Hill v. Mitchell

• Decision Date: 08 March 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-4132.,03-4132.
• Citation: 400 F.3d 308
• Parties: Jeffrey D. HILL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Betty MITCHELL, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

400 F.3d 308

Jeffrey D. HILL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Betty MITCHELL, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 03-4132.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: November 4, 2004.

Decided and Filed: March 8, 2005.

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Gary W. Crim, Dayton, Ohio, for Appellant.

Charles L. Wille, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Gary W. Crim, Dayton, Ohio, Timothy R. Payne, Public Defender's Office, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant.

Before: GIBBONS, ROGERS, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

A state-court jury imposed a capital sentence on Jeffrey Hill for the aggravated murder of his mother, and Hill now challenges a district court decision denying his petition for habeas corpus relief. Among a host of other claims, Hill emphasizes that his lawyers' failure to hire a mitigation psychologist until the day before the mitigation hearing constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Even assuming that the delay in hiring this psychologist amounted to objectively defective lawyering, we agree with the district court that Hill has not shown that the delay prejudiced the penalty phase of his trial — first because the mitigation theory that the psychologist did present (that Hill was suffering from cocaine psychosis at the time of the murder) did not differ in material ways from the one that would have been presented with more preparation and, second, because nine psychological and background assessments of Hill had already been undertaken by the time the mitigation psychologist had been hired and all of them were submitted to the jury during the sentencing hearing. Because we reject this claim and Hill's other claims as well, we affirm.

I.

Early in the morning on March 23, 1991, Jeffrey Hill, then 26 years old, visited his mother, Emma Hill, at her apartment. He borrowed $20 from her (under the pretext of needing money to buy cigarettes), left the apartment and bought some crack cocaine (even though he had consumed nearly $400 worth of crack cocaine the preceding night).

When he returned within the hour, his mother, who was partially paralyzed from a stroke, complained that he did not visit her regularly. An argument between the two ensued and eventually ended when Hill stabbed his mother ten times with a kitchen knife. According to Hill's later confession, his mother said, "Why? Why did you do this?" as she lay dying on the floor next to her bed. JA 1161. Hill did not respond and instead searched her belongings for more money that he could use to buy crack. Finding another $20, Hill left his mother in the apartment, locked the door behind him and drove away in his mother's car. After disposing of the knife, he smoked more crack cocaine and, at some point along the way, met a friend, Charlotte Jones.

That evening, Hill returned to his mother's apartment, leaving Jones waiting in the car after telling her that he was stopping off to get some money from his mother — although he later testified that he returned "to see if she [his mother] was all right." JA 1161. Having forgotten to take the key with him when he locked the apartment, he forced the door open, went into her closet and took the $120 he found there.

Later that night, a police officer stopped Hill for driving without lights. Spotting a crack cocaine pipe next to the driver's seat and eventually learning that Hill lacked a license and had an outstanding arrest warrant, the officer took Hill into custody. Two days later, the police found Emma Hill's body in her apartment. When homicide detectives questioned Hill about his mother's death, Hill initially denied knowing about her death but, after being confronted with inconsistencies in his statements, confessed to the murder. Further investigation corroborated Hill's confession: The police found a bloodstained knife where Hill confessed he had abandoned it; the wounds proved to be consistent with ones that would be made by the knife; and money found in the car carried blood stains consistent with Emma Hill's blood type.

A grand jury indicted Hill, charging him with aggravated murder during a robbery (count 1), aggravated robbery (count 2), aggravated burglary (count 3) and theft of a motor vehicle (count 4). When Hill expressed an interest in raising an insanity defense, the trial court appointed psychologists to evaluate him. After these evaluations, the Ohio trial court found Hill competent to stand trial, and the three psychologists who evaluated him for insanity each concluded that at the time of the murder he did not lack the ability to know right from wrong or to refrain from the act had he chosen to do so. Hill abandoned the insanity defense and argued his innocence at trial. At the end of the guilt phase of the trial, a jury convicted him on all counts.

At the mitigation hearing, Hill's counsel presented testimony from four witnesses designed to persuade the jury to give him a life sentence rather than a death sentence. His mitigation psychologist, Dr. Myron Fridman, testified that Hill's cocaine addiction and intoxication affected his actions at the time of the murder. Dr. Fridman testified that Hill was addicted to cocaine at the time of the murder and that crack addicts who consume large amounts of cocaine may enter a mental state called cocaine psychosis in which they become irrational, violent and aggressive. Dr. Fridman also testified that Hill would be a good candidate for rehabilitation because he would not have access to cocaine in prison. And Hill's counsel submitted into evidence nine reports detailing Hill's mental health and describing various aspects of his family history, all of which Hill supplemented by testifying himself during the sentencing hearing.

When asked at the sentencing hearing if he remembered stabbing his mother, Hill answered, "Not really," JA 1163, but his testimony otherwise corresponded to his earlier confession. After the sentencing hearing, the jury recommended that Hill be sentenced to death, concluding that the aggravating circumstance — committing murder during an aggravated robbery — outweighed the mitigating factors presented by Hill. The trial court accepted the jury's recommendation.

Represented by new counsel, Hill appealed his conviction and sentence to the Hamilton County Court of Appeals, see State v. Hill, 1993 WL 538902 (Ohio Ct.App. Dec.22, 1993), and to the Ohio Supreme Court, see State v. Hill, 73 Ohio St.3d 433, 653 N.E.2d 271 (1995), but each court affirmed the jury's verdict and the death sentence. After the United States Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari, Hill v. Ohio, 516 U.S. 1079, 116 S.Ct. 788, 133 L.Ed.2d 738 (1996), Hill sought post-conviction relief in the state courts. The court of common pleas rejected each of Hill's post-conviction claims, and the Hamilton County Court of Appeals affirmed. State v. Hill, 1998 WL 320917 (Ohio Ct.App. June 19, 1998).

After the Ohio Supreme Court declined to exercise discretionary review, Ohio v. Hill, 83 Ohio St.3d 1460, 700 N.E.2d 878 (1998), Hill filed a habeas corpus petition in federal district court, asserting 20 grounds for relief ranging from ineffective assistance of counsel to prosecutorial misconduct to assorted errors by the state trial court. In two separate opinions, the district court denied the writ of habeas corpus, concluding that all of Hill's claims either failed on the merits or were procedurally defaulted. Hill now brings this appeal.

II.

Hill argues, first and foremost, that his attorneys' failure to hire a mitigation psychologist until the day before the mitigation hearing violated his right to counsel under the Sixth (and Fourteenth) Amendment. We disagree.

When a constitutional claim reaches us on a petition for habeas corpus, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996), ordinarily limits our review of the relevant state-court rulings. "[W]ith respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings," AEDPA permits federal courts to grant habeas relief in only two instances: (1) if the state court decision "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States" or (2) if it "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (emphasis added). But when a claim has not been "adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings," id., and has not been procedurally defaulted, we look at the claim de novo rather than through the deferential lens of AEDPA. Maples v. Stegall, 340 F.3d 433, 436 (6th Cir.2003) ("Where, as here, the state court did not assess the merits of a claim properly raised in a habeas petition, the deference due under AEDPA does not apply.").

The Ohio Court of Appeals spoke to the mitigation-psychologist claim in this way:

Hill claims in his fourth assignment of error that he was denied effective assistance of counsel because counsel only contacted Dr. Fridman, the addiction specialist who testified during the mitigation phase of Hill's trial, a day before he testified. Hill proffered Dr. Fridman's affidavit in the court below; it stated that he had been contacted after the guilt phase of Hill's trial, that he did not meet Hill until the morning he testified, and that had he evaluated Hill earlier, he could have done an evaluation of Hill and testified specifically about Hill and his addiction as opposed to addiction in general. Hill also referred to the affidavit of Dr. Hawgood as an example of the type of testimony which could have been presented to the jury had Dr. Fridman been contacted earlier. The record demonstrates that Dr. Fridman was contacted one day before he testified. While we are puzzled by counsel's seeming inattention, Hill's claim is res judicata...