Wiggins v. Corcoran
After electing a trial by judge, Kevin Wiggins was convicted of first degree murder robbery, and two counts of theft. Wiggins chose a jury for sentencing. Instead of developing a case in mitigation based on Wiggins’ social history, defense counsel chose to question whether Wiggins was actually guilty of murder. The jury sentenced Wiggins to death. The Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction unanimously and the sentence by a divided court. Wiggins applied for state post-conviction relief, alleging that his counsel’s failure to make out a case in mitigation based on his social history constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. In the state proceeding, Wiggins’ counsel presented a social history report detailing Wiggins’ history of physical, sexual, and mental abuse at the hands of his parents and guardians, and that his IQ indicated borderline mental retardation. The state court denied his petition and the court of appeals affirmed. Wiggins filed a timely 28 U.S.C. ยง 2254 petition in the federal district court, which reversed his conviction for insufficient evidence and his sentence because of ineffective assistance of counsel. The court of appeals reversed, finding, in part, that Wiggins’ counsel had sufficient knowledge of potentially mitigating evidence to make an informed strategic choice at the sentencing phase.
Question Presented:
Does defense counsel in a capital case violate the requirements of Strickland v. Washington by failing to investigate available mitigation
evidence that could well have convinced a jury to impose a life sentence, as the Supreme Court concluded in Williams v. Taylor and as most
appeals court have concluded, or is a defense counsel’s decision not to investigate such evidence virtually unchallengeable so long as counsel knows rudimentary facts about the
defendant’s background?
