PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 18-6

SAMMIE LOUIS STOKES,

Petitioner – Appellant,

v.

BRYAN P. STIRLING, Director, South Carolina Department of Corrections; MICHAEL STEPHAN, Warden of Broad River Correctional Institution,

Respondents – Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Aiken. R. Bryan Harwell, Chief District Judge. (1:16-cv-00845-RBH)

Argued: May 6, 2021 Decided: August 19, 2021

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, HARRIS, and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Chief Judge Gregory wrote the opinion, in which Judge Harris joined. Judge Quattlebaum wrote a dissenting opinion.

ARGUED: Paul Alessio Mezzina, KING & SPALDING LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Michael Douglas Ross, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Diana L. Holt, DIANA L. HOLT, LLC, Columbia, South Carolina; Michele J. Brace, VIRGINIA CAPITAL REPRESENTATION RESOURCE CENTER, Charlottesville, Virginia; Ashley C. Parrish, Joshua C. Toll, Isra J. Bhatty, Edward A. Benoit, KING & SPALDING LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Alan Wilson, Attorney General, Donald J. Zelenka, Deputy Attorney General, Melody J. Brown, Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE USCA4 Appeal: 18-6 Doc: 79 Filed: 08/19/2021 Pg: 2 of 58

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees.

2 USCA4 Appeal: 18-6 Doc: 79 Filed: 08/19/2021 Pg: 3 of 58

GREGORY, Chief Judge:

Sammie Louis Stokes confessed to capital murder, putting mitigation of the death

penalty at the heart of his defense. His trial counsel prepared some personal mitigation

evidence but, at the last minute, withheld it. Instead, counsel presented a single witness at

sentencing: a retired prison warden who was unprepared and counterproductive. The jury

returned a death sentence without hearing a word from the defense about Stokes as an

individual. In postconviction proceedings, new counsel found more information about

Stokes’s traumatic upbringing, but failed to pursue a mitigation-based ineffective

assistance of counsel claim. We conclude that postconviction counsel were ineffective,

providing good cause for Stokes’s procedural default of such a claim. On the merits, we

find that trial counsel’s failure to adequately investigate and present personal evidence was

objectively unreasonable and prejudicial. We reverse the district court order dismissing

Stokes’s petition and remand for issuance of the writ unless the State grants resentencing.

I.

A.

Stokes’s childhood in Branchville, South Carolina was marked by extreme abuse

and neglect. His parents were serious alcoholics. Stokes initially lived with his father. He

met his mother, Pearl, for the first time when he was four years old. When he was five,

Stokes went to live with Pearl and met his sister Sara for the first time.

Pearl lived with a man, Richard, whom the kids regarded as a stepfather. As one

relative put it, the family lived in a “run-down wooden shack” without running water or

3 USCA4 Appeal: 18-6 Doc: 79