Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman
| Decision Date | 25 April 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-11284.,05-11284. |
| Parties | Jalil ABDUL-KABIR, fka Ted Calvin Cole, Petitioner, v. Nathaniel QUARTERMAN, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division. |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
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Robert C. Owen, Austin, TX, Jordan M. Steiker, Austin, TX, Raoul D. Schonemann, Oakland, CA, for Petitioner.
Greg Abbott, Kent C. Sullivan, Eric J.R. Nichols, Gena Bunn, Edward L. Marshall, Carla E. Eldred, Austin, Texas, for Respondent.
Petitioner Jalil Abdul-Kabir, formerly known as Ted Calvin Cole,1 contends that there is a reasonable likelihood that the trial judge's instructions to the Texas jury that sentenced him to death prevented jurors from giving meaningful consideration to constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence. He further contends that the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) denying his application for postconviction relief on November 24, 1999, misapplied the law as clearly established by earlier decisions of this Court, thereby warranting relief under the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We agree with both contentions. Although the relevant state-court judgment for purposes of our review under AEDPA is that adjudicating the merits of Cole's state habeas application, in which these claims were properly raised, we are persuaded that the same result would be dictated by those cases decided before the state trial court entered its judgment affirming Cole's death sentence on September 26, 1990. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
In December 1987, Cole, his stepbrother Michael Hickey, and Michael's wife, Kelly, decided to rob and kill Kelly's grandfather, Raymond Richardson, to obtain some cash. Two days later they did so. Cole strangled Richardson with a dog leash; the group then searched the house and found $20 that they used to purchase beer and food. The next day, Michael and Kelly surrendered to the police and confessed. The police then arrested Cole who also confessed.
Cole was tried by a jury and convicted of capital murder. After a sentencing hearing, the jury was asked to answer two special issues:
The trial judge instructed the jury to take into consideration evidence presented at the guilt phase as well as the sentencing phase of the trial but made no reference to mitigating evidence. Under the provisions of the Texas criminal code, the jury's affirmative answers to these two special issues required the judge to impose a death sentence. See Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071 (Vernon 2006).
At the sentencing hearing, the State introduced evidence that Cole pleaded guilty to an earlier murder when he was only 16. Shortly after being released on parole, Cole pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated sexual assault on two boys and was sentenced to 15 more years in prison. As evidence of Cole's propensity for future dangerousness, the State introduced Cole's diary which, according to the State's expert psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Coons, revealed a compulsive attraction to young boys and an obsession with criminal activity. Dr. Coons described Cole as a sociopath who lacked remorse and would not profit or learn from his experiences.
In response, Cole presented two categories of mitigating evidence. The first consisted of testimony from his mother and his aunt, who described his unhappy childhood. Cole's parents lived together "off and on" for 10 years, over the course of which they had two children, Cole, and his younger sister, Carla. App. 35. Shortly after Cole was born, his father was arrested for robbing a liquor store. Cole's father deserted the family several times, abandoning the family completely before Cole was five years old. On the last occasion that Cole saw his father, he dropped Cole off a block from where he thought Cole's mother lived, told Cole to "go find her," and drove off. Id., at 42. Cole had no contact with his father during the next 10 years. Ibid. After Cole's father left, his mother found herself unable to care for Cole and his sister and took the children to live with her parents in Oklahoma. Cole's grandparents were both alcoholics—Cole's mother was herself a self-described "drunk"—and lived miles away from other children. Eventually, because Cole's grandparents did not want their daughter or her children living with them, Cole's mother placed him in a church-run children's home, although she kept her daughter with her. Over the next five years Cole's mother visited him only twice. Cole's aunt, who visited him on holidays, testified that Cole seemed incapable of expressing any emotion and that his father never visited him at all.
The second category of mitigating evidence came from two expert witnesses—a psychologist and the former chief mental health officer for the Texas Department of Corrections—who discussed the consequences of Cole's childhood neglect and abandonment. Dr. Jarvis Wright, the psychologist, spent 8 to 10 hours interviewing Cole and administering an "extensive battery of psychological tests." Id., at 63. He testified that Cole had "real problems with impulse control" apparently resulting from "central nervous damage" combined with "all the other factors of his background." Id., at 69. He also testified that Cole had likely been depressed for much of his life, that he had a "painful" background, and that he had "never felt loved and worthwhile in his life." Id., at 73, 86. Providing an analogy for Cole's early development, Dr. Wright stated that "the manufacturing process had botched the raw material horribly." Id., at 73.
When specifically asked about future dangerousness, Dr. Wright acknowledged that "if Ted were released today on the street, there's a much greater probability of dangerous behavior than with the rest of us." Id., at 74. Although he acknowledged the possibility of change or "burn out," he admitted that Cole would likely pose a threat of future dangerousness until "years from now." Ibid. Except for his prediction that Cole would change as he grew older, Dr. Wright's testimony did not contradict the State's claim that Cole was a dangerous person, but instead sought to provide an explanation for his behavior that might reduce his moral culpability.
Dr. Wendell Dickerson, a psychologist who had not previously examined Cole, observed that it was difficult to predict future dangerousness, but that "violent conduct is predominantly, overwhelmingly the province of the young" with the risk of violence becoming rare as people grow older. Id., at 95. On cross-examination, in response to a hypothetical question about a person with Cole's character and history, Dr. Dickerson acknowledged that he would be "alarmed" about the future conduct of such a person because "yes, there absolutely is a probability that they would commit... future acts of violence." Id., at 113. In sum, the strength of Cole's mitigating evidence was not its potential to contest his immediate dangerousness, to which end the experts' testimony was at least as harmful as it was helpful. Instead, its strength was its tendency to prove that his violent propensities were caused by factors beyond his control— namely, neurological damage and childhood neglect and abandonment.
It was these latter considerations, however, that the prosecutor discouraged jurors from taking into account when formulating their answers to the special issues. During the voir dire, the prosecutor advised the jurors that they had a duty to answer the special issues based on the facts, and the extent to which such facts objectively supported findings of deliberateness and future dangerousness, rather than their views about what might be an appropriate punishment for this particular defendant. For example, juror Beeson was asked:
The prosecutor began his final closing argument with a reminder to the jury that during the voir dire they had "promised the State that, if it met its burden of proof," they would answer "yes" to both special issues. App. 145. The trial judge refused to give any of several instructions requested by Cole that would have authorized a negative answer to either of the special issues on the basis of "any evidence which, in the jury's opinion, mitigated against the imposition of the Death Penalty, including any aspect of the Defendant's character or record." Id., at 115; see also id., at 117-124. Ultimately, the jurors answered both issues in the affirmative and Cole was sentenced to death.
On direct appeal, the sole issue raised by Cole was that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict. The CCA rejected Cole's...
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