Demarcus Ali Sears v. Stephen Upton, Warden (561 U.S. 945)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 29, 2010 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 561 U.S. 945 · 130 S. Ct. 3259
- Decided
- June 29, 2010
- Term
- October Term 2009
- Vote
- 5–4
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. According to an expert who testified during state posteonvietion relief, petitioner Demareus A. Sears performs at or below the bottom first percentile in several measures of cognitive functioning and reasoning. The cause of this abnormality appears to be significant frontal lobe brain damage Sears suffered as a child, as well as drug and alcohol abuse in his teens. But because — in the words of the state trial court — his counsel conducted a penalty phase investigation that was “on its face . . . constitutionally inadequate,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 27B, evidence relating to Sears’ cognitive impairments and childhood difficulties was not brought to light at the time he was sentenced to death. After finding constitutionally deficient attorney performance under the framework we set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984), the state postconviction court found itself unable to assess whether counsel’s inadequate investigation might have prejudiced Sears. App. to Pet. for Cert. 29B-30B. Because Sears’ counsel did present some mitigation evidence during Sears’ penalty phase — but not the significant mitigation evidence a constitutionally adequate investigation would have uncovered — the state court determined it could not speculate as to what the effect of additional evidence would have been. Id., at 30B. Accordingly, it denied Sears postconviction…
Excerpt of a 23,727-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.