Stokes v. Stirling

• Decision Date: 19 August 2021
• Docket Number: No. 18-6,18-6
• Citation: 10 F.4th 236
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit
• Parties: Sammie Louis STOKES, Petitioner – Appellant, v. Bryan P. STIRLING, Director, South Carolina Department of Corrections; Michael Stephan, Warden of Broad River Correctional Institution, Respondents – Appellees.

10 F.4th 236

Sammie Louis STOKES, Petitioner – Appellant,

v.Bryan P. STIRLING, Director, South Carolina Department of Corrections; Michael Stephan, Warden of Broad River Correctional Institution, Respondents – Appellees.

No. 18-6

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: May 6, 2021

Decided: August 19, 2021

ARGUED: Paul Alessio Mezzina, KING & SPALDING LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Michael Douglas Ross, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Diana L. Holt, DIANA L. HOLT, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina; Michele J. Brace, VIRGINIA CAPITAL REPRESENTATION RESOURCE CENTER, Charlottesville, Virginia; Ashley C. Parrish, Joshua C. Toll, Isra J. Bhatty, Edward A. Benoit, KING & SPALDING LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Alan Wilson, Attorney General, Donald J. Zelenka, Deputy Attorney General, Melody J. Brown, Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees.

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, HARRIS, and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Chief Judge Gregory wrote the opinion, in which Judge Harris joined. Judge Quattlebaum wrote a dissenting opinion.

GREGORY, Chief Judge:

Sammie Louis Stokes confessed to capital murder, putting mitigation of the death penalty at the heart of his defense. His trial counsel prepared some personal mitigation evidence but, at the last minute, withheld it. Instead, counsel presented a single witness at sentencing: a retired prison warden who was unprepared and counterproductive. The jury returned a death sentence without hearing a word from the defense about Stokes as an individual. In postconviction proceedings, new counsel found more information about Stokes's traumatic upbringing, but failed to pursue a mitigation-based ineffective assistance of counsel claim. We conclude that postconviction counsel were ineffective, providing good cause for Stokes's procedural default of such a claim. On the merits, we find that trial counsel's failure to adequately investigate and present personal evidence was objectively unreasonable and prejudicial. We reverse the district court order dismissing Stokes's petition and remand for issuance of the writ unless the State grants resentencing.

I.

A.

Stokes's childhood in Branchville, South Carolina was marked by extreme abuse and neglect. His parents were serious alcoholics. Stokes initially lived with his father. He met his mother, Pearl, for the first time when he was four years old. When he was five, Stokes went to live with Pearl and met his sister Sara for the first time.

Pearl lived with a man, Richard, whom the kids regarded as a stepfather. As one relative put it, the family lived in a "run-down wooden shack" without running water or indoor plumbing. Richard and Pearl sometimes took the children along to clubs and bars, and other times the children were left unsupervised. Stokes and Sara often skipped school and sometimes stole food from neighbors to eat. On some weekends, they stayed with their paternal grandmother, who ran a liquor house and brothel out of her home. When Stokes was nine years old, his father died suddenly on the front lawn, where Stokes saw his body. Afterwards, the kids lived with Pearl and Richard permanently.

The children witnessed and suffered physical and sexual abuse. Richard sexually abused Sara, regularly and openly. When Sara was as young as 13 years old, Pearl sometimes "gave" Sara to men as "payment" in exchange for car rides. Stokes was disciplined by whippings with an extension cord. Pearl and Richard fought explosively. One witness recalled Pearl being hospitalized after Richard broke a bottle over her head; Stokes recalled Richard breaking her jaw. When Stokes was 13, he witnessed his mother, on the couch, intoxicated, as she fell into a coma and then died, leaving Stokes parentless.

Stokes remembers his mother's death as a point when his life turned for the worse. Stokes and Sara briefly lived with an aunt but ultimately chose to live unsupervised with Richard. Stokes began using drugs and alcohol. He attended under-resourced schools where his failure to progress was ignored. Stokes repeated the eighth grade three times, yet only stopped attending school at age 18, when he was in the ninth grade. Around age 11 or 12, Stokes had been sexually abused by a babysitter. Thereafter, he had many sexual encounters, and at age 15, impregnated two partners. At that same age, a "relationship" began between Stokes and Audrey Smith, a friend of his mother's, who was almost ten years older than him. Stokes was "obsessed" with Smith, and their relationship was often tumultuous. When Stokes was 18 and Smith was 27, they married.

According to the child development expert retained by Stokes's federal counsel, these facts amount to an extraordinarily traumatic childhood that impaired Stokes's future emotional regulation and social adaptation.¹

B.

In 1988, Stokes was convicted of assaulting Smith with a knife. Soon after his release in 1990, the couple became involved again. Before long, Stokes assaulted Smith for a second time, choking her in a park and leaving her unconscious. He was convicted of that assault in 1991 and sentenced to ten years. While serving the sentence, in 1998, Stokes was cellmates with Roy Toothe. Toothe's mother, Pattie Syphrette, lived with his children and their mother, Connie Snipes. Syphrette wanted to gain custody of her grandchildren by having Snipes killed. Stokes agreed to carry out the murder for $2,000.

Stokes was released from prison several months later. Within weeks, he and Syphrette met to make plans. Syphrette falsely told Snipes that she had kidnapped and planned to murder Doug Ferguson, a man who sometimes lived with them. Syphrette invited Snipes to join, and Snipes agreed. Stokes also invited Norris Martin, a longtime friend from childhood. Martin, who has an intellectual disability, was a "follower" of Stokes growing up. Snipes went with Syphrette, Stokes, and Martin on a drive to an isolated area. While Syphrette waited by the car, Snipes walked with Stokes and Martin into the woods. Though the factual accounts differ about exactly what happened next, it is undisputed that Stokes drew a gun and held Snipes at gunpoint; Martin raped Snipes, followed by Stokes; and Martin and Stokes each shot Snipes once in the head, killing her. When a car passed nearby, they fled, leaving the body in the woods where it was found days later. At the scene, police found a hat, knife, and wallet belonging to Martin. The group was arrested soon after, and Stokes penned a detailed confession in county jail.

Martin later testified to further details about the crime. According to Martin, Stokes instigated the rape and murder of Snipes; Stokes was especially abusive, anally raping Snipes and using Martin's knife to mutilate her breasts; Stokes pushed the gun into Martin's hand and forced him to pull the trigger; and Stokes mutilated the corpse, cutting off a portion of the scalp and cutting off the genitals.

The jury also heard about the subsequent murder of Doug Ferguson. In the days after the Snipes murder, Syphrette feared Ferguson's knowledge of her plans to murder Snipes. Syphrette enlisted Stokes and a friend, Faith Lapp, to kidnap Ferguson. The group had bound Ferguson with duct tape when police arrived at Syphrette's home. Ferguson died of suffocation from his bindings. In a subsequent prosecution, Stokes pleaded guilty to Ferguson's murder.

C.

In 1998, the trial court appointed Thomas Sims as Stokes's lead counsel and Virgin Johnson as second chair. The lawyers were former prosecutors with several years of experience in private practice. They had some limited death penalty experience, but little to no experience preparing a mitigation defense. Trial preparation spanned nine months. Sims and Johnson began preparing mitigation evidence six months in. Trial counsel's efforts on the mitigation investigation totaled around 45 hours out of the hundreds they billed. They hired their fact investigator's receptionist as the mitigation investigator, though she had no prior experience with mitigation investigations. She was conducting an interview the same day that the jury reached its initial verdict.

The guilt phase of the trial began on October 25, 1999. The parties agreed to restrict the guilt phase to a bare recitation of the facts and reserve any aggravating facts about the crime for the penalty phase. Four days later, the jury returned a guilty verdict after an hour's deliberation. For the penalty phase, trial counsel decided to focus on prison adaptability: they planned to argue that Stokes's health condition made him especially suitable for a life sentence. Stokes was HIV-positive. His health was declining significantly around this time; he even needed an emergency blood transfusion in the days before trial. Trial counsel retained a neurologist who was prepared to testify to evidence of brain damage possibly caused by AIDS. They also prepared a forensic psychiatrist to testify that Stokes was likely to imminently die of AIDS in prison.

Stokes was hesitant about this strategy, and trial counsel knew it. They repeatedly intervened to secure his consent. For example, a memorandum by the mitigation investigator describes a "very tense meeting" with Stokes five days before trial, in which Stokes opposed disclosing his HIV status. J.A. 2544. She secured his approval on the condition that the courtroom be cleared when the issue would be discussed. Ultimately, though, on the eve of sentencing, Stokes withdrew his consent, refusing to allow his counsel to mention his HIV status under any circumstances.

Still, the defense team had other evidence ready. Their investigation had not uncovered the full extent of Stokes's life story, but they knew the broad outlines. At the start of sentencing, Stokes's sister and aunt were on the witness...