David Martinez Ramirez was sentenced to death in 1994 for the brutal murders of his girlfriend, Mary Ann Gortarez, and her 15-year-old daughter, Candie, whom he sexually assaulted before stabbing both victims multiple times with kitchen knives, a box cutter, and scissors in their Arizona apartment. The case returned to the Ninth Circuit on remand from the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Shinn v. Ramirez, which barred federal habeas courts from considering evidence beyond the state court record based on ineffective postconviction counsel.
Thomas found that Ramirez's trial counsel was constitutionally deficient for failing to provide crucial background information to the mental health expert examining Ramirez and for conducting an inadequate investigation into his troubled childhood. "A lawyer who knows of but does not inform his expert witnesses about essential pieces of information going to the heart of the case for mitigation does not function as 'counsel' under the Sixth Amendment," Thomas wrote, citing established Ninth Circuit precedent. The court noted that counsel only provided the expert with Ramirez's criminal history, withholding his low IQ scores of 70 and 77 and failing to interview family members who could have testified about severe childhood trauma.
The panel delivered its harshest criticism for counsel's failure to uncover mitigating evidence that painted a dramatically different picture of Ramirez's background than what emerged at sentencing. "Sentencing counsel's choice of witnesses is particularly troubling," Thomas wrote, noting that all three family witnesses "were children themselves during the events in question, compromising their ability to remember and process Ramirez's disturbing childhood." The opinion detailed how counsel failed to contact six other family members who later signed declarations saying they would have testified about Ramirez's exposure to pesticides as a migrant farm worker, his mother's alcoholism during pregnancy, and severe neglect that included being fed beer as an infant.
The case arose from Ramirez's 1995 petition for postconviction relief, which did not raise his ineffective assistance claim. The State conceded that the attorney who assisted Ramirez in that first petition was constitutionally ineffective. When Ramirez filed a second petition in 2005 raising the ineffective assistance claim with new counsel, the state court denied it as untimely. However, the court did conduct an eight-day evidentiary hearing on Ramirez's intellectual disability claim under Atkins v. Virginia, developing a substantial record that became central to the federal habeas proceedings. U.S. District Judge James A. Teilborg initially denied habeas relief, which the Ninth Circuit reversed in 2019 before the Supreme Court intervened.
Despite finding deficient performance, the panel rejected Ramirez's arguments that the errors prejudiced his defense, applying the Supreme Court's recent decision in Thornell v. Jones and the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Lee v. Thornell. Thomas explained that the new evidence of intellectual disability and childhood trauma, while compelling, would not have substantially altered the sentencing outcome because it merely provided different explanations for diminished capacity that the sentencing judge had already recognized. "Ramirez's new diagnostic evidence would have offered a different explanation for something the sentencing judge already knew: that at the time of the crime Ramirez had diminished capacity to control his conduct," the court wrote.
The opinion emphasized that under Arizona law, mitigation evidence carries diminished weight when not causally connected to the criminal conduct. Thomas noted that while Ramirez's experts identified frontal lobe brain dysfunction affecting judgment and impulse control, "the expert did not directly connect this lack of judgment and impulse control to Ramirez's crime." The court distinguished cases where federal courts had found prejudice, explaining that those involved either less aggravating evidence or stronger causal connections between mental impairment and the crimes.
Judge Marsha Berzon dissented in part, arguing that the panel should grant a certificate of appealability on Ramirez's Atkins claim challenging his intellectual disability determination and remand for further proceedings. Berzon maintained her position from the 2019 decision that "Ramirez is entitled to a certificate of appealability on his Atkins claim and that the district court abused its discretion in holding that his Atkins claim does not relate back to his timely filed habeas petition." The majority declined to address four uncertified issues, including whether various exceptions to procedural default applied to Ramirez's claims.