The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Lawrence Jefferson, say­ing that his tri­al coun­sel had been inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in his case, includ­ing evi­dence relat­ed to ​“a head injury he sus­tained as a child when an auto­mo­bile rolled over his head.” The court also found that the state courts had denied Jefferson a ​“full and fair” hear­ing on the issue, in vio­la­tion of due process, when, with­out notice to Jefferson’s lawyer, it invit­ed the Assistant Attorney General to sub­mit an order dis­miss­ing Jefferson’s peti­tion for relief, then signed the order sub­mit­ted ver­ba­tim, com­plete with fac­tu­al mis­state­ments and erro­neous legal cita­tions. The poten­tial brain dam­age to Jefferson was so obvi­ous that the U.S. Supreme Court not­ed in a 2010 opin­ion send­ing the case back for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion that “[t]he acci­dent left [Jefferson’s] skull swollen and mis­shapen and his fore­head vis­i­bly scarred.” Before tri­al, a psy­chol­o­gist had rec­om­mend­ed that defense coun­sel obtain a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion of Jefferson, but no eval­u­a­tion was per­formed. An exam­i­na­tion con­duct­ed dur­ing Jefferson’s appeals process found sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of brain dam­age, includ­ing an enlarged head indica­tive of brain swelling from the acci­dent, asym­met­ri­cal reflex­es, and dis­crep­an­cies in ver­bal and visu­al-spa­tial test scores. A neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist con­clud­ed that these find­ings indi­cat­ed right hemi­sphere and frontal lobe dam­age to the brain. A neu­rol­o­gist tes­ti­fied, ​“the most com­mon thing with a closed head injury, trau­mat­ic injury of this sort, is prob­lems with judg­ments, exec­u­tive plan­ning, and impulse con­trol, the abil­i­ty to fore­see the con­se­quences of your action in the future, as opposed to right now.” Jefferson’s jury nev­er heard this mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. According to the court, ​“The men­tal health evi­dence would have pro­vid­ed the jury an expla­na­tion for Petitioner’s past behav­ior and his tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing his past behav­ior.” The prac­tice of courts sign­ing opin­ions and orders writ­ten by pros­e­cu­tors ver­ba­tim is not uncom­mon. In 2016, the Supreme Court denied a peti­tion filed by coun­sel for Alabama death-row pris­on­er Doyle Lee Hamm seek­ing review of his case, in which the state court adopt­ed word-for-word an 89-page order writ­ten by the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office and the fed­er­al court said it was bound by the state court ​“find­ings.” That order reject­ed Hamm’s claim that his lawyer was inef­fec­tive, rul­ing that evi­dence the jury had nev­er heard con­cern­ing Hamm’s child­hood diag­no­sis of bor­der­line men­tal retar­da­tion, school records reflect­ing Hamm’s intel­lec­tu­al deficits, and evi­dence of seizures, head injuries, and drug and alco­hol abuse was ​“cumu­la­tive.”

(Lawrence Joseph Jefferson v. Eric Sellers, No. 1:96-CV-0989-CC (N.D. Ga. Apr. 20, 2017; Jefferson v. Upton, 560 U.S. 284 (2010).) See Representation and Mental Illness.

Tags
Citation Guide