Lawyer's own view of 'train wreck' performance doesn't justify resentencing, top state court says
An Arkansas judge should not have granted a new sentencing hearing for a death-row inmate based on his lawyer’s concession that his performance in the trial’s last phase was “a train wreck,” the Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled.
The court said the judge considering the ineffective assistance claim by convicted murderer Brandon Lacy should have relied on an objective assessment of his lawyer’s performance, rather than the lawyer’s self-assessment, report the Times Record Online and the Associated Press. The court’s Feb. 4 decision (PDF) remanded for a new hearing on ineffective assistance in the penalty phase of trial.
Lacy’s lead lawyer, Steve Harper, had said his closing argument at the end of the trial’s sentencing phase was “one of the worst I’ve ever given.” He explained his work in the sentencing phase way:
“By the time that portion of the trial came around, I’d had to adopt a lot of the burdens of every portion of the trial and it was—it was a train wreck. By the time it came around I was physically, mentally, emotionally exhausted. I was beat dead, and I didn’t give a good closing. … Could have been a lot better.”
Lacy’s family members had testified in the sentencing phase that he had a difficult and abusive childhood, and he was drinking heavily beginning at an early age. Harper’s opening and closing arguments in this phase were “very brief,” the supreme court said.
Lacy had also contended his lawyers were deficient because they failed to present an affirmative defense of mental disease or defect during the guilt phase of the trial. The supreme court upheld the judge’s determination that Lacy was not entitled to relief on that ground, citing findings by three psychologists that Lacy had no such impairment.
