his grandmother with.

Id. at 349–50.

Late in the evening of September 14, Prince's body was discovered by her children. Id. at 348. An autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed 18 times, had suffered blunt-force trauma to the head

, and had been anally raped. Id. at 349. Semen found in the victim's anus was later positively identified as Carter's. Id. at 353.

The next day, Carter was detained by police in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and, after being given his Miranda warnings, he confessed to Prince's murder. Id. at 349. He was subsequently extradited to Ohio, where he was indicted for, inter alia , one count of aggravated murder with three capital specifications, namely, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and rape. Id. at 350.

Prior to trial, a competency hearing was held at the request of defense counsel.

Because Carter had attempted to commit suicide "several" times while in custody, his arms and legs were shackled throughout the proceedings, and he was guarded by three members of the Trumbull County Sheriff's Department. Despite these circumstances, the court concluded that Carter was competent to stand trial based upon the testimony of Dr. Stanley Palumbo, a court-appointed licensed psychologist. Id. at 355. According to Palumbo,

[w]ith reasonable scientific certainty[,] Mr. Carter [was] competent to stand trial. Mr. Carter underst[ood] the nature of the proceedings against him and d[id] not suffer from any gross mental disorder that would [have] interfere[d] with his ability to participate in his defense. He d[id] not suffer from any mood disorder such as depression, which would [have] cause[d] him to have trouble following a witness's line of statements or [not] have the energy and interest in participating in his own defense in his own best interest.

Ibid. In its findings of fact, the court further noted that while "Palumbo testified that the Defendant does not trust his attorney, or any other attorney ... Defendant's distrust of his attorney does not exhibit paranoid behavior since he distrusts all attorneys and not specifically his attorney." Ibid.

Shortly thereafter, Carter entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Ibid. In advance of the trial, the defense hired Dr. Steven A. King to assess Carter's mental state at the time of the crime. While interviewing Carter, King became concerned that Carter was not competent to stand trial based upon "several subtle signs of a psychotic disorder

"—such as inappropriate laughter and auditory and visual hallucinations—as well as Carter's musing about killing Anthony Consoldane, one of his trial counsel. Following a motion by Carter's counsel, a second competency hearing was held on February 26, 1998.

At the hearing, three experts—King, Palumbo, and forensic psychiatrist Dr. Robert Alcorn—testified. Id. at 355–56. While King reiterated his diagnosis that Carter was incompetent—specifically, due to "his paranoia, his hostility and his inability to cooperate in his defense"—he acknowledged that "this was a close call, this is a subtle case."¹ Palumbo and Alcorn, however, disagreed. Palumbo, who had examined Carter on four different occasions, testified that Carter understood the charges against him, at no time seemed to be responding to auditory or visual hallucinations, and did not demonstrate confusion or agitation. Palumbo further attributed Carter's anger towards his attorneys to personality issues and to "questions about his attorneys proceeding for him on his behalf." Alcorn echoed Palumbo's assessment, opining that Carter was aware of the nature of the proceedings against him, that Carter had attempted to feign signs of mental illness during one of his interviews, and that Carter's antipathy towards Attorney Consoldane was related to Carter's assessment of Consoldane's performance. At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court once again found Carter competent to stand trial, noting that even King had acknowledged that the issue was borderline and that a defendant's distrust of or hostility towards his attorney does not necessarily equate with incompetence. Id. at 356.

Two weeks later, during the trial's opening statements, Carter interrupted defense counsel to express his desire to plead guilty. After the statements concluded, a brief recess was held, at which time Carter informed the court that he did not wish to attend the proceedings. Initially, the trial judge stated that he would hold off on deciding that matter, as he wished to research the issue to ensure that Carter's rights were adequately protected. Carter was, however, insistent that he did not want to attend the trial; and after asking whether he would be removed if he "acted up" in court, he lunged at the judge. The court described the ensuing events:

[w]hat happened is basically the Defendant lost complete control, indicated to the Court that he would act up and, in fact, proceeded to jump around, went crazy causing the deputies, four deputies to restrain him and put him in leg irons

. And he struggled very violently with them. And he has promised to the Court that he intends to continue that type of activity throughout the trial if he's required to be here.

Defense counsel agreed with this characterization of the incident and stipulated that until Carter could control himself, Carter would monitor the proceedings via television in...