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Hutchison v. State12/7/2004
ly that his son did not deserve death. No other relatives testified. The additional testimony Hutchison's parents and other relatives presented at the evidentiary hearing was not merely cumulative, as the motion court found. One glaring example of trial counsel's failure is that Hutchison's parents did not testify at trial that Hutchison was sexually abused as a child. His parents also did not testify at trial about Hutchison's mental deficits or his family's history of mental illness and alcohol and substance abuse.
Trial counsel talked to Hutchison's brother but did not call him as a witness to testify about their childhood. Hutchison's trial counsel did not talk to Hutchison's aunt, uncle and cousin who were willing to testify about Hutchison's childhood in California.
The court found that some of the family members who were not contacted were unfamiliar with Hutchison's recent activities so their testimony was not relevant. Contrary to that court's ruling, a defendant need not show a nexus between his mental capacity and the crime to admit such mitigating evidence. See, Tennard , 124 S.Ct. at 2573.
Specifically, the court found that trial counsel were not ineffective for not calling Hutchison's brother because, as a matter of trial strategy, they decided he was not believable. The court also found that counsel was not ineffective for not presenting testimony regarding childhood sexual abuse because Hutchison's mother wanted it to be kept private. In Wiggins the trial counsel failed to investigate or present significant evidence for mitigation in Wiggins background, including his history of sexual abuse. The United States SupremeCourt found that failure to discover this evidence was not reasonable professional judgment. Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 533-534.
The court looked at each family member's testimony and found that it would not have changed the outcome. However, in deciding prejudice from counsel's failure to investigate a client's life history, courts should evaluate the totality of the evidence. Wiggins , 539 U.S. at 536. The question is whether, when all the mitigation evidence is added together, is there a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different?
An investigation of Hutchison's family history in preparation for his post-conviction case revealed that: Hutchison had a low IQ and learning disabilities; he had difficulties in school and was placed in special education classes; Hutchison's mother smoked marijuana with her sons when they were small boys; he turned to alcohol and drugs; his family had a history of alcoholism, substance abuse and mental illness; he was physically and sexually abused as a child; and by the time he was 16, Hutchison was being treated by a psychiatrist, who concluded that he suffered from bipolar disorder and alcoholism. The jury never heard most of this evidence.
Hutchison claims that his trial counsel were ineffective for failing to provide their expert, Dr. Bland, with sufficient background information to conduct an adequate evaluation and for failing to follow up on any information in Dr. Bland's report. Dr. Bland had only the oral history that Hutchison provided. Bland's reliance solely on the background information Hutchison related to him left Dr. Bland open to impeachment at trial. He spent less than three hours with Hutchison, and his report was very short. Bland identified some problems in his report, including borderline intellectual functioning, personality disorder and drug and alcohol abuse, but did not address the effect these deficits had on Hutchison. Trial counsel did not follow up with additional preparation with regard to these problems.
Hutchison claims
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