In Callahan v. Campbell, No. 04-12009 (Oct. 5, 2005), the Court (Tjoflat, Black, Wilson) denied habeas relief to a death row inmate sentenced to death for a 1982 murder.
The Court rejected challenges based on the fact that the Alabama trial judge who ultimately presided over Callahan’s trial stepped into the police interrogation room, while Callahan was being interrogated after arrest, to ascertain whether his right to counsel was being respected.
The Court found no Supreme Court case directly on point, and noted that the Supreme Court has merely held that a judge cannot adjudicate a case where he was also an investigator for the government. Here, the judge was not an investigator for the government, having not been in the room during the interrogation, and having only interved on the right to counsel question.
Further, the judge’s failure to recuse himself did not violate Callahan’s Sixth Amendment right to call witnesses. The Court noted that others testified about the incident and that the law does not give a defendant a right to call "a witness he perceives as most credible."
The Court also rejected the argument that Callahan’s trial lawyer was constitutionally ineffective for failing to object to the admission of some of Callahan’s incriminating statements to police. The Court noted that the Alabama state courts had found that these specific statements were admissible under state law, and that a lawyer is not ineffective for not objecting to statements that were admissible.
The Court also found that Callahan’s lawyer, Knight, who had since died, was not ineffective at the penalty phase. For one, when a lawyer is dead and unavailable, the Court presumes he was not ineffective. For another: "When we place ourselves in Knight’s position, which we must, we see the following: overwhelming evidence that his client committed a premeditated kidnapping, rape, and murder of a random victim, including a confession to the kidnapping and rape in which he concocted a prior sexual relationship with the victim, and insinuated his ex-wife was the real murderer; his client’s last two wives left him, in part, bexause he was physically abusive; his client had two previous convictions for assault with intent to murder, one of which arose from when he shot his own 11-year-old nice in the foot; his client’s past included no compelling mitigation evidence, such as mental health problems or physical abuse; and his client had already once been sentenced to death for the murder [in a sentence that was overturned and remanded]. Given the hand Knight was delath, we cannot say a decision to focus on mercy instead of mitigation was an unreasonable one."
