Ineffective Counsel Squared
An ineffective counsel appeal can be lost when appellate lawyers replicate the trial lawyers' blunders.
In La Porte, Indiana, when you bring up the 2014 wrongful conviction of Jason Tibbs for Rayna Rison’s 1993 murder, which I write about in SUBMERGED, some people reply, “But didn’t he lose his appeals?” Prisoners get two shots at what the courts call post-conviction relief or post-conviction review. Usually, the best route is to show “ineffective assistance of counsel.” That should have worked for Jason because his lawyers were so inept in his defense. But his appellate lawyers replicated some of the same blunders as his trial attorneys, guaranteeing that the appellate state and federal courts would not reverse the guilty verdict.
There were many points where his defense was ineffective. Back in 1993, Jason had multiple alibi witnesses who helped clear him as a suspect. But in 2014, the prosecutor called them to the stand. Jason’s lawyers had yet to refresh their memories with what they said in police reports at the time of the crime. They honestly admitted they couldn’t remember what happened one night two decades ago, and during the closing argument, Jason’s attorney told the jury that his client’s alibi was “a mess.” There was another defense witness who was not properly prepared. He was supposed to present the jury with a time trial that would have invalidated the story of a state witness but forgot to bring one of his notes to the stand. The judge would not allow him to present it the next day.
Jason’s lawyers were most remiss in researching the background of the State’s star witnesses. Seeking a reduction in his murder sentence, Rickey Hammons touched off Jason’s investigation with an outlandish story. He claimed he saw Tibbs and his sister’s boyfriend, Eric Freeman, back his sister’s Buick into the family pole barn while he was smoking dope in the loft. He said the two opened the Buick’s trunk to reveal Rayna’s dead body. It didn’t take too much digging to discover the elaborate stories Hammons concocted during the investigation of the murder he committed, where he accused multiple people of serious crimes and then recanted those accusations. His own sister told police he was “a pathological liar.” None of this was presented in the appellate courts.
When police first told Freeman about Rickey’s story, he didn’t know what they were talking about. But five years later, he was financially vulnerable and unable to hire a lawyer. He opted to sign an immunity agreement in return for falsely confessing he helped Jason murder Rayna. However, in a 3.5-hour recorded interview with the police that was more indoctrination than interrogation, Freeman showed he did not know the most basic elements of the crime. What he did know contradicted the most fundamental part of Hammons's account, and the police browbeat him into accepting Rickey’s story.
Jason’s lawyers, who constantly battled with the prosecutor and judge throughout the trial, later admitted that they became flustered at a point when they should have entered a transcript of the interview as evidence. This oversight became the basis of Jason’s appeal. But his lawyers failed to convince the appeals courts why the 140-page transcript was so important. At the very beginning of the interview, Freeman told the police that the Buick with the body in the trunk was “broke down” at the time, so he couldn't have been driving it on the night of the murder. He also told them he had broken up with Rickey’s sister and left the Hammons household three months before, so he wouldn't have had access to the car even if it were working. In essence, these two revelations alone imploded the entire pole barn story. However, the appellate judges in state and federal courts never learned this vital information. Instead, when affirming the verdict, they cited the “overwhelming evidence” from the testimony of Hammons and Freeman.