Lee v. GDCP Warden

• Decision Date: 11 February 2021
• Docket Number: No. 19-11466,19-11466
• Parties: James Allyson LEE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. GDCP WARDEN, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

987 F.3d 1007

James Allyson LEE, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.GDCP WARDEN, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 19-11466

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

February 11, 2021

Lynn Damiano Pearson, Tahirih Justice Center, Atlanta, GA, Michael C. Garrett, Garrett Gilliard & Saul, Augusta, GA, Marcia A. Widder, Georgia Resource Center, Atlanta, GA, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Sabrina Graham, Beth Attaway Burton, Attorney General's Office, Atlanta, GA, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.

GRANT, Circuit Judge:

James Allyson Lee, a Georgia prisoner sentenced to death for the murder of Sharon Chancey, appeals the district court's denial of his federal habeas corpus petition, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Lee contends that his attorneys violated his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel by failing to adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase of his capital murder trial. The Georgia Supreme Court rejected Lee's ineffective-assistance claim in state postconviction proceedings on the ground that he failed to show that the allegedly deficient performance prejudiced him, as required under Strickland v. Washington , 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). The district court found that the Georgia Supreme Court's decision was not an unreasonable application of federal law and denied Lee's § 2254 petition. After careful consideration, and with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm.

I.

A.

One night in May 1994, after stealing several handguns from a gun shop and driving around for a while with his friend Shannon Yeoman, James Lee decided to steal his father's prized pickup truck, a 1992 Chevrolet Silverado. Lee later told the police that he wanted to kill his father—and probably would have if things had gone as planned—because his father had abused and abandoned Lee and his mother when Lee was a child. The plan was for Yeoman to lure Lee's father out to a nearby highway by telling him that Lee needed help with a broken-down car. Putting the plan in motion, Lee dropped off Yeoman near the trailer park where his father lived and drove Yeoman's Toyota to the meeting place to wait.

Right away, Lee's plan hit a snag: his father was out of town. The father's live-in girlfriend, Sharon Chancey, was home alone, but refused when Yeoman asked her to drive the truck to help Lee. Lee, meanwhile, had really been "hoping it would be [his] dad"; he had worked himself up thinking about the things that his father "had done to [Lee] when [he] was small and the things that he had done to [Lee's] mother, and the life that she chose from those things." When Yeoman reported that only Chancey was home, Lee "still had those emotions and those feelings going," and he thought, "You'll do."

He sent Yeoman back to try again, telling her to insist that Chancey come out to help him with the supposedly broken-down old Toyota. When Chancey still refused, Lee went into the trailer himself to persuade her. Lee later said that Chancey was reluctant because Lee's father didn't like her driving his truck, but she eventually agreed to help. At trial, the parties disputed whether Chancey left the trailer voluntarily—she was wearing only a nightshirt and panties, had no shoes on, and had left her dentures at home, which was apparently something she never did.

One way or another, at about 4:00 in the morning, Chancey and Yeoman drove in the prized Silverado truck to Highway 84 near Blackshear, Georgia, where Lee had set his trap. After arriving, Chancey got out of the truck and walked over to the Toyota, and Lee used one of his stolen guns to shoot her in the face.¹

Lee picked up Chancey's apparently lifeless body and threw her in the back of the Silverado. After stopping for gas—with Chancey still half-naked and bleeding in the truck bed—Lee drove approximately 50 miles to a remote area. He dragged Chancey out of the back of the truck, pulling off her nightshirt in the process, and dumped her in the woods wearing only her panties. Before leaving, Lee began to pull Chancey's rings off her fingers, and she grabbed his hand. Lee took out his gun and fired three more shots, hitting Chancey once more in the face and once in the abdomen.

Lee and Yeoman left Chancey's body in the woods and drove the Silverado to Fernandina Beach, Florida, where Yeoman's family lived. Lee mentioned the murder to various friends and acquaintances that day, telling several people that the blood in the back of the truck was from a woman he'd killed, and at one point calling Chancey a "dead bitch[ ]." Apparently, none of his friends believed him.

The police were easier to convince. That night, as Lee was driving with two of his friends in the Silverado, a Florida state trooper pulled him over for an equipment violation. Lee gave one of his friends a pistol and told him to "get out and shoot the cop," but his friend dropped the pistol on the floor and kicked it under the seat. Meanwhile, the trooper discovered that the tag on the Silverado was registered to Yeoman's 1980 Toyota. He soon determined that the Silverado did not belong to any of its occupants, and that Chancey, whose purse and identification were in the Silverado, was missing. When questioned, Lee eventually confessed that he had killed Chancey and taken the truck.

Lee later gave videotaped statements at the scenes of both shootings, describing how he had shot Chancey once on the side of the highway, and three more times after dumping her in the woods. He told the police that he had planned to kill his father and killed Chancey instead of him because she was there.

Lee was charged with murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, theft by taking, possession of a firearm during commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He pleaded not guilty and proceeded to trial in Charlton County, Georgia, where Chancey's body was found. The state elected not to prosecute the charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and the trial court granted Lee's motion for a directed verdict for lack of venue on the charges of kidnapping and theft. The jury found Lee guilty of the remaining charges.

During the sentencing phase, the state presented evidence that at the time of the murder, Lee had been on probation for stealing a truck and breaking into a church two years earlier. The state also presented evidence that about two months before the murder, Lee and a man named Doug Gregory stole a car outside Atlanta and drove it to Florida. There, Lee and four or five of his friends took Gregory out to an area called the Point and brutally beat him. Gregory testified that before the beating, Lee told his friends that there was going to be an "initiation," and that he "wanted to see blood, a lot of blood." Lee started the beating by hitting Gregory with a stick about the size of a baseball bat. He hit Gregory at least four times in the head with the stick, while his friends beat Gregory with more sticks and a metal folding chair until he was covered in blood from head to toe. After the beating, Lee threatened Gregory that if he went to the police, he "wasn't anything but a bullet."

The state also presented evidence that while awaiting trial on the murder charge, Lee escaped from jail in Georgia, stole a car and some clothes, and fled to Florida. After the police recaptured him, Lee gave yet another audiotaped statement in which he confessed to killing Chancey. For the first time, he claimed that he was on "acid" at the time of the murder. He also reiterated, however, that he had wanted to kill his father and insisted that he would still kill him, even if he were sober. He was angry; he said that his father beat his mother when he was little, and his mother turned to drugs when his father left them, so he never really had a mother or father. He also swore that he would kill the investigator and the GBI agent in charge of his murder case if he ever got the chance and said that he would have shot at the police when he was arrested after the escape if he had had a gun. When asked if Chancey's murder was the first time that he had killed someone, he responded in the affirmative, but added more: "Yep. But, killing's so easy. Now that I've done it once, it wouldn't be hard doing it." He qualified this chilling statement by saying that he "wouldn't go out and do it" and he pointed out that he had not killed anyone besides Chancey, even when he'd had the opportunity.

Lee presented the testimony of seven mitigation witnesses: Denise Baxley, who was one of his elementary school teachers; Johnny Lee, his father; Melton Lloyd, his stepfather; Barbara Lloyd, his mother; Mavis Garrison, his house mother from the Boys’ Ranch where he lived from the ages of 15 to 17; Daniel Grant, Ph.D., a psychologist who performed a battery of neuropsychological tests; and Lee himself.

The first witness was Baxley, Lee's special education teacher for two years when he was seven to nine years old. Lee had been evaluated and placed in a class for severely emotionally disturbed students. Lee was very impulsive and had "some basic security problems." He also had trouble paying attention and was being treated with Ritalin

for hyperactivity. Baxley testified that she conducted occasional home visits as part of the special education program, and she always found his home to be in "disarray"—whether he lived alone with his mother or with his grandparents. Parental involvement was an integral part of the special education program, but although Lee's mother participated to "the best of her ability probably," she never followed up on Baxley's suggestions for after-school activities, and never really provided any kind of authority figure for Lee. Baxley never observed Lee being cruel or mean to other people.

Lee's father, Johnny Lee, testified that he had six children and had been married seven times. He was married to Lee's mother Barbara, but the two separated when Lee was...