Cory R. Maples v. Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections ( 2018 )

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 15-14586
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 5:03-cv-02399-SLB
CORY R. MAPLES,
Petitioner-Appellant,
versus
COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Alabama
________________________
(April 5, 2018)
Before WILSON, JILL PRYOR, and HULL∗, Circuit Judges.
WILSON, Circuit Judge:
∗
Judge Hull was in active service when this case was orally argued, but subsequently took senior
status.
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Cory R. Maples, an Alabama death-row inmate, appeals the district court’s
denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 amended petition for writ of habeas corpus. We
granted Maples a Certificate of Appealability (COA) as to one claim: “Whether the
district court erred in denying [Maples’s] claim that his trial counsel rendered
ineffective assistance of counsel in the investigation and presentation of mitigating
evidence during the penalty phase of [Maples’s] 1997 trial?” Having considered
the state court record, the district court’s order, the parties’ submissions, and with
the benefit of oral argument, we vacate the district court’s denial of Maples’s
amended § 2254 petition as to that penalty-phase mitigation claim and remand for
an evidentiary hearing and fact findings as outlined below.1
I. BACKGROUND
When Maples was 21 years old, he confessed to shooting and killing two
friends and fleeing in a car belonging to one of the friends after a long day of
drinking. Two years later, he was convicted of murder and the jury recommended
the death penalty, by a vote of 10 to 2 2; the state trial court subsequently accepted
that recommendation. The court found one statutory aggravating factor (murder
during a robbery), one statutory mitigating factor (Maples had a limited criminal
1
To the extent necessary, we sua sponte expand the COA to include the issue of whether Maples
should be granted an evidentiary hearing on his penalty-phase mitigation claim. See Thomas v.
Crosby, 371 F.3d 782, 796 (11th Cir. 2004) (Tjoflat, J. concurring) (“[O]ur cases establish the
power of our court to add issues to a COA sua sponte.”).
2
Under Alabama law, at least 10 jurors must agree to recommend the death penalty. See Ala.
Code § 13A-5-46(f).
2
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history), and a few non-statutory mitigating factors. After concluding that
Maples’s mitigating factors were weak and unpersuasive, the court found that the
single statutory aggravating factor justified imposing the death penalty.
In July 2001, Maples filed his initial Rule 32 petition for habeas relief in
Alabama state court. In September 2001, the State filed a response and a proposed
order denying the petition. In December 2001, Maples filed an amended Rule 32
petition that contained significantly more factual allegations about his penalty-
phase mitigation claim, and the state habeas court accepted the petition; but no
evidentiary hearing was held. Then, in 2003, the court dismissed Maples’s
petition on the pleadings and signed the State’s September 2001 proposed order,
even though the order was drafted before Maples filed his amended Rule 32
petition. Thus, the order did not address Maples’s new allegations. In signing the
order, the court merely struck through “2001” on the signature line and wrote in
the 2003 date.
Because Maples did not timely appeal this Rule 32 order, albeit through no
fault of his own as his counsel at the time had abandoned him, no state appellate
review occurred. As a result, the district court in his federal § 2254 case
determined that Maples’s penalty-phase mitigation claim was procedurally
defaulted. This court later affirmed that determination. Maples v. Allen, 586 F.3d
879, 886–91 (11th Cir. 2009) (per curiam). The United States Supreme Court,
3
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noting the abandonment by his own counsel, granted certiorari as to the
procedural-default issue, vacated this court’s ruling, and remanded, concluding that
“ample” cause exists to excuse Maples’s procedural default. See Maples v.
Thomas, 565 U.S. 266, 280, 289–90, 132 S. Ct. 912, 922, 927–28 (2012).
However, the Court left open the question of whether actual prejudice exists. We
then remanded the case back to the district court to consider actual prejudice in the
first instance.
On remand, the district court, without holding an evidentiary hearing and
applying AEDPA deference, 3 concluded that Maples’s penalty-phase mitigation
claim was procedurally defaulted for lack of prejudice. Because the standard for
3
Because the state habeas court denied Maples’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim
on the merits, the district court reviewed the claim under the standards set by the Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 402-
03, 120 S. Ct. 1495, 1518 (2000). AEDPA bars federal courts from granting habeas relief to a
petitioner on a claim that was adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the state court’s
adjudication:
(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an
unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or
(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable
determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the
State court proceeding.
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). “‘[C]learly established Federal law’ under § 2254(d)(1) is the governing
legal principle or principles set forth by the Supreme Court at the time the state court renders its
decision.” Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 71–72, 123 S. Ct. 1166, 1172 (2003). With respect
to § 2254(d)(2), “[s]tate court fact-findings are entitled to a presumption of correctness unless the
petitioner rebuts that presumption by clear and convincing evidence.” Conner v. GDCP Warden,
784 F.3d 752, 761 (11th Cir. 2015).
4
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actual prejudice overlaps with the standard for Strickland4 prejudice, see Strickler
v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 289, 119 S. Ct. 1936, 1952 (1999), the court focused its
analysis on whether Maples’s penalty-phase mitigation claim satisfied Strickland’s
prejudice prong. In doing so, the court found reasonable the state habeas court’s
conclusion that Maples, in his amended Rule 32 petition, did not allege facts that
established Strickland prejudice, and determined that the claim was procedurally
defaulted. This is Maples’s appeal of that determination.
II. DISCUSSION
Like the district court, we too focus our analysis on Strickland prejudice.
But we, unlike the district court, conclude that the state habeas court’s rejection of
Maples’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim was unreasonable under 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d).”5 We also conclude, upon a de novo review, that Maples pleaded facts
in his amended Rule 32 petition that, if proven, “would entitle him to habeas
corpus relief.” Daniel v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corr., 822 F.3d 1248, 1280 (11th
4
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052 (1984). Under Strickland, a defendant
has a Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of trial counsel. Id. at 686, 104 S. Ct. at
2063. Counsel renders ineffective assistance, warranting vacatur of a conviction or sentence,
when his performance falls “below an objective standard of reasonableness,” taking into account
prevailing professional norms, and when, upon a reweighing of all of the evidence old and new,
“there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the
proceeding would have been different.” Id. at 688, 694-95, 104 S. Ct. at 2064, 2068-69. “A
reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” Id. at
694, 104 S. Ct. at 2068.
5
Because Maples “did not fail to develop the factual basis of his claim[] in state court through
any omission, fault, or negligence that can fairly be attributed to him,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2)
does not a bar him from accessing an evidentiary hearing. See Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1281 (internal
quotation marks omitted).
5
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Cir. 2016). Because the state court’s habeas decision was unreasonable—thereby
piercing AEDPA deference and prompting a de novo review—and because a de
novo review reveals Maples’s claims, if proven, would establish a valid Strickland
claim, we hold that he is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on the matter. See id. at
1248, 1261, 1280–81 (ordering an evidentiary hearing on a petitioner’s Strickland
claim after an Alabama state court unreasonably dismissed the petitioner’s Rule 32
petition on the pleadings). We address each point in turn.
A.
The state habeas court’s decision that Maples’s allegations, if true, could not
establish a valid penalty-phase mitigation claim was unreasonable under § 2254(d).
The decision was based both on an unreasonable determination of facts, see 28
U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2), and an unreasonable application of clearly established law,
see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Not only did erroneous factual conclusions based on
the wrong Rule 32 petition permeate the court’s decision, but the court also
conducted a splintered and fragmented prejudice analysis, contrary to Strickland’s
directives.
1.
The state habeas court’s “adjudication of [Maples’s penalty-phase
mitigation] claim . . . resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable
determination of the facts” because the court, in adjudicating the claim, relied on
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the wrong Rule 32 petition. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). The court was required to
determine the facts governing Maples’s claim by examining his operative Rule 32
petition—his amended Rule 32 petition—and accepting as true the allegations
therein. See Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1261. Instead, the court determined the governing
facts by examining Maples’s initial Rule 32 petition; thus, all of the new and more
detailed allegations in the amended petition were ignored. In Maples’s amended
Rule 32 petition detailing his mitigating evidence, he not only alleged specific
details about his depression, suicide attempts, mental health issues, head trauma,
and good character, but he also identified multiple persons who could have
testified accordingly.
For example, although Maples alleged specific details about his depression
and suicide attempts, and named multiple persons who could have testified about
the details, the state habeas court concluded that Maples failed to identify any
details about his depression. And, even though Maples alleged that the director of
his drug-addiction program, Kathy Goodwin, could have testified about his
addiction and mental health issues, the court found that Maples did not identify
anyone from the program who could testify about his addiction and mental health
issues.
Similarly, the state habeas court made unreasonable factual determinations
about Maples’s head-trauma allegations. In his amended Rule 32 petition, Maples
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alleged that but for trial counsel’s deficient performance, his stepmother would
have testified that he suffered head traumas that required emergency medical
treatment, including a fall off a 20-foot cliff. The state habeas court nonetheless
concluded that Maples identified no specific instances of head trauma about which
his stepmother would have testified. This same error is true for the state habeas
court’s determinations about Maples’s good-character allegations. In his amended
Rule 32 petition, Maples named several friends, a guidance counselor, and a high
school football coach who could have testified about his history of good character.
But the court concluded that Maples did not identify by name any educators or
friends who could have testified about his character.
Although § 2254(d)(2) imposes a high bar for showing an unreasonable
determination of facts, we have little trouble concluding that Maples has overcome
that bar. The state habeas court did not merely misconstrue a few facts in the
record; the court—in a capital case—relied on the wrong set of facts. And that
error led to a decision based on factual conclusions that cannot be reconciled with
the record.6
2.
6
At oral argument, the State contended that Maples cannot rely on § 2254(d)(2) to establish that
the state habeas court’s decision was unreasonable because the decision was a summary decision
and did not include factual determinations. We disagree. The decision was not a summary
decision devoid of factual determinations. It was 86-pages long, and it made reasoned
conclusions about Maples’s pleaded facts.
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The state habeas court also unreasonably applied clearly established federal
law, Strickland, because the court “failed to consider the prejudicial effect of trial
counsel’s deficient performance based on the totality of available mitigating
evidence.” See Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1277 (internal quotation marks omitted);
Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 397–98, 120 S. Ct. 1495, 1515 (2000). In
considering Maples’s penalty-phase mitigation claim, the court impermissibly
“broke up [the] claim into different subparts, then analyzed them separately.” See
Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1278. It examined Maples’s allegations paragraph by
paragraph, treating individual paragraphs (or, in some instances, small groups of
paragraphs) as distinct subparts. Only in analyzing each subpart in isolation did
the court find that none of the subparts include allegations that would support a
finding of prejudice; it never considered the combined effects of the allegations.
For example, in evaluating Maples’s allegation that his brother could have
offered helpful good-character evidence if trial counsel had called him as a
witness, the court analyzed it alone, in a vaccum:
In paragraph 126, Maples alleges that Daniel Maples, his
half brother, would have testified that [Maples] was a
fun, loving brother who respected his father and did what
he was told . . . . Maples has failed to proffer the [c]ourt
any evidence that testimony from his half brother would
have produced a different result in the penalty phase of
trial.
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Because of this splintered prejudice inquiry, “the [court] never considered what
would be the combined effect of all mitigating evidence in producing a different
outcome at sentencing.” See id. Therefore, the court unreasonably applied
Strickland. See id. (“[I]t is the reweighing of the totality of mitigating evidence
that is important for reweighing under Strickland.”); Williams, 529 U.S. at 397–98,
120 S. Ct. at 1515.
B.
And because the state court’s determinations were unreasonable under
§ 2254(d), we now review Maples’s petition de novo—where, notably, we are
unrestrained by AEDPA’s “formidable barrier to federal habeas relief.” See White
v. Wheeler, 577 U.S. ___, ___, 136 S. Ct. 456, 460 (2015).
Strickland’s deficient-performance prong requires Maples to show that his
trial counsel’s performance at the penalty phase “fell below an objective standard
of reasonableness and was outside the wide range of professionally competent
assistance.” See Johnson v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 643 F.3d 907, 928 (11th Cir.
2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). The prejudice prong requires Maples to
show that “but for [the] deficient performance, there is a reasonable probability
that the result of [his penalty-phase] proceeding would have been different.” Id. at
928–29. To be clear, Strickland does not require certainty that the result would
have been different, only a reasonable probability. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694,
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104 S. Ct. at 2068; Hardwick v. Crosby, 320 F.3d 1127, 1160–61(11th Cir. 2003).
And a reasonable probability is simply a probability sufficient to undermine
confidence in the outcome. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S. Ct. at 2068. In
determining whether there is a reasonable probability of a different result, we must
“evaluate the totality of the available mitigation evidence—both that adduced at
trial, and the evidence adduced in the habeas proceeding”—and “reweigh[] it
against the evidence in aggravation.” Williams, 529 U.S. at 397–98, 120 S. Ct. at
1515. If this reweighing shows “a breakdown in the adversarial process that our
system counts on to produce just results,” such that the proceeding was
“fundamentally unfair,” then we must vacate the death sentence. Strickland, 466
U.S. at 696, 700, 104 S. Ct. at 2069, 2071.
Here, Maples’s allegations, if true, amount to a valid Strickland claim.
1.
First, the allegations in Maples’s amended Rule 32 petition, if true, amount
to deficient performance under Strickland. In the petition, Maples asserts that,
among other things:
• Before Maples’s case, trial counsel had never assisted with a capital penalty
phase.
• Trial counsel’s entire mitigation investigation consisted only of briefly
speaking to Maples’s father and stepmother and hiring a psychologist, Dr.
Allen Shealy, who only met with Maples for a few hours. Trial counsel did
not contact any other individuals, despite Maples’s father and stepmother
recommending several potential mitigation witnesses by name, including:
neighbors, teachers, friends, and relatives. Trial counsel also neglected to
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request Maples’s educational and medical records. Further, trial counsel
failed to provide Dr. Shealy with more thorough information about, among
other things, the abuse Maples suffered as a child, Maples’s struggles with
drug addiction, and Maples’s past suicidal ideation, thereby jeopardizing the
thoroughness of his assessment.
• Trial counsel conducted this cursory investigation despite their awareness
that Maples had a history of personal trauma that warranted additional
investigation. For example, trial counsel were in possession of Maples’s
application to a drug-addiction program which indicated that Maples
struggled with addiction and multiple suicide attempts. Yet, trial counsel did
not contact any of Maples’s counselors from the program—not even Kathy
Goodwin, the director of the program who interviewed Maples for admission
to the program.
• Trial counsel offered just four witnesses at the penalty phase: Dr. Shealy,
Maples’s father, Maples’s stepmother, and Maples’s uncle—and wholly
failed to prepare them for their testimony. In fact, trial counsel did not even
inform the majority of the witnesses—Maples’s stepmother, father, and
uncle—prior to trial that they would even testify; counsel told them during a
break in the trial that they would testify.
• And when trial counsel did put the mitigation witnesses on the stand, he
elicited limited, scattered mitigation evidence. The testimony from Maples’s
father, stepmother, and uncle was superficial at best. And Dr. Shealy’s
testimony was not only based solely on his short discussion with Maples,
without the benefit of any educational, medical, or other records provided by
the defense, but was also confusing and misleading.
These allegations show that trial counsel “failed to conduct a minimally adequate
mitigation investigation” and that trial counsel’s preparation for Maples’s penalty-
phase presentation “fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.” See
Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1262, 1268 (internal quotation mark omitted).
First, based on the allegations, the scope of trial counsel’s mitigation
investigation was unreasonable. Trial counsel “unreasonably decided to end the[ir]
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. . . investigation after only talking to” Maples’s father, Maples’s stepmother, and
Dr. Shealy. See Cooper v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 646 F.3d 1328, 1351 (11th Cir.
2011). “[P]otentially powerful mitigating evidence stared [trial counsel] in the
face,” such as Maples’s suicide attempts, but they ignored the evidence, failing to
take any steps to pursue it. See Bobby v. Van Hook, 558 U.S. 4, 11, 130 S. Ct. 13,
19 (2009). Trial counsel requested neither Maples’s medical records nor his
educational records. They also failed to contact Maples’s drug-addiction program
or a single person from the laundry list of people whom Maples’s father and
stepmother named as potential witnesses. “[A]ny reasonably competent attorney
would have realized that pursuing these leads was necessary to making an
informed choice” about penalty-phase strategy. See Williams v. Allen, 542 F.3d
1326, 1340 (11th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation mark omitted).
Second, based on Maples’s allegations, trial counsel’s preparation for the
penalty-phase presentation was unreasonably cursory. In light of Maples’s
videotaped confession, trial counsel had “every expectation that [Maples would] be
convicted and w[ould] be facing a death sentence.” See Johnson, 643 F.3d at 932.
Trial counsel knew from the outset that Maples’s life depended on the penalty-
phase presentation. Yet they (1) waited until midway through trial to inform
Maples’s family members that they would be testifying and (2) failed to prepare
any of the penalty-phase witnesses for their testimony. No reasonable attorney
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who knows his client’s life depends on the penalty-phase presentation would
devote such minimal effort to preparing the presentation.
2.
Furthermore, the allegations in Maples’s amended Rule 32 petition, show
“that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors,
the result in the proceeding would have been different.” Williams, 542 F.3d at
1342. The result we reach is guided both by the de novo standard of review and
Strickland, which emphasized that “the ultimate focus of the inquiry must be on
the fundamental fairness of the proceeding whose result is being challenged.”
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 696, 104 S. Ct. at 2069. To this end, we must ask whether
“the result of the particular proceeding is unreliable because of a breakdown in the
adversarial process that our system counts on to produce just results.” Id. With
Strickland as our guide, reexamining in combination all of the evidence—that
adduced in Maples’s penalty phase and that alleged in his amended Rule 32
petition—de novo, and considering that Maples was only one vote away from a life
sentence even without this additional mitigating evidence, we are unconvinced that
Maples’s trial produced a reliable, just result.7
7
This is so despite the fact that Maples’s trial counsel presented a case in mitigation, including
relatively lengthy testimony by Dr. Shealy that included some examples of the physical abuse
Maples suffered as a child. Dr. Shealy was engaged only to evaluate Maples’s fitness for trial,
trial counsel failed to prepare him adequately for the evaluation with any records or other
information, and his entire evaluation consisted of a single four-hour interview with Maples.
The quantity of Dr. Shealy’s testimony, although relevant to our prejudice analysis, does not
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In his amended Rule 32 petition, Maples alleged that he was prejudiced by his
trial counsel’s deficient performance because, among other things:
• Due to the deficient performance, the jury did not hear evidence that
Maples’s birth mother: has a mental illness; routinely threw violent, self-
mutilating tantrums; stabbed Maples’s father once while he was driving;
attempted to slit the throat of Maples’s father; once tried to sell Maples to a
neighbor; and once left Maples in a car for hours when he was a toddler.
• Due to the deficient performance, the jury did not hear evidence that Maples
cried for his birth mother, who had abandoned him in childhood, until his
early teenage years and that Maples’s stepmother had to sit with him at night
while he was growing up because of his nightmares. The jury also did not
hear evidence that Maples’s birth mother emotionally abused him again in
his late teenage years. Specifically, the jury was not able to fully appreciate
Maples’s encounter with his mother at age 17, where she again neglected
him, verbally abused him, and after just a few months abandoned him once
more—an event that deeply hurt him and launched him into a period of drug
abuse. Underscoring the extent to which this episode of abuse affected
Maples, he dropped out of high school during the time that he lived with his
mother.
• Due to the deficient performance, the jury did not hear evidence that, in the
years leading up to his crimes, Maples suffered from serious depression and
suicidal ideation. Maples wrote poetry about depression and loneliness;
once wrote a suicide note and then hid in the woods; and took anti-
depressants in jail prior to trial. Nor did the jury hear evidence that Maples
attempted suicide on three separate occasions by (1) taking over thirty
sleeping pills, drinking a bottle of alcohol, and crashing a family member’s
car; (2) playing Russian roulette (he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the
trigger); and (3) slashing his wrists with a butcher knife.
change our task—reweighing all of the evidence anew. To the extent some of the new mitigating
allegations in Maples’s amended Rule 32 petition could be characterized as cumulative, that
characterization goes to the weight of the evidence, not to whether we consider it at all. And for
the reasons we explain below, after we reweigh de novo the totality of the evidence in mitigation
against that in aggravation, we cannot say we have confidence in the outcome of Maples’s
penalty phase proceedings.
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• Due to the deficient performance, the jury heard only a few scattered
statements about Maples’s good character, even though Maples had lifelong,
positive relationships with friends and family members; looked after his
younger brother, discouraging him from using drugs; acted in an undercover
capacity to assist police officers with arresting a drug dealer; never had
disciplinary issues in school; was regarded as a respectful young man by
school staff; was active in extracurriculars as a youth, including church and
high school sports; and had a record of good behavior in jail during the two
years leading up to trial.
• Due to the deficient performance, the jury also did not hear evidence that
Maples has a history of head trauma. Maples once fell off a 20-foot cliff as
a teenager and was struck in the head with a bat about a year before his
crimes.
These new and more extensive allegations identify powerful, more in-depth
mitigation evidence, and establish a reasonable probability that, but for trial
counsel’s deficient performance, the result of Maples’s penalty-phase proceeding
would have been different.
We are unpersuaded that the new mitigation evidence would have been a
“double-edged sword” if it had been presented. The State had already harped on
some of the damaging aspects of Maples’s past. And even then, the jury still
narrowly voted for death; this new evidence would have helped far more than it
would have hurt.
We are equally unpersuaded that the new mitigation evidence is merely
cumulative; especially when evidence of the suicidal ideation and the head traumas
was completely left out. Furthermore, the gravity of the abuse and personal trauma
that Maples experienced was not accurately depicted. Trial counsel offered no
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evidence of Maples’s multiple suicide attempts and suicidal ideation. Trial counsel
offered no evidence of Maples’s serious and grave depression. Trial counsel
offered no evidence of Maples’s head traumas. Trial counsel offered no evidence
about Maples’s history of nightmares. Trial counsel offered little to no evidence
exploring the abuse that Maples’s birth mother subjected him to when he was 17
years old. And trial counsel failed to fully bring evidence of Maples’s good
character to light, which could have shown the jury that Maples tried to be a good
person despite his traumatic childhood, adolescence, and ongoing resulting mental
health problems.
The evidence actually offered by trial counsel compared to the evidence that
was available, merely scratched the surface of the kind of trauma Maples suffered.
And even if a portion of the new evidence is cumulative in a sense, its relevance or
strength is not undermined when it is considered and reweighed with all of the
evidence. This is especially true here since the allegations in the amended Rule 32
petition are considerably more detailed and substantive than what was actually
presented. All things considered, the quality of the mitigation evidence is
important.
Here, we are tasked with reweighing all of the aggravating and mitigating
circumstances as a whole. And in doing so, we are hard pressed to conclude that
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there is no reasonable probability that a jury would have recommended a life
sentence over the death penalty.
Indeed, the impact of evaluating the totality of the evidence is even more
striking considering that it need only sway one more juror. And the probability
that one more juror would have been moved to vote for life over death is further
compounded by the limited aggravation evidence in this case—the state trial court
found only one statutory aggravating factor applicable here. See Williams, 542
F.3d at 1343 (“Further supporting a finding of prejudice is the fact that this case is
not highly aggravated. It is well established that ‘a [sentence] only weakly
supported by the record is more likely to have been affected by errors than one
with overwhelming record support.’” (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 696, 104 S.
Ct. at 2069)). Again, even with trial counsel’s cursory mitigation presentation, two
jurors still voted against the death penalty: just one vote shy of enough votes to
preclude a jury recommendation of death. Id.; See Ala. Code § 13A-5-46(f);
Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1276 & n.20. Under these circumstances, there is a reasonable
probability that Maples’s new evidence—evidence that could have altered his
sentencing profile—would have shifted the life-versus-death balance. See
Williams, 542 F.3d at 1343.
Because the evidence offered by trial counsel lacked so many important data
points about Maples’s background and character, the trial judge and jury could not
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“accurately gauge [Maples’s] moral culpability.” See Porter v. McCollum, 558
U.S. 30, 41, 130 S. Ct. 447, 454 (2009) (per curiam). These powerful pieces of
evidence could have altered Maples’s sentencing profile, painting a different, more
compelling picture of him. The mitigation evidence that was actually presented
painted a picture of Maples as someone who was abused as a child but suffered no
real continuing effects from the abuse, got mixed up with drugs as an adult, and
made bad decisions solely as a result of his drug addiction. But when accounting
for Maples’s new evidence, the totality of the mitigation evidence paints a different
picture of Maples as someone with life-threatening mental health issues who has
experienced lasting, ongoing trauma due to his birth mother’s abuse and rejection,
and who, despite such issues, tried to lead a productive life. Thus, it is reasonable
to conclude that the evidentiary scales would have been tipped, yielding a sentence
of life rather than death. Essentially, we cannot in good conscience refuse to
acknowledge that there could have been a different result here.
III. PROCEEDINGS ON REMAND
After conducting an evidentiary hearing,8 the district court shall make
factual findings and conclusions of law as to whether Maples has shown actual
prejudice to excuse his procedural default of his penalty-phase mitigation claim in
state court, as set forth in Maples, 565 U.S. at 280, 289–90, 132 S. Ct. at 922, 927–
8
Of course, in addition to holding the evidentiary hearing, the district court may order discovery
if appropriate.
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28. If the court concludes that Maples has shown actual prejudice, the court shall
rule on the merits of the penalty-phase mitigation claim. Since we have
determined that the state habeas court’s decision was unreasonable, the district
court “is no longer bound by § 2254(d) or limited to consideration of the facts
developed in the state [habeas] court record when evaluating the merits of
[Maples]’s claim.” See Daniel, 822 F.3d at 1280. The district court should review
Maples’s claim de novo. See id. at 1282.
VACATED AND REMANDED.
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HULL, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
Cory R. Maples, an Alabama death-row inmate, appeals the district court’s
denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 amended petition for writ of habeas corpus. In this
appeal, Maples’s sole claim is that his trial counsel was ineffective in the
investigation and presentation of mitigating evidence during the penalty phase of
his 1997 trial.
After conducting de novo review, the district court ruled that Maples has not
shown (1) the required prejudice to excuse his procedural default or (2) Strickland
1
prejudice. There was no evidentiary hearing in state or federal court, and thus the
district court accepted all of Maples’s well-pleaded allegations as true. Because of
certain concerns about the state collateral proceedings, the district court conducted
de novo review. Without deciding deficient performance, the district court
concluded that Maples had not shown prejudice because: (1) his trial counsel had
presented extensive mitigating evidence at trial; (2) his new evidence was either
cumulative or, at best, weak mitigating evidence; and (3) given the totality of the
aggravating and mitigating evidence, Maples had not show a reasonable
probability that his new evidence would have changed the outcome of his penalty
trial.
1
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052 (1984).
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I agree with the district court and conclude that precedent requires us to
affirm its ruling that Maples has not shown prejudice and its denial of his amended
§ 2254 petition.
Because a prejudice inquiry requires consideration of both aggravating and
mitigating circumstances, I review the aggravating nature of Maples’s admitted
murders and the extensive mitigating evidence his counsel presented at trial. I then
outline the district court’s comparison of the trial and new mitigation evidence, and
why it concluded Maples had not established prejudice. Lastly, I explain why I
agree with the district court that Maples has not shown prejudice.
I. 1995 MURDERS
Defendant Maples robbed and brutally murdered his two friends, Stacy
Terry and Barry Robinson, so that Maples could steal Terry’s red Camaro. 2
Maples confessed and has never denied that he shot both young men twice in the
head during his robbery of Terry’s Camaro. The Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals described the “execution-type slaying” as follows:
At some time in the late evening hours of Friday, July 7, 1995, or the
early morning hours of Saturday, July 8, 1995, Stacy Alan Terry,
2
Throughout the record, various parties’ names have multiple spellings. Appellant
Maples’s first name is spelled either Cory or Corey. His father’s name is spelled Philip or
Phillip. A friend, Mr. Birdsong’s, first name is spelled either Alan or Allen. And the testifying
psychologist’s first name is also spelled either Alan or Allen, and his last name is spelled both
Shealy and Shealey. For clarity’s sake, I will use one spelling of each of these names throughout
this dissent.
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Barry Dewayne Robinson II, and the Defendant, Corey Ross Maples,
arrived at the residence of the Defendant on Mud Tavern Road in
Morgan County[, Alabama]. All three of the young men were
acquaintances. Mr. Terry, whose nickname was Twinky, and the
Defendant had spent the evening of July 7 drinking, playing pool, and
“riding around” in Mr. Terry’s 1995 Camaro. The Defendant and Mr.
Terry had attended high school together until the Defendant dropped
out his senior year. As evidenced by the testimony of family and
friends, the two young men had spent a considerable amount of time
together during the week preceding these events.
Mr. Robinson was new to the area, but had known Mr. Terry and the
Defendant for several months. Mr. Robinson asked Mr. Terry for a
ride home from the pool hall where all three young men were playing
pool.
Once the three young men arrived at the home of the Defendant,
Corey Maples, [Maples] left the car and went into the mobile home.
The [D]efendant picked up a .22 caliber rifle and walked back outside
to the car where Mr. Terry and Mr. Robinson sat getting ready to
leave. The Defendant walked to the driver’s side of the car and shot
Mr. Terry twice in the head and then shot Mr. Robinson twice in the
head.
....
Mr. Terry and Mr. Robinson died as a result of gunshot wounds to the
head. Both young men were shot twice in the head. . . . The wounds
were consistent with an execution-type slaying. The evidence proved
beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendant shot both men. He was
armed with a .22 caliber rifle which belonged to his father.
Maples v. State, 758 So. 2d 1, 14–15 (Ala. Crim. App. 1999). After
executing his friends, Maples left Terry’s body lying in the driveway and
dumped Robinson’s body in a nearby creek. The state court pointed out
where the bodies were found, stating:
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At some time around 1:00 a.m. on July 8, 1995, the Defendant’s half-
brother, Daniel Maples, and his friend, Matt Shell, arrived at the
residence on Mud Tavern Road and found the body of Stacy Terry
lying in the driveway close to the trailer where the Defendant and his
half-brother lived with their father and the Defendant’s stepmother.
At some time around 9:00 p.m. on July 8, 1995, the Decatur police
received a report of a body found in a creek commonly referred to as
Mud Tavern Creek, one mile down the road from the Defendant’s
residence. The body was identified as that of Barry Robinson II.
Id. at 15. After learning that Maples killed the victims, the police found Maples in
a motel in Nashville, Tennessee a month later, still in possession of Terry’s red
Camaro. Id.
The 1995 indictment charged: (1) that Maples, pursuant to one course of
conduct, did intentionally murder Stacy Terry and Barry Robinson by shooting
them with a rifle (Count I); and (2) did intentionally murder Terry while Maples
was in the course of committing the theft of Terry’s 1995 Chevrolet Camaro
automobile (Count II). Given the overwhelming evidence of guilt and Maples’s
confession, the jury convicted Maples of the capital murders.
II. PENALTY PHASE
The State did not present any evidence during the penalty phase. Instead,
Maples’s trial counsel presented extensive mitigating evidence from these four
witnesses: Dr. Allen Shealy and family members Elyse, Kenneth, and Phillip
Maples.
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The mitigation evidence fell into these four categories: (1) Maples’s birth
mother’s abuse and neglect of Maples from birth to age three; (2) his alcohol and
drug abuse and his attempts to overcome them by attending Quest Rehab; (3) his
assistance to law enforcement in a drug case; and (4) the care and high regard
Maples’s family and friends had for him. As to these categories, I detail the trial
mitigation evidence and later compare it to Maples’s new mitigating evidence (i.e.,
his factual allegations in the amended collateral petitions, which the district court
accepted as true and proven for purposes of its prejudice ruling).
III. MITIGATION EVIDENCE AT 1997 TRIAL
A. Dr. Shealy
At defense counsel’s request, the state trial court ordered that a doctor from
the State’s medical facility evaluate Maples to determine (1) his mental state at the
time of the murders and (2) his competence to stand trial. Importantly, as to the
mitigation issue here, defense counsel also asked for and obtained funds to retain
the separate services of psychologist Dr. Allen Shealy, noting that such assistance
would be vital to proving mitigating circumstances during the penalty phase of
trial.
Dr. Shealy has impressive credentials, including a Ph.D. in clinical
psychology, certifications from the Alabama Board of Examiners in Psychology
and the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology, and was the
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author of numerous scholarly articles and publications. At the time he interviewed
Maples in 1997, Dr. Shealy had served: (1) as a professor at the University of
Alabama’s medical school (in the departments of psychiatry and psychology)
and/or the University of Alabama’s department of criminal justice for almost thirty
years; (2) as the director of psychology at an Alabama hospital for eight years; and
(3) in clinical private practice for fifteen years.
Dr. Shealy’s evaluation consisted of “an extensive interview and history and
mental status exam” along with the administration of tests to gauge Maples’s
intelligence, personality, psychoneurological deficits, and reading level. Dr.
Shealy testified that he gave Maples: (1) the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
(“WAIS”) test, which is the “most reliable measure of intelligence”; (2) the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (“MMPI”); (3) projective testing
(e.g., showing people drawings, ink blots, etc., and “asking what their perceptions
are and comparing that to other people”); and (4) the Wide Range Achievement
Test (“WRAT”) to gauge reading level. According to Dr. Shealy, these tests are
widely used among psychologists, and he performed them as part of “a complete
psychological evaluation” of Maples. As discussed later, Maples had average
intelligence but could read at a college level.
Dr. Shealy spent four to five hours with Maples. Prior to the evaluation,
Maples’s lawyers provided Dr. Shealy with “some background” information. Dr.
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Shealy determined that Maples was oriented in person, time, place, and
circumstances.
During the evaluation, Dr. Shealy had Maples describe his recollection of
the murders and the events leading up to them. Maples told Dr. Shealy that he had
attended drug rehab at Quest Treatment Center a year or so before the murders and,
prior to that, was using a host of illegal drugs. Maples acknowledged to Dr. Shealy
that “beginning at about age seventeen and for about three years he was using
marijuana, cocaine, LSD, he had used heroin once, he had used Ecstasy, various
pills, crack cocaine, methamphetamine, PCP, and something called Crank.”
Dr. Shealy had Maples describe his use of alcohol and drugs, noting
Maples’s “lack of memory for the events.” Dr. Shealy explained to the jury: (1)
that there are certain drugs and combinations of drugs and alcohol that would make
it difficult for Maples to recall events; (2) that he was thus interested in knowing
what “chemical state” Maples’s brain was in at the time of the murders, including
the type and amount of substances Maples had ingested; and (3) he wanted to
know roughly how much alcohol Maples had that night and if Maples had smoked
marijuana or taken any other drugs in order to “see what the mix was.”
Maples told Dr. Shealy that he was drinking steadily for approximately ten
hours before the shootings—he started at around 2:00 that afternoon, had seven or
eight beers in the early evening, four to five more beers at Terry’s sister’s house,
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and then “seven or eight mixed drinks” at the Caddy Shack. Maples also smoked a
joint of marijuana at 3:00 that afternoon. Maples stopped drinking at 10:00 p.m.
when he and Terry went to the pool hall. They left the pool hall with Robinson
around midnight. Terry told Maples that they had to give Robinson a ride home,
and Terry dropped Maples off first.
Maples told Dr. Shealy that “his memory started getting fuzzy when he came
out of the house that night. [Maples] didn’t remember what made him come
outside after he went in the house after he was dropped off there.” Dr. Shealy
testified that Maples told him the following details about the murders.
Maples remembered that Terry dropped him off at home, and Maples told
Terry to call him the next day “and they would play golf or something.” Maples
got out of the car and had some trouble finding his keys or fumbled for his keys,
but he eventually got into the house.
Once inside the house, Maples: (1) “opened his parents’ bedroom door
because he knew he could see the car from there”; (2) saw the car was still in front
of the house and saw Robinson standing up outside the car; and (3) observed that
“it was a low built car, and [Robinson] was slouched over like he was looking into
the car and had his head inside the door.” Maples told Dr. Shealy that the next
things he remembered were: (1) “seeing Twinky [Terry] with his head laid back in
the seat” and he remembered a lot of blood on the side of Terry’s face; (2) “putting
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the gun down, . . . going up to the car, Twinky being in the passenger seat and
[Robinson] being half in and half out of the car”; and (3) “checking both of their
pulses and realiz[ing] that they both were dead.”
Then Maples told Dr. Shealy that he: (1) “kind of freaked out and didn’t
know what to do so he pulled Twinky [Terry] out of the car, checked his pulse
again”; (2) he “stood there for two to three minutes trying to figure out what to
do”; (3) he “thought about calling the police but he knew they would arrest him
whether he left or whether he didn’t”; (4) he “couldn’t pick up Twinky [Terry]
because he was too heavy, so he left him”; and (5) he put Robinson “the rest of the
way in the car and drove back towards Decatur and came to a creek and knew he
couldn’t ride around with a body in the car, so he threw the body in the creek.”
Dr. Shealy asked Maples if he had experience with traumatic situations, and
Maples replied that he had found a friend of his dead in 1994 or 1995. Maples
“was the first one on the scene of a car accident, and . . . it looked like [the
friend’s] head had been cut off.” In 1992, Maples came upon another car accident
and saw a girl’s lifeless body. This shocked him because “her face was
particularly torn up.”
While Dr. Shealy said it was “hard to say with any specificity” how much
alcohol and/or drugs Maples had consumed prior to the murders, he thought “it
was clear that [Maples] wasn’t so intoxicated that his memory was totally wiped
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out because he remembered the details of what happened before such as getting out
of the car and looking for his keys. He [Maples] remembered the details
afterwards in terms of checking the pulses.”
From these facts, Dr. Shealy formed several hypotheses, including:
(1) Maples had a “dissociative experience where he blocked out that part from his
memory which would have been perhaps contributed to by the intoxication; the
alcohol and drugs”; or (2) “because of his heavy hallucinogenic drug usage, LSD
and so forth, it could have been a dissociative experience related to a flashback.”
Maples had told Dr. Shealy that he previously had experienced “several bad trips
and one flashback” while he was using LSD in 1992 or 1993.
During the evaluation, Dr. Shealy questioned Maples about his family
history. Maples had a “good relationship” with his father (Phillip Maples), but
Maples reported that his birth mother was abusive and neglectful. Maples’s birth
mother “beat him a lot.” His birth mother even tied Maples to a chair and whipped
him with a broom handle. Maples told Dr. Shealy that his birth mother was
“crazy.” His birth mother had stabbed his father and poured hot grease on his
father while he was sleeping. When Maples would stay with his grandmother on
the weekends, Maples would arrive with “fingernail marks on his neck and bruises
on his body from his mother’s abuse.” When his grandmother later told him about
these incidents, Maples “got angry and wondered what he had done to cause it.”
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According to Maples’s grandmother, his mother “had run away with him at one
time to Pennsylvania.”
When Maples was three years old, his birth mother and father divorced, and
his mother moved away. Maples did not see his mother again until he was 17 or
18 years old, when he went to live with her briefly. At age 17 or 18, Maples lived
with his mother for only two to three months and described her as “easily
angered.” Maples said “he had a lot of questions he wanted to ask her, why after
fifteen years of no contact, why she wanted to see him now.”
When Maples was four years old, his father, Phillip, remarried. Maples told
Dr. Shealy that “he always got along with [his stepmother Elyse] real good all in
all.” Maples related that his father was the disciplinarian, “that discipline was
being whipped with a belt when he was younger and as he became older it was
being grounded or having restrictions placed on him.” Maples did say that his
father “got drunk” when Maples was young.
Maples performed well academically and got along with his classmates
throughout grammar school and junior high school. Maples began smoking
marijuana when he was 11 or 12 and started drinking alcohol when he was 13. His
parents “stayed on him” about his grades and his friends. Although he had been in
advanced academic classes when he was younger, Maples (at age 18) dropped out
of school in 12th grade in 1992.
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Dr. Shealy said that there was “[n]othing remarkable” about Maples’s
history of romantic relationships “except perhaps sexual relations beginning at age
fourteen.” Dr. Shealy opined that Maples’s romantic relationships were “not a
major factor in terms of understanding his psychological and emotional
involvement and personality involvement.”
Dr. Shealy asked about Maples’s friendships and learned that Maples’s “best
friend in growing up,” Kenneth, had slept with Maples’s girlfriend. Maples
admitted that he later “got even with” Kenneth during a drug deal. Dr. Shealy
asked about Maples’s relationship with Jamie Dobbs, who Maples met in 1993 and
who introduced Maples to cocaine. Dobbs had a “big inheritance” and the two
men spent their time partying and doing drugs. In addition, Maples had “spent a
lot of time on the street.” According to Maples, the spring of 1993 to the
beginning of 1994 “were the street days and heavy drug use days.” The murders
were committed in July 1995, after Maples was released from drug treatment at the
Quest rehab facility in January 1995.
Dr. Shealy explained to the jury how Maples’s abusive and neglectful
mother had a long-lasting effect on Maples. Dr. Shealy testified that the abuse and
abandonment Maples’s mother inflicted on him occurred at a very vulnerable age.
Because infants are totally dependent on their mothers, an abusive mother “has a
lot of long-term effects on people.” Dr. Shealy emphasized that “[c]hildren who
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have been abused or neglected or abandoned during early childhood are much
more likely” to rebel against authority, “act out in some antisocial ways,” and
abuse drugs and alcohol. Substance abuse, he explained, was a common tactic to
numb the emotional pain of the mother’s abuse. Dr. Shealy said this was Maples’s
story—an abused child growing into “a man of the streets . . . somebody who had
taken the tough guy position.” In Dr. Shealy’s opinion, Maples had feelings, but
he would numb them or pretend they did not exist.
Dr. Shealy also interviewed a police officer, Officer Frost, who worked at
the jail where Maples was held. Officer Frost was friends with and knew Maples
in high school. According to Officer Frost, Maples played varsity football and
baseball in high school. Maples was not a troublemaker at school but was, rather,
a “perfectionist” who was concerned about his image. In 1992, when Maples was
18, he dropped out of school and was denied entry to the Army due to a failed drug
test. This, according to Dr. Shealy, was the start of Maples’s “downfall.”
According to the tests performed by Dr. Shealy, Maples was of average
intelligence but could read at a college level. Dr. Shealy commented that it was
“unusual” for a defendant’s achievement level to surpass his intelligence, and this
suggested that Maples had “applied himself and been a good student.” It also fit
with Officer Frost’s description of Maples as a perfectionist.
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Dr. Shealy also performed a personality test on Maples by having Maples
answer 566 true/false questions and then feeding the answers into a computer
program, which in turn generated results. Based on the computer program, the
Axis II 3 “diagnosis” was “passive aggressive personality disorder.” Dr. Shealy
testified that the lower-level “diagnostic impressions” generated by the personality
test were “adjustment disorder with depressed mood,” “[o]rganic personal
syndrome,” “alcohol abuse and psycho active substance abuse,” and “dissociative
disorder.” Dr. Shealy said he did not find any evidence of brain damage.
Based on the computer program’s results, Dr. Shealy explained Maples’s
personality disorder this way: “Many of these individuals control their anger most
of the time at a great emotional expense. That is, they are over controlled.
However, some may prove to be dangerous or unpredictable. . . . If sufficiently
provoked they can explode in an outburst of passion often seen as unexpected by
those around them and violently assault their provoker and others present as well.”
Dr. Shealy said that this diagnosis “fits with the evidence that during high school
he [Maples] was very well behaved, he had a period of pretty intense acting out
which related to substance abuse and alcohol abuse, and there was this
3
“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (‘DSM’) organizes
psychiatric diagnoses into several dimensions or axes: Axis I pertains to all psychological
diagnostic categories except mental retardation and personality disorders, and Axis II pertains to
mental retardation and personality disorders.” Jones v. GDCP Warden, 815 F.3d 689, 709 n.3
(11th Cir. 2016).
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perfectionistic pattern, over controlled, and probably a lot of seething anger
underneath having to do with [his] early childhood experience of being abused.”
Dr. Shealy told the jury that Maples’s use of drugs and alcohol could be the
“cue that would trigger something from the past. It could be something in the
present that could provoke an outburst.” Dr. Shealy explained to the jury that
individuals with passive aggressive personality disorder “build an emotional wall
around themselves” that can be eroded by substance abuse or intoxication. Dr.
Shealy stated that either a “sufficiently strong stimulus” or “some incapacitation as
a result of intoxication” could provoke an outburst. Dr. Shealy also explained that
his diagnosis of passive aggressive personality disorder relates back to, and is a
product of, the trauma in Maples’s childhood because abused children “are likely .
. . to act out.”
Dr. Shealy’s final opinion was that, given Maples’s history and his alcohol
and marijuana use during the ten hours or so before the murders, Maples was
impaired in terms of his capacity to behave in a normal fashion or to conform his
behavior to the requirements of the law.
As part of his preparation, Dr. Shealy also reviewed a report prepared by Dr.
Lawrence Maier, a psychologist with the state department of mental health. Dr.
Maier performed a structured interview of Maples but did not conduct any
psychological testing. Dr. Maier found that Maples had “probable personality
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disorder antisocial type” and “poly substance abuse,” both of which are, according
to Dr. Shealy, consistent with his own findings and conclusions.
During the State’s cross-examination, Dr. Shealy admitted that there was not
much difference between his diagnosis and Dr. Maier’s. Dr. Shealy explained that
both disorders involve anger, but one is expressed as “over controlled hostility”
and the other is typically expressed towards others. Dr. Maier had not conducted
any personality testing, but only interviewed Maples. Dr. Shealy said that, if he
had not conducted the personality testing, he “probably” would have reached the
same conclusion as Dr. Maier.
Dr. Shealy acknowledged that “the diagnostic impression of a passive
aggressive personality disorder was a diagnostic impression arrived at by the
computer program.” But Dr. Shealy insisted that his own opinion was based not
only on the computer results but also on Maples’s history and his personal
observations of Maples. For example, Dr. Shealy administered the Bender-Gestalt
Visual-Motor test to Maples, and Dr. Shealy noted that Maples drew the figures in
a very organized, precise, and exacting way, even erasing one drawing twice to get
an angle exactly right. This suggested to Dr. Shealy that Maples was “not
impulsive,” but was “orderly, organized, careful, [and] conscientious.” To Dr.
Shealy, this meant that Maples was not someone who suffered from a “conduct
disorder,” or an “impulse control disorder,” or even “chronic acting out.”
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B. Stepmother Elyse Maples
Maples’s stepmother, Elyse Maples, testified that Maples was a good and
smart child who did not get into trouble and that his birth mother abused him.
Elyse and Maples’s father were married for 20 years and had one child together.
Stepmother Elyse had known Maples since he was three years old. Elyse
described him as a “typical kid” who was “very fun loving” and “enjoyed being
around other kids a lot.” Although Maples was “adventuresome” as a child and
“liked to have his daddy’s attention,” “he wasn’t somebody that got in trouble a
lot.” Elyse said that Maples was smart and did well in school. [Id.] He tested
“above average” in kindergarten and was in advanced classes until the fourth
grade. During those years, Elyse said that she had a good relationship with
Maples. Elyse tried to be a mother to Maples as best she could.
When Maples was in sixth or seventh grade, his grades started falling.
Based on Elyse’s observation, Maples did not have a drug problem until after he
came back from living with his biological mother when he was 17 or 18 years old.
During the time that Maples lived with his mother, his mother abused him. His
birth mother would call Elyse and say she did not want him at home “when her
company came over.” Elyse testified that Maples’s mother called her “three weeks
after she hadn’t seen him any more and asked me if he came home and he hadn’t,
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so he was basically on the streets then.” Maples initially would not return to his
father and stepmother’s home, so he “was actually on the street basically.”
When Maples did return, Elyse noticed that he “would stay out until the
early hours of the morning,” and he was drinking and running with a crowd who
were known for using drugs. Maples’s father and stepmother tried several tactics
to address their son’s drug problem, but because Maples “didn’t have any
insurance and at the time was basically indigent,” most treatment facilities would
not accept him. Eventually, Maples sought drug treatment and was accepted at the
Quest drug rehab center. That treatment ended in January 1995, and Elyse saw “a
lot of improvement” in Maples.
Elyse testified that Maples “had worked with the Decatur city police to catch
somebody with some drugs, and we had some threats—some telephone threats and
we just didn’t feel like [Maples] would be safe in the area so we moved him.” At
this point, Maples moved to his uncle’s house in Tennessee.
Elyse stated that she had attended the trial and “[t]hat’s not the Corey
Maples I knew and it’s still not the Corey Maples I know.”
C. Uncle Kenneth Maples
Maples’s uncle also testified. Kenneth Maples worked for the local fire
department, and he was at the scene of the murders that night as part of his job.
Kenneth testified that Maples was “okay” growing up. Kenneth confirmed that
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Maples’s birth mother abandoned Maples and the family. Kenneth never saw
Maples’s mother around him. Kenneth agreed that Maples was “a pretty good
kid,” that Maples “got messed up on drugs,” and that Maples would not have
committed the crimes if not for “drugs in his life.”
In addition to testimony that Maples was a good kid until he started abusing
drugs, trial counsel in the guilt phase had already presented testimony that Maples
was trustworthy. During the guilt phase, Maples’s lawyers called Allen Birdsong,
Maples’s friend and former employer, who testified that Maples was trustworthy.
For example, Birdsong testified that Maples lived with him in Tennessee for a time
and worked for him doing cable T.V. installation. Birdsong said that Maples was
with him when he cashed business checks for thousands of dollars, and Maples
knew Birdsong had three trucks. Birdsong said he trusted Maples with his things.
D. Father Phillip Maples
Maples’s father, Phillip Maples, testified last and gave vivid examples of
how Maples’s birth mother physically and emotionally abused their son. Phillip
described Maples’s birth mother as “crazy” and “a nut case.” Phillip explained
that Maples’s mother tried to kill Maples and him on “several different occasions.”
Phillip testified that Maples’s mother “beat [Maples] on several occasions, choked
him, left him in the car with the windows rolled up, slapped him, you know, just
crazy stuff.” Phillip stated that he was at work when the birth mother tied Maples
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to a chair and beat him with a broom handle, and Phillip came home to find bruises
and rope marks on his two-year-old son. That was the “final straw,” and he
divorced Maples’s mother when Maples was 2 or 3 years old.
Phillip testified that Maples’s mother viciously attacked him on several
occasions by stabbing him, shooting at him, and pouring hot grease on him while
he slept. Phillip explained that “[y]ou could be talking to her one minute and she
would be fine and the next minute she was a whole other person in another world.”
Phillip was “totally against” Maples going to live with his mother when
Maples was 17. Phillip agreed with defense counsel that Maples’s mother seemed
to be ashamed of him because she kicked him out of the house when she had
friends coming over and she never came to the trial.
Phillip admitted that he knew Maples drank “a little bit” as a teenager, but he
did not realize Maples was using drugs at that time. After Maples went to stay
with his birth mother, Phillip saw a change in his son. “[I]t was like his mind was
wandering a lot,” Phillip explained. Maples used to call his father and check in,
but Phillip and Elyse “didn’t hear from him more and more and more . . . and we
heard from different people that the folks he was running around with . . . was
well-known into drugs.” Phillip reiterated that Maples eventually went to drug
therapy, and it helped him. Phillip testified that his son was “a good kid.” Phillip
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said that Maples’s birth mother was “just the woman that had him. . . . [Elyse] is
his mother.”
In addition to Dr. Shealy’s and his family’s testimony about Maples’s
substance abuse during the penalty phase, there had already been evidence of
Maples’s alcohol and substance abuse during the trial.
The trial evidence in the guilt phase revealed that Maples was drinking the
night of the murders. In his written statement to police, Maples wrote that, several
hours before the murders, he had “6 or 7 beers” but “didn’t feel very drunk.” Two
women with Maples and Terry earlier that night testified that all four of them were
drinking at the Caddy Shack, a local restaurant, although Maples did not appear
drunk or high. The owner of the pool hall where all three men spent time that
night testified that Maples had trouble getting out of the car when he arrived.
Another witness from the pool hall testified that he did not know whether Maples
was drunk that night, but that Maples was not shooting pool as well as normal and
seemed “a little hyper.” During the defense’s case-in-chief, Maples presented
evidence from two witnesses who said that, although he had been drinking that
day, Maples did not seem intoxicated.
The State presented evidence that Maples was also using drugs that day.
After killing Terry and Robinson in execution style, Maples drove to the home of
Heather Davis and April Phillips. Phillips testified that Maples had drugs in his
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hand and “kept asking” her if she wanted to “get messed up,” (do drugs). Maples
told her “he had been doing crystal meth and crack.” After leaving Phillips’s
house, Maples went to the home of James Smith, a.k.a. “Fishbone,” and tried to
buy drugs. When Fishbone did not sell him drugs, Maples left with another man to
“get some crack.”
In a videotaped interview shown to the jury, Maples admitted to police his
execution-style killings and that he smoked marijuana that night, but he denied
consuming any hard drugs. In the video, Maples acknowledged having “seven or
eight” beers and some liquor in the hours leading up to the murders. Later, Maples
stated that he had between six and seven beers by the time he left a party at Terry’s
sister’s house that night at about 7:30-7:45 p.m. Maples said he could tell he had
had six beers, but he was not “starting to get drunk or staggering around or
anything.”
Maples told investigators that “personal problems” had been on his mind,
but his anger and gloominess had nothing to do with the victims. Maples said
drinking would exacerbate these negative thoughts. Maples said he would think
about how he was a “screw-up,” he was lonely, “things about my real mom,” and
he was down on himself because of problems he had caused his family.
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E. Trial Counsel’s Closing Stressed Multiple Mitigation Factors
At the close of the sentencing-phase evidence, Maples’s trial counsel argued
that the following mitigating factors warranted a life sentence: (1) Maples’s lack of
a significant criminal history; (2) Maples acted under the influence of extreme
mental or emotional disturbance; (3) Dr. Shealy had testified that Maples’s
capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was substantially
impaired; (4) Maples’s age (21) at the time of the murders; (5) the abandonment,
abuse, and neglect by Maples’s birth mother; (6) Maples’s past drug dependency;
(7) Maples’s attempts to control his drug addiction by going to a drug rehab
program; (8) Maples’s assistance to law enforcement; (9) Maples’s diminished
mental capacity at the time of the murders due to his consumption of alcohol; (10)
Maples’s display of remorse and candor and acceptance of full responsibility for
his crimes in his videotaped confession to police; and (11) the fact that “the crime
was absent of any prolonged suffering or torture.”
IV. 1997 SENTENCING
On October 31, 1997, the jury recommended death by a 10-2 vote. At the
November 21, 1997, sentencing hearing, the state trial court judge accepted the
jury’s recommendation and sentenced Maples to death on both murders.
In its November 21, 1997 sentencing order, the state trial court explained
that the State had proven the existence of one statutory aggravating circumstance:
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Maples committed the capital murder offense while engaged in the commission of
a robbery of the victim’s red Camaro. The state trial court also found the existence
of one statutory mitigating circumstance: Maples had no significant prior criminal
history.
The state trial court found that Maples’s alcohol consumption on the night of
the murders did not establish that Maples was so severely impaired that he could
not appreciate the criminality of his conduct that night. Further, the court noted
that Maples stole the vehicle of victim Terry and fled the state because he knew the
authorities would be after him. The court found the evidence too unpersuasive to
support the statutory mitigating circumstances of (1) Maples being under extreme
mental or emotional disturbance or (2) substantial impairment of Maples’s capacity
to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.
The state trial court acknowledged Dr. Shealy’s diagnosis of a passive-
aggressive personality disorder caused by his birth mother’s abuse of Maples and
that Dr. Shealy had testified that alcohol and past drug abuse might be a trigger for
Maples’s actions on the night of the murders. And the state trial court discussed
how Maples had presented seven additional mitigating circumstances, on top of
those listed in the statute.
First, the state trial court did not doubt that Maples was abused and
abandoned by his birth mother. Maples’s evidence proved that Maples “is a
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troubled young man with a history of abuse from his mother and self-abuse
through drugs and alcohol.”
Second, the state trial court acknowledged that the trial testimony
established that Maples had a “drug dependency” on a host of illegal drugs and
“has suffered from addiction to various controlled substances.”
Third, the state trial court credited the testimony from Phillip and Elyse
Maples that Maples had tried to stop using drugs and had attended drug rehab.
Fourth, as to Maples’s cooperation with police, the state trial court noted that
Maples’s stepmother testified that Maples had assisted the city police “in
apprehending a drug violator.”
Fifth, Maples had presented his “diminished mental capacity at the time of
the crime due to his consumption of alcohol” as a non-statutory mitigating factor.
But the state trial court was not convinced on this point.
Lastly, the state trial court credited Maples’s “candor” in his confession to
police. The state trial court concluded that the victims not experiencing prolonged
suffering or torture was not a mitigating factor.
In weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the state trial
court wrote that it did find “several non-statutory mitigating circumstances in
addition to the one statutory mitigating circumstance, but found them weak and
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unpersuasive.” In sum, the state trial court found “[t]he statutory aggravating
circumstance far outweighed the mitigating facts.”
On direct appeal, the Alabama appellate courts affirmed Maples’s
convictions and two death sentences. Maples v. State, 758 So. 2d 1 (Ala. Crim.
App. 1999); Ex parte Maples, 758 So. 2d 81 (Ala. 1999).
V. POST-CONVICTION PROCEEDINGS IN STATE COURT
Maples pursued collateral relief in state court. In 2001, and through new
counsel, Maples filed a petition for relief pursuant to Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules
of Criminal Procedure (the “initial Rule 32 petition”). In September 2001, the
State filed (1) an answer and motion to dismiss the initial Rule 32 petition, and (2)
a proposed order as to the allegations in the initial Rule 32 petition.
In December 2001, Maples’s counsel filed an amended Rule 32 petition,
which is, in some places, a verbatim copy of the initial Rule 32 petition (the
“amended Rule 32 petition”). However, in critical areas of the mitigation claim,
the amended Rule 32 petition added names of new mitigation witnesses and the
substance of those witnesses’ alleged testimony about specific incidents.
As noted in the majority opinion of my colleagues, the state Rule 32 court in
2003 dismissed Maples’s amended Rule 32 petition on the pleadings. But the state
Rule 32 court signed verbatim the State’s September 2001 proposed order, even
though that order was drafted prior to Maples filing his amended Rule 32 petition
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and thus did not address the many substantive new allegations contained in
Maples’s amended Rule 32 petition. The Rule 32 court merely struck through
“2001” on the signature line, wrote in the 2003 date, and signed the order.
Accordingly, I agree with the majority opinion that the state court’s Rule 32
decision (1) relied on a “wrong set of facts” taken from the initial Rule 32 petition
in 2001, (2) did not consider the additional, substantive mitigation facts alleged in
the amended Rule 32 petition in 2003, and (3) thus did not consider the totality of
the available mitigating evidence. Importantly too, under the unique procedural
history here, Maples did not timely appeal the Rule 32 court’s ruling and, thus,
there is no Alabama appellate decision on Maples’s amended Rule 32 petition to
review.
As a result, the federal district court, and now this Court, are left with only
the state trial court’s Rule 32 decision that (1) did not mention or consider
Maples’s operative amended Rule 32 petition, and (2) incorrectly said Maples had
not named his new mitigation witnesses and had not produced the substance of
their mitigation testimony, when in fact Maples had done just that in his amended
Rule 32 petition. Thus, I agree with my colleagues’ majority opinion that the
district court, and now this Court, must conduct de novo review.
Where the majority and I part company is over the prejudice ruling in the
majority opinion. Taking as true all factual allegations in Maples’s amended Rule
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32 and § 2254 petitions,4 I agree with the district court that Maples has not shown
either actual prejudice to overcome his procedural default or Strickland prejudice.
The district court first denied the amended § 2254 petition based on Maples’s
failure to timely appeal the Rule 32 court’s decision and failure to exhaust his
mitigation claim in state court. This Court affirmed. Maples v. Allen, 586 F.3d
879 (11th Cir. 2009).
Reversing, the United States Supreme Court found that Maples’s collateral
counsel (Sullivan & Cromwell in New York), who filed Maples’s amended Rule
32 petition and did not timely appeal the Rule 32 court’s decision, essentially
“abandoned” him, which constituted “ample cause . . . to excuse the procedural
default in which he was trapped when counsel of record abandoned him without a
word of warning.” Maples v. Thomas, 565 U.S. 266, 289, 132 S. Ct. 912, 927
(2012).
The Supreme Court, however, remanded to our Court to consider whether
Maples could establish the prejudice necessary to excuse his procedural default, id.
at 927-28, and we remanded the prejudice issue to the district court. Maples v.
Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corr., 460 F. App’x 860 (11th Cir. 2012) (unpublished).
The district court concluded Maples had not established prejudice to excuse his
4
Maples’s allegations in his amended Rule 32 petition are substantially identical to those
in his amended § 2254 petition, although his § 2254 petition alleged for the first time that his
maternal grandmother suffered from Pseudotumor Cerebri, a brain condition.
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procedural default or Strickland prejudice either. This is now Maples’s appeal of
that prejudice ruling. I review the district court’s thorough order and then why I
agree Maples has not shown prejudice.
VI. DISTRICT COURT’S PREJUDICE RULING
In a 178-page order, the district court denied Maples’s amended § 2254
petition. The district court initially found that the state Rule 32 court’s order was
an adjudication on the merits and was entitled to AEDPA deference. The district
court reasoned that “[a]lthough the wholesale adoption of a party’s proposed
opinion may be disfavored, it is not per se illegal or improper.”
Nonetheless, the district court also recognized that (1) Maples’s amended
Rule 32 petition provided additional details that were lacking in his initial Rule 32
petition, such as the names of the new witnesses and the substance of their
mitigation testimony, and (2) the Rule 32 court’s ruling that some claims lacked
details and specificity was therefore unreasonable. Thus, the district court also
conducted de novo review of all allegations in Maples’s amended Rule 32 and
§ 2254 petitions.5
5
The district court noted that Maples’s reply brief in federal court for the first time also
made new allegations that were never made in his amended Rule 32 petition in state court. For
example, Maples’s reply brief alleged that his father and stepmother, Phillip and Elyse Maples,
abused him physically and emotionally, including beating him, burning him with cigarettes, and
forcing him to sleep in the woods. That is a wholly new claim never made in the amended Rule
32 and § 2254 petitions.
The district court rejected the new allegations made in the reply brief as unexhausted and
procedurally defaulted. Maples does not appeal that ruling. Indeed, Maples does not rely on
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At bottom, the district court determined that, even under de novo review and
even if proven, Maples’s allegations did not show the requisite prejudice, his
mitigation claim was procedurally defaulted, and his Strickland claim failed too.
Because the showings of prejudice with respect to procedural default and
Strickland “overlap,” the district court stated that it would consider them
simultaneously. Because the district court took all of Maples’s allegations as true
and proven, the district court referred to Maples’s allegations as “mitigation
evidence.”
In deciding the prejudice issue in its 178-page order, the district court
grouped Maples’s allegedly new mitigation evidence into these seven subsets: (1)
Maples’s family history (the abuse and abandonment by his birth mother); (2)
Maples’s good character references; (3) Maples’s drug addiction, including his
efforts at recovery, depression, and suicide attempts; (4) Maples’s assistance to law
enforcement; (5) counsel’s failure to procure a “competent” psychological
evaluation; (6) Maples’s post-arrest behavior; and (7) Maples’s head trauma.
First, as to his abusive childhood inflicted by his birth mother, the district
court concluded the additional mitigation evidence was cumulative of the trial
mitigation evidence because it consisted of “the same examples, perhaps with more
details, or different examples of abuse and abandonment of Maples by his mother.”
these newly added allegations in this appeal at all. In his reply brief on appeal, Maples explicitly
states that his claim relies on the allegations in his amended Rule 32 petition.
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The district court determined that “[e]ven if the state court unreasonably
determined that Maples failed to identify witnesses and the substance of their
testimony in the amended Rule 32 petition, its decision that any additional
testimony from witnesses would have been cumulative of that presented at trial is
not an unreasonable application of Strickland.” Alternatively, the district court
determined that “even if this aspect of the claim is considered de novo, Maples’s
allegations, if true, fail to show Strickland actual prejudice because this court finds
the alleged [mitigation] testimony was merely cumulative of the [mitigation]
testimony presented at trial and would not have changed the result of the penalty
phase.”
Second, as to Maples’s “character references,” the district court determined
that much of the additional mitigation testimony Maples hopes to offer is
cumulative of the trial testimony by his father, stepmother, Dr. Shealy, and some
witnesses during the guilt phase. In any event, the new character evidence
consisted of generic impressions of Maples’s good nature, which would have only
spurred the prosecution to highlight gruesome details of the murders and argue
how, “despite his intelligence and supportive extended family, Maples chose a
culture of drugs and violence over education and responsibility.” Even under de
novo review, the district court concluded that the additional good-character
testimony was cumulative, refuted by the record, or was at best “generic good
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character evidence that either carries with it an aggravating edge or could have
spurred the prosecutor to undermine it.” In sum, the district court found the new
character evidence “double-edged” and “minimally consequential.”
Third, as to Maples’s depression, suicide attempts, and drug abuse, the
district court noted that Maples’s amended petitions “frame[d] this claim in such a
way that the relevance of the depression and suicide attempts is tied to another
mitigating factor that was well known to the jury – his history of drug abuse and
his attempted recovery.” The district court concluded that even if Maples’s
depression and suicide attempts were part of the evidence put before the jury to
show that Maples suffered from a serious drug addiction, “this evidence would not
likely have changed the balance of aggravating and mitigating factors such that
there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the penalty phase of trial
would have been different.” While noting that “no reasonable jurist would agree”
with the Rule 32 court that Maples had failed to identify mitigation witnesses and
describe the substance of their testimony in his amended Rule 32 petition on this
point, Maples was not entitled to relief because he had not established prejudice.
Fourth, as to Maples’s assistance to law enforcement in the arrest of drug
dealer Mark Carrell, the district court found that such testimony “likely would have
caused the prosecutor to present and emphasize Maples’s prior lawless behavior.”
Maples himself had been buying and using illegal drugs for years. The prosecutor
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would have emphasized that Maples may have turned informant for reasons of
personal revenge.6
Fifth, as to Dr. Shealy’s testimony, the district court determined that
Maples’s allegations, even if true, did not show why Dr. Shealy’s diagnosis of
passive-aggressive personality disorder is wrong, how Dr. Shealy’s testimony was
confusing or misleading, or how counsel’s preparation of Dr. Shealy was
inadequate.
Sixth, as to Maples’s good behavior in jail, the district court found “very
little likelihood that such evidence would have influenced either the jury or the trial
court.”
Seventh, as to his two instances of head trauma, the district court noted that
Maples had not described: (1) what Elyse Maples or his friends could have said
about the nature and severity of his head injuries; (2) the effect of the head injuries
on his behavior or mental state; or (3) why Dr. Shealy’s testimony failed to
adequately explain the impact of these head injuries. 7
6
It was already known to the jury that, on a different occasion, Maples had ripped off his
former best friend, Kenneth, in retribution for Kenneth sleeping with Maples’s girlfriend.
7
For the first time before the district court, Maples alleged that his counsel had “notice”
of his “diminished mental capacity” caused by “brain injury.” At trial, Maples’s counsel argued
that he had diminished mental capacity due to alcohol and drug use, not past head traumas. The
district court rejected these new allegations as unexhausted and procedurally defaulted and,
alternatively, concluded that the state court record did not support Maples’s contention that
counsel had “notice” of his now alleged brain injury.
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Even accepting as true all of Maples’s allegations in his amended Rule 32
and § 2254 petitions, the district court determined that Maples had not
demonstrated prejudice based on the state-court record and, thus, it denied
Maples’s request for an evidentiary hearing.
Before discussing why the district court’s prejudice ruling should be
affirmed, I review the relevant law as to prejudice required to overcome procedural
default and Strickland prejudice.
VII. PREJUDICE FOR PROCEDURAL DEFAULT AND STRICKLAND
Federal courts may not entertain claims from a state habeas petitioner that
are procedurally defaulted. Maples, 565 U.S. at 280, 132 S. Ct. at 922. Claims are
procedurally defaulted when a state court has declined to address those claims due
to a failure by the prisoner to meet some state procedural requirement and the state
judgment rests on independent and adequate state procedural grounds. Id.
Procedural default can be overcome, however, by a showing of cause and “actual
prejudice.” United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 167-68, 102 S. Ct. 1584, 1594
(1982). Because the U.S. Supreme Court already determined that cause exists for
Maples’s procedural default (failing to timely appeal the Rule 32 order), the district
court correctly confined its opinion to whether he can establish “actual prejudice”
to excuse his procedural default.
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The State argues that this means Maples must meet both Strickland’s
prejudice standard and the “more rigorous” “actual prejudice” standard needed to
overcome procedural default. But the district court properly concluded that, under
the particular circumstances here, the prejudice inquiries overlap. See Mincey v.
Head, 206 F.3d 1106, 1147 & n.86 (11th Cir. 2000) (explaining that Strickland
prejudice and the prejudice required to overcome procedural default are “one and
the same”) (citing Prou v. United States, 199 F.3d 37, 49 (1st Cir. 1999)
(concluding that the Frady and Strickland prejudice standards are one and the
same)); see also Harris v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corrs., 874 F.3d 682, 688 (11th
Cir. 2017) (“[T]he prejudice showing for overcoming the procedural default is
coterminous with the prejudice showing [a petitioner] must make to prove [his]
ineffective assistance of counsel claim.”). In other words, in this case, the
procedural-default and merits inquiries fold together—if Maples can show
Strickland prejudice, he has shown “actual prejudice” sufficient to excuse his
procedural default. So this brings us to what Maples must show to establish
Strickland prejudice. 8
8
For purposes of this appeal, and because the threshold issue is prejudice, I will assume
arguendo that Maples’s trial counsel’s performance was deficient as to the investigation and
presentation of mitigating evidence and discuss only prejudice.
At this juncture, there is no testimony by Maples’s trial counsel as to (1) what
investigation they did or did not do and their reasons for doing so, (2) what Maples told them, or
(3) what strategic decisions they made. Therefore, because this case has a threshold prejudice
issue for procedural default and that prejudice analysis is essentially the same as Strickland
prejudice, I focus on the prejudice issue.
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As for Strickland’s prejudice prong, the standard is whether “there is a
reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the
proceeding would have been different.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S. Ct. at
2068. Because Maples alleges ineffective assistance at the penalty phase, he must
show a “reasonable probability that, absent the errors, the sentencer would have
concluded that the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not
warrant death.” Puiatti v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 732 F.3d 1255, 1286 (11th
Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). A reasonable probability is “a
probability sufficient to undermine confidence” in the outcome. Johnson, 643 F.3d
at 935 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Rose v. McNeil, 634 F.3d 1224,
1242 (11th Cir. 2011). “The likelihood of a different outcome must be substantial,
not just conceivable.” Rose, 634 F.3d at 1242 (internal quotation marks omitted).
In assessing prejudice, we consider the totality of the mitigation evidence—
including the evidence adduced at trial and the new evidence adduced at the habeas
proceeding—and “reweigh” it against the evidence in aggravation. Puiatti, 732
F.3d at 1286 (citing Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30, 41, 130 S. Ct. 447, 453-54
(2009)); see also Wong v. Belmontes, 558 U.S. 15, 26, 130 S. Ct. 383, 390 (2009)
(per curiam) (“[T]he reviewing court must consider all the evidence—the good and
the bad—when evaluating prejudice.”).
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For the reasons explained below, I agree with the district court that Maples
has not established prejudice.
VIII. DISCUSSION
As an initial matter, there was compelling evidence in aggravation. Maples
killed two young men, one of whom was a good friend, by shooting them each
twice in the head at point-blank range, unceremoniously dumping their bodies, and
stealing his friend’s red Camaro, and cavalierly escaping out of state until he was
caught a month later still with his friend’s car. The state trial court found the
existence of one statutory aggravating circumstance: that Maples committed the
murders during the commission of the theft of his friend’s Camaro. None of
Maples’s post-conviction allegations undermines this statutory highly aggravating
circumstance.
More importantly, this is not a case in which trial counsel presented no
mitigating evidence. Rather, at trial the jury was well aware of Maples’s abuseive
birth mother, his other family background, his serious drug and alcohol abuse, his
drug rehab, and other personal background. Most of Maples’s new allegations are
cumulative of the themes already advanced at trial.
Time and again, the United States Supreme Court and this Court have held
that a defendant-petitioner failed to show prejudice when his allegedly new
mitigation evidence was essentially cumulative of that presented at trial. See, e.g.,
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Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 200-01, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1409-10 (2011) (“The
‘new’ evidence largely duplicated the mitigation evidence at trial. School and
medical records basically substantiate the testimony of [the petitioner’s] mother
and brother. Declarations from [the petitioner’s] siblings support his mother’s
testimony that his stepfather was abusive and explain that [the petitioner] was
beaten with fists, belts, and even wooden boards.”); Wong, 558 U.S. at 22-23, 130
S. Ct. at 387-88 (holding that “[s]ome of the [additional mitigating] evidence was
merely cumulative of the humanizing evidence [the petitioner] actually presented”
because the jury was “well-acquainted with [the petitioner’s] background and
potential humanizing features” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Tanzi v. Sec’y,
Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 772 F.3d 644, 660 (11th Cir. 2014) (holding that the mitigating
evidence presented at the petitioner’s postconviction hearing, while not “identical”
to the mitigating evidence presented at trial, was “substantially the same in all
relevant respects (albeit more detailed)”); Holsey v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic
Prison, 694 F.3d 1230, 1262-66 (11th Cir. 2012) (concluding that the state supreme
court’s determination—that the petitioner’s additional mitigating evidence
regarding his limited intelligence and his troubled, abusive childhood was “largely
cumulative” of the evidence presented at trial—was not unreasonable where the
petitioner merely presented “more details” and a “larger pool of information of the
same type already offered”); Pooler, 702 F.3d at 1276 (rejecting prejudice claim
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where the “new” evidence of the petitioner’s good character and military service
was cumulative of that presented at trial); Boyd, 592 F.3d at 1297-98 (finding that
much of the evidence presented by the petitioner during postconviction
proceedings “was in some measure cumulative” of the trial evidence because
“much (although not all) of the ‘new’ testimony introduced at the post-conviction
hearing would simply have amplified the themes already raised at trial”); Rhode v.
Hall, 582 F.3d 1273, 1287 (11th Cir. 2009) (“At best, the evidence would have
been cumulative, providing more information about [the petitioner]’s bad
childhood and early exposure to drugs and alcohol.”). 9
The same holds true here. The majority of what Maples presented in his
amended Rule 32 and § 2254 petitions was additional evidence of previous
mitigation factors that were already presented to the jury. For example, Maples
presented to the jury that: (1) his birth mother regularly beat him, choked him, and
slapped him; (2) his birth mother left Maples in the car with the windows rolled up
and once tied Maples to a chair and beat him with a broom handle; (3) his birth
9
This approach is consistent with that taken by our sister circuits too. See, e.g., Jackson
v. Bradshaw, 681 F.3d 753, 769–70 (6th Cir. 2012) (holding that evidence presented during
collateral proceedings was “largely cumulative” of evidence presented during sentencing because
the collateral evidence provided only a “larger pool of information of the same type already
offered” at sentencing); Paul v. United States, 534 F.3d 832, 842–43 (8th Cir. 2008) (holding that
“[m]uch of the new [collateral] evidence cited by [the petitioner] [was] largely cumulative of
evidence that was presented . . . at the penalty phase of the trial” although the collateral evidence
might have provided “more detail about [the petitioner]’s difficult and abusive childhood or his
compassionate character”); Buckner v. Polk, 453 F.3d 195, 207 (4th Cir. 2006) (“To the extent
that the [new] affidavits provide new detail of the stories of [the petitioner]’s brother’s death and
his father’s alcoholism, we conclude that this new detail is largely cumulative.”).
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mother would also viciously attack his father, Phillip, stabbing him and pouring
hot grease on him; (4) his birth mother abandoned him not once but twice;
(5) when Maples reunited with his birth mother at age 17, he only lived with her
for two to three months, during which time she was again abusive and neglectful;
(6) it was during or directly after this time with his birth mother that Maples
became heavily involved in drugs and was living on the streets; and (7) Phillip
Maples testified that he saw a change in his son after Maples briefly went to live
with his mother at age 17.
While Maples’s amended Rule 32 and § 2254 petitions provided some
additional details about Maples’s abusive birth mother—her violent, self-
mutilating tantrums, her attack on Phillip with a metal hairbrush, trying to sell
Maples to a neighbor when he was three years old—these are simply “more or
better examples” of the same story. Our Court has instructed that providing a state
collateral court with mere cumulative evidence—that is, a “larger pool of
information of the same type already offered” that “merely amplifie[s] the themes”
of sentencing by “expanding on and providing more details and different
examples” is insufficient to demonstrate prejudice. Holsey, 694 F.3d at 1260-61,
1263.
Indeed, Maples’s new allegations about how his mother’s abuse affected
him—how he cried for his mother until his early teenage years, how he would ask
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family members about his mother and why she left him, and how her second
abandonment of him when he was 17 deeply hurt him—are very similar to
evidence that the jury heard from his parents, Phillip (father) and Elyse Maples
(stepmother), about how Maples was changed after going to live with his birth
mother at 17, how he fell in with a rough crowd, began doing heavy drugs, and was
living on the streets. It is also strikingly similar to the testimony Dr. Shealy gave
about how the birth mother’s early abuse and neglect likely caused Maples’s drug
abuse and Maples’s desire to project a “tough guy” image. In sum, the jury knew
the parameters and many of the details of Maples’s birth mother’s abuse, along
with the fact that she abandoned Maples not once, but twice. They knew from Dr.
Shealy the long-term effect this sort of parental abuse has on children, and they
heard from Phillip and Elyse Maples how Maples went into a tailspin after his birth
mother left Maples a second time.
The allegations in the amended Rule 32 and § 2254 petitions at most might
have “amplifie[d]” these themes, but they did not present something radically
different or even new. See id. at 1263. Thus, as to the birth mother’s abuse and
abandonment of Maples, I agree with the district court that the allegations in the
amended Rule 32 and § 2254 petitions are largely cumulative of the evidence put
before the jury and do not change the overall picture. See Marquard v. Sec’y for
Dep’t of Corr., 429 F.3d 1278, 1308 (11th Cir. 2005) (“There is no reason to
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believe that added details about Marquard’s troubled childhood and substance
abuse—which the sentencing court clearly recognized in imposing a death
sentence—would have had any effect on the sentence.”); Robinson v. Moore, 300
F.3d 1320, 1347 (11th Cir. 2002) (“While the additional mitigation witnesses
procured by Robinson’s 3.850 counsel could have presented the resentencing jury
and trial judge with more details, or different examples, of these aspects of
Robinson’s life, these aspects of his life were nonetheless known to the
resentencing jury and trial judge.”).
But this is not all. The jury also heard ample testimony about Maples’s own
serious problems with drug addiction, his stay at the Quest rehab center in an effort
to stop using drugs and alcohol, his help to law enforcement, and his family’s view
that he was a well-behaved, smart child who did not present any problems until he
began abusing drugs. In that sense, the so-called “new” evidence of his good
moral character, friendliness, efforts to beat his drug addiction, and assistance to
law enforcement are similarly cumulative of the trial testimony. But important to
the prejudice assessment, this “new” evidence carried a bad downside.
As this Court has noted, a § 2254 petitioner cannot establish prejudice when
there is a “virtual certainty” that the introduction of “good” mitigating evidence
“would have led to the introduction of ‘bad’ evidence.” Reed v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t
of Corr., 593 F.3d 1217, 1246 (11th Cir. 2010); see also Wong, 558 U.S. at 25, 130
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S. Ct. at 389 (“A heavyhanded case to portray [the petitioner] in a positive light . . .
would have invited the strongest possible evidence in rebuttal—the evidence that
[the petitioner] was responsible for not one but two murders.”).
Here, the prosecutor could have readily flipped this “good” evidence into a
liability by pointing out how, despite coming from an environment with a loving
and helpful father and step-mother, other affectionate and concerned family
members, and a life full of supportive friends, caring teachers, and skilled coaches,
Maples nonetheless left high school in his senior year and chose a life of drug
addiction and then coldly murdered even his good friend in order to take his
friend’s red Camaro, while killing a second young man in order to do so. See
Jones v. GDCP Warden, 815 F.3d 689, 716-17 (11th Cir. 2016) (noting the
mitigating nature of certain new evidence but pointing out that a “substantial
flaw[]” in that evidence was how it “would have opened the door to a vast array of
aggravating evidence that likely would have overwhelmed the balance of
mitigating evidence”); see also Pooler, 702 F.3d at 1275 (“Much of the 3.850
evidence Pooler claims his trial counsel . . . should have presented in the penalty
phase was not mitigating but aggravating, or else would have opened the door to
the introduction of aggravating evidence that would have diluted its impact.”).10
10
The new evidence Maples alleges is testimony from Maples’s childhood friends,
teachers, and other family members, such as the Farrells (an aunt and uncle), the Rays (extended
family), and Daniel Maples (a half-brother). Maples alleges they will testify he had good moral
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The belated assistance-to-law-enforcement evidence suffers from similar
problems. The prosecutor could have noted that Maples had a history of both
heavy drug use and getting revenge on people who wronged him—i.e., ripping off
his friend Kenneth Hall during a drug deal after Hall slept with Maples’s
girlfriend—and suggested that Maples’s intentions in helping the police were less
than honorable.
The other problem with this so-called good-character evidence is that it is
weak in light of Maples’s confession to murdering his good friend and a young
man simply hitching a ride home in such a cold-blooded and execution-style
manner. See Brooks v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corr., 719 F.3d 1292, 1301 (11th
Cir. 2013) (“A reasonable jurist could conclude that evidence that Brooks had been
a nice, polite, and nonviolent person would not sway a jury from its
recommendation of death, especially in light of the aggravating circumstances in
the case that directly and powerfully contradicted any generic impression of
Brooks’s good nature.”).
character, was friendly and polite, worked hard, was a fun-loving person, and did what he was
told.
It is worth noting that at this stage, the district court accepted Maples’s allegations as true
as to the friends, teachers, and other family members who would say good things about him.
However, it remains to be seen (at the evidentiary hearing before the district court) if Maples can
actually prove his allegations or if these witnesses, on cross-examination, might have to admit
Maples’s various negative traits or other bad conduct that the jury never heard about.
In any event, the State did not introduce any evidence at all at the first penalty phase, but
that would not be what happens when Maples must now try to prove his alleged good moral
character and positive demeanor on remand. But taking all of Maples’s allegations as true and
proven, and even with no additional evidence by the State, the district court properly found
Maples had not shown prejudice.
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Further, the alleged non-cumulative mitigating evidence is also weak and
unpersuasive. As a new mitigation factor, Maples emphasizes his post-arrest good
behavior, nightmares, and prescription for depression medication. But given the
heinous and cold-blooded nature of Maples’s double murders, I do not believe the
jury would have given this post-arrest mitigating circumstance much, if any,
weight.
That leaves Maples’s new allegations of depression and suicidal behavior
while he was abusing drugs and his two alleged head traumas. The jury was
actually aware of Maples’s past drug addiction and Dr. Shealy’s diagnosis that
Maples was suffering from mild situational depression, likely caused by being in
prison. But evidence of a wider depression after dropping out of high school, 11 his
multiple suicide attempts (during his periods of drug use), his taking antidepressant
medication while in prison, and his head traumas were mostly not before the jury.
In this regard, trial counsel actually had in their possession Maples’s application to
the Quest drug rehab center, which chronicled his past drug use and suicide
attempts. Maples suggests that Heather Davis, his ex-girlfriend, could have
testified that Maples once took more than 30 sleeping pills and drank a bottle of
11
In his amended Rule 32 petition, Maples tied the time frame of his depression to his
years of serious drug use, between the time he dropped out of high school in 1992 and when he
went to drug rehab in 1994. For the first time in his reply brief before the district court, Maples
alleged that he had a long history of depression and emotional disorders, but the district court
rightly did not credit those allegations. I also note again that Maples does not rely on the new
allegations from his reply brief in this appeal.
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alcohol before crashing his step-mother’s car. This is yet another example of new
mitigation evidence that also had a bad downside.
In any event, there are no allegations regarding: (1) whether Maples’s
depression and suicidal ideation were in place at the time of the murders (which
took place shortly after he got out of drug rehab); (2) what effect, if any, the head
traumas had on Maples, how they affected his cognitive function, if at all, whether
Maples sustained brain damage or how severe any such damage was; or
(3) whether any of these factors contributed to the execution-style slayings of
Terry and Robinson. There are simply no allegations tying Maples’s depression,
suicidal ideation, or alleged head traumas to the brutal double murders he
committed. Indeed, both the trial testimony and post-conviction allegations
demonstrate that Maples is intelligent, read at a college level, and had no brain
damage or neurological deficiencies. The evidence instead points to the cold-
blooded act of a clear-thinking man—he shot his good friend and an acquaintance
at point-blank range, dumped their bodies, stole the red Camaro, and drove it out of
state to enjoy that nice car and escape the consequences. He was not found for
over a month, but for sure he still had that coveted red Camaro.
Simply put, the cumulative weight of all the allegations of mitigating
evidence made in Maples’s operative petitions falls far short of the powerful and
compelling evidence that the Supreme Court has held sufficient to satisfy the
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prejudice prong in a brutal murder case. See, e.g., Porter, 558 U.S. at 41, 130 S.
Ct. at 454 (“Had Porter’s counsel been effective, the judge and jury . . . would have
heard about (1) Porter’s heroic military service in two of the most critical—and
horrific—battles of the Korean War, (2) his struggles to regain normality upon his
return from war, (3) his childhood history of physical abuse, and (4) his brain
abnormality, difficulty reading and writing, and limited schooling.”); Rompilla v.
Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 390-93, 125 S. Ct. 2456, 2467-69 (2005) (Rompilla’s trial
counsel failed to discover or present evidence that Rompilla (1) had test results
pointing to schizophrenia, fetal alcohol syndrome, and stunted mental
development, (2) was beaten by his father with fists, leather straps, belts, and
sticks, (3) was locked in a small wire mesh dog pen filled with excrement, (4) was
not allowed to visit other children or speak on the phone, and (5) lived without
indoor plumbing, slept in an unheated attic, and attended school in rags); Wiggins
v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 516-17, 534-35, 123 S. Ct. 2527, 2532-33, 2542 (2003)
(trial counsel offered no evidence of Wiggins’s life history, which included
(1) being left alone for days at a time with no food, forcing him to beg for food and
eat paint chips and garbage, (2) beatings for breaking into the locked kitchen, and
(3) being passed among various foster homes, where he was physically abused and
also suffered repeated molestations, rapes, and gang-rapes); Williams v. Taylor,
529 U.S. 362, 395-97, 120 S. Ct. 1495, 1514-15 (2000) (holding that petitioner was
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prejudiced where his trial counsel failed to present evidence of his “nightmarish
childhood,” neglect and abuse by his parents, and “borderline” mental retardation,
along with testimony of the petitioner’s good deeds and improvement while in
prison).
In addition, Maples’s new mitigation evidence is simply an extension of
what the jury heard, which is critically different from the above cases, in which the
new mitigation was not only powerful, but of a type that counsel did not present at
all in the sentencing phase. See, e.g., Porter, 558 U.S. at 41, 130 S. Ct. at 454
(noting that the “judge and jury at Porter’s original sentencing heard almost
nothing that would humanize Porter or allow them to accurately gauge his moral
culpability,” including the powerful evidence of Porter’s heroic and emotionally
scarring military service); Rompilla, 545 U.S. at 393, 125 S. Ct. at 2469 (finding
that the evidence discovered after trial “adds up to a mitigation case that bears no
relation to the few naked pleas for mercy actually put before the jury”); see also
Hardwick v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 803 F.3d 541, 558-59 (11th Cir. 2015)
(concluding that petitioner had shown prejudice where sentencing judge and jury
heard “none” of the available mitigating evidence regarding the petitioner’s family
history of abuse, neglect, and dysfunction, his years of substance abuse or his
diagnosis of schizophrenia).
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On appeal, Maples relies heavily on a few cases where this Court found
prejudice to exist, but those cases involved materially different factual
circumstances and do not help Maples. For example, in Johnson, this Court
determined that the jury never heard any evidence that: (1) Johnson’s parents were
alcoholics; (2) Johnson was sent to live with his grandparents when his father
abandoned the family; (3) Johnson and his siblings would hide in their bedroom
“huddled together in terror” when his father would come home drunk and beat
their mother; (4) Johnson’s mother severely abused him physically and
emotionally; (5) their grandparents inflicted “horrible” physical and emotional
abuse on their grandchildren in a home his brother described as “pure hell”; and
(6) Johnson witnessed his mother’s repeated suicide attempts and found her body
when she eventually succeeded in killing herself. Johnson, 643 F.3d at 935-37. In
granting habeas relief, this Court concluded that, “[t]he description, details, and
depth of abuse in Johnson’s background . . . far exceeded what the jury was told”
and trial counsel “could have painted for the jury the picture of a young man who
resembled the tormented soul in ‘The Scream.’” Id. at 936, 938.
Similarly, in Williams v. Allen, the defendant’s mother was the sole
mitigation witness. 542 F.3d 1326, 1329, 1331-32 (11th Cir. 2008). Her “brief
testimony” did not mention the routine and vicious attacks the defendant’s father
would visit upon his wife and children. Id. The mother did little to protect her
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children and was herself physically abusive toward the children. Id. at 1332. The
jury did not hear from the psychiatrist, who would have testified that the defendant
had experienced “an extreme brutalizing exposure to trauma,” with a childhood
marked by extensive abuse, neglect, and deprivation. Id. at 1333-34. This Court
held that the mitigation evidence that his trial lawyers failed to discover “paints a
vastly different picture of his background than that created by [his mother’s]
abbreviated testimony.” Id. at 1342.
In contrast, the Maples jury heard about his birth mother’s abuse and
abandonment from three witnesses and heard from Dr. Shealy that her abuse and
neglect had a long-lasting effect on Maples and caused him to use drugs to numb
the pain.
In sum, when I review the totality of the mitigating facts alleged in Maples’s
amended Rule 32 and § 2254 petitions, I do not see the stark discrepancy that was
present in the above cases where the Supreme Court and this Court found
prejudice. Rather, this case is more like those where the Supreme Court and this
Court have found no prejudice.
In light of Maples’s execution-style murders of two victims to steal his
friend’s red Camaro, and the similarity in the basic mitigation stories told at the
sentencing trial and on Rule 32 review, I agree with the district court that Maples
has not demonstrated a reasonable probability that he would have received a
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different sentence if his trial counsel had presented the additional mitigation
evidence Maples contends counsel should have.
IX. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, I believe precedent requires that we affirm the
district court’s denial of Maples’s § 2254 petition. I respectfully dissent. 12
12
To be clear, the majority opinion, as did the district court, accepts all of Maples’s
allegations as true, but it remains to be seen what Maples can actually prove on remand. Notably
too, the district court bypassed and never made a ruling on deficient performance, and the
evidentiary hearing encompasses that issue too. Moreover, on remand, the State will have an
opportunity to present evidence as well. I anticipate that the evidence on remand will be
vigorously disputed, and the district court’s fact findings will need to be thorough and complete.
Given the original 178-page order by the district court, I am confident that a thorough review
will occur once again.
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