Samayoa

Opinion by Judge SILVERMAN; Dissent by Judge REINHARDT.

OPINION

It is undisputed that on December 18, 1985, appellant Richard Samayoa beat Nelia Silva to death with a wrench in the *920 course of burglarizing her home. Samayoa also beat to death Nelia’s two-year-old daughter, Katherine. The pathologist estimated that Nelia was struck in the head 24 times. The jury heard testimony that the faces of both mother and daughter were smashed in, their skulls crushed, and fragments of bone penetrated their brains. It is undisputed that Samayoa left Nelia and Katherine naked from the waist down — he said he did that to make the crime look like a rape — and then he stole jewelry from the Silva house that he gave away as gifts to members of his family. The mutilated bodies of both victims were found by Rolando Silva, Nelia’s husband and Katherine’s father. Photos of the decedents and of the bloody crime scene were introduced into evidence.

Nine years earlier, Samayoa had raped and sodomized a woman with multiple sclerosis, who begged him, “Please don’t rape me. I’m a cripple.” He was convicted of burglary and rape and sentenced to prison. Five years later, while staying overnight at a…

dissenting:

This is a capital case in which the trial defense counsel, for reasons that are impossible to fathom, deliberately and knowingly refused to investigate the capital defendant’s abusive family background, the type of mitigating evidence that the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized is highly relevant to a jury’s decision whether to impose the death penalty. See, e.g., Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 535 , 123 S.Ct. 2527 , 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003). In fact, in this case it was the only mitigating evidence by which counsel would have had any realistic chance of persuading the jury to spare his client’s life.

Because Richard Samayoa’s trial counsel refused to investigate the circumstances of his client’s upbringing, the jury that sentenced him to death never learned that he was raised under unimaginably horrific conditions: that he was the victim of constant and severe physical and psychological abuse, that his family environment was rife with sexual abuse of children, and that he had drugs pushed upon him by abusive adult relatives starting at an extremely young age. Samayoa’s counsel had no strategic justification for failing to obtain such evidence and present it to a…

Glen Niemy, Bridgton, ME, for the petitioner-appellant.

Annie Featherman Fraser (argued), Deputy Attorney General, and Raymond M. DiGuiseppe, Deputy Attorney General, San Diego, CA, for respondent-appellee.

Before: ALEX KOZINSKI, Chief Judge, STEPHEN REINHARDT and BARRY G. SILVERMAN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge SILVERMAN; Dissent by Judge REINHARDT.

SILVERMAN, Circuit Judge:

It is undisputed that on December 18, 1985, appellant Richard Samayoa beat Nelia Silva to death with a wrench in the course of burglarizing her home. Samayoa also beat to death Nelia's two-year-old daughter, Katherine. The pathologist estimated that Nelia was struck in the head 24 times. The jury heard testimony that the faces of both mother and daughter were smashed in, their skulls crushed, and fragments of bone penetrated their brains. It is undisputed that Samayoa left Nelia and Katherine naked from the waist down—he said he did that to make the crime look like a rape—and then he stole jewelry from the Silva house that he gave away as gifts to members of his family. The mutilated bodies of both victims were found by Rolando Silva, Nelia's husband and Katherine's father. Photos of the decedents…