In the current term of the United States Supreme Court Holly Wood is the fifth capital defendant to challenge his death sentence on the ground that he had the ineffective assistance of counsel. Only one succeeded - George Porter, a multiple murderer whom the Justices spared because he had the misfortune (30 years before he killed), as an already deeply disturbed young man, to be engaged in heavy combat during the Korean War.
Holly Wood, a murderer who exhibits "significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning", failed in his claim. In the Wood v. Allen majority opinion authored by Sonia Sotomayor [over the dissent of Justice John Paul Stevens (Kennedy joining)] the Court declared that
Reviewing all of the evidence, we agree with the State [of Alabama] that even if it is debatable, it is not unreasonable to conclude that, after reviewing the Kirkland report, counsel made a strategic decision not to inquire further into the information contained in the report about Wood’s mental deficiencies and not to present to the jury such information as counsel already possessed about these deficiencies.Like the other three aggravated murderers whom the Supreme Court did not spare this term Wood was represented by a lawyer whose skills and judgment left much to be desired. But since the court found the representation met the constitutional minimum the death sentences stand.
Justice Stevens, however, concluded
"There is a world of difference between a decision not to introduce evidence at the guilt phase of a trial and a failure to investigate mitigating evidence that might be admissible at the penalty phase… the only reasonable factual conclusion I can draw from this record is that counsel’s decision to do so was the result of inattention and neglect."
I cannot but note the contrast between these defendants and those in New Jersey who were represented by the statewide Office of the Public Defender, none of whose clients was executed, in the twenty five years between the 1982 restoration of capital punishment and its 2007 legislative repeal.
The Public Defender's efforts were matched by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which believed death is different and afforded capital defendants what Associate Justice Alan Handler called "super due process". I asked in my introductory essay to the symposium which examined the repeal if New Jersey would be a Herald of Change. Thus far the United States Supreme Court has not heard the trumpet's call.
The complete file on the Wood case on Scotus Wiki can be found HERE.
