UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ KARU GENE WHITE, │ Petitioner - Appellant, │ > No. 21-5958 │ v. │ │ LAURA PLAPPERT, Warden, │ Respondent - Appellee. │ ┘ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Lexington. No. 5:02-cv-00492—Karen K. Caldwell, District Judge.

Argued: June 27, 2024

Decided and Filed: March 14, 2025

Before: BATCHELDER, STRANCH, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.

_________________

COUNSEL ARGUED: Margaret O’Donnell, ATTORNEY AT LAW, Frankfort, Kentucky, for Appellant. Elizabeth Hedges, OFFICE OF THE KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL, Frankfort, Kentucky, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Margaret O’Donnell, ATTORNEY AT LAW, David M. Barron, KENTUCKY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ADVOCACY, Frankfort, Kentucky, for Appellant. Elizabeth Hedges, Bryan D. Morrow, OFFICE OF THE KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL, Frankfort, Kentucky, for Appellee.

THAPAR, J. (pp. 2–47), (app. 48–53), delivered the opinion of the court in which BATCHELDER, J., concurred. STRANCH, J. (pp. 54–86), delivered a separate dissenting opinion. No. 21-5958 White v. Plappert Page 2

_________________

OPINION _________________

THAPAR, Circuit Judge. In 1979, Karu Gene White used a crowbar to beat a blind seventy-five-year-old and two other seniors to death while robbing them. In the forty-five years since, White has offered various reasons why he shouldn’t be executed.

Here, he argues that Kentucky shouldn’t have sentenced him to death because his trial counsel failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence. Neither argument holds up. Thus, we affirm the district court’s denial of his habeas petition.

I.

A. Factual Background

After months of planning, White and two accomplices perpetrated a horrific home invasion. His target? A small, coal-heated home tucked away in the heart of Appalachia. On the first floor of that house, Charlie Gross, a seventy-five-year-old minister, ran a grocery store with his seventy-four-year-old wife Lula and her seventy-nine-year-old brother Sam, a local farmer. The Grosses ran the store to pay the healthcare expenses of their son, Marvin, who suffered from a mental health disorder that relegated him to a nursing home.

White, a twenty-year-old, was a lifelong friend of the Grosses. He was looking to pick up some extra cash and figured that the store was a perfect target. After all, he knew the Grosses were old and disabled, making it “easy to knock them out” or kill, if need be. R. 125-1, Pg. ID 5906. White also knew that they were saving money for their “dumb boy,” as he put it. Id. at Pg. ID 5907. And he knew that the Grosses—Great Depression survivors who didn’t trust banks—stored their money in bulk cash around the house. No. 21-5958 White v. Plappert Page 3

As White planned the operation, he recruited two teens to assist: his seventeen-year-old hal