United States Ninth Circuit

In a capital habeas matter, grant of petitioner's habeas petition is affirmed where defense counsel provided petitioner ineffective assistance at the penalty phase because: 1) petitioner properly challenged the district court's legal conclusions, as opposed to its factual ones; 2) counsel spent almost no time preparing for the penalty phase hearing; 3) counsel failed to obtain any of the readily available medical, psychological, law enforcement, or school records for petitioner or his siblings; and 4) properly presented evidence of petitioner's brain injury, and its profound effect on his behavior, could have altered the jury's impressions of his detrimental guilt phase testimony and of his boastful, disrespectful demeanor by indicating an organic basis for his inappropriate expressions and for his tendency to exaggerate his past.

Appellate Information

• Argued 06/23/2009
• Decided 12/09/2009
• Published 12/09/2009

Judges

• Before: ALEX KOZINSKI, Chief Judge, HARRY PREGERSON, STEPHEN REINHARDT, PAMELA ANN RYMER, ANDREW J. KLEINFELD, KIM McLANE WARDLAW, W. FLETCHER, RICHARD A. PAEZ, MARSHA S. BERZON, JAY S. BYBEE, and MILAN D. SMITH, JR., Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• James William Bilderback II, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, argued, Kristofer Jorstad, Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, CA, for the respondent-appellant, cross-appellee., Sean K. Kennedy, Federal Public Defender, Los Angeles, CA, for the petitioner-cross appellant/appellee.