Leslie Wayne Yohey was convicted by a Texas jury of murdering his estranged wife, Terri Yohey, and her boyfriend, Craig Gooch, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Yohey entered his wife's apartment carrying a loaded nine-millimeter pistol and waited for her. When Terri and Gooch entered the bedroom, both were shot repeatedly. Yohey called 911, admitted to police that he had shot them, gave a written confession, and testified at trial that the confession was accurate. He also testified that he later gathered and repositioned shell casings and placed a .22-caliber pistol in Gooch's hand.
Before trial, Yohey's first appointed attorney sought substantial funding for expert witnesses, but the trial court initially denied the request under a Texas statutory cap. The court later replaced that lawyer after Yohey's pauper status changed, appointed Gary Hutton, and—eleven days before trial—appointed a psychiatric expert after the relevant Texas law was amended. The state appellate court affirmed the conviction, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused discretionary review.
Yohey then sought federal habeas relief. Although his initial petition identified four grounds and attached extensive state-court materials, he later submitted a lengthy advisory that the district court treated as presenting 45 issues. The magistrate judge concluded that state remedies had been exhausted, recommended denying relief, and the district court adopted that recommendation. The district court granted a certificate of probable cause, and Yohey appealed pro se.
Issue #1
Whether the Fifth Circuit would consider claims that Yohey incorporated by reference, raised for the first time on appeal, or first asserted in his reply brief.
Holding
No. The court considered only claims adequately argued in Yohey's opening appellate brief and preserved in the district court.
Reasoning
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28 requires an appellant to explain why relief is warranted and to cite the supporting authorities and record. Although pro se filings receive liberal construction, a pro se litigant still must brief an argument to preserve it. Yohey could not avoid that requirement by broadly incorporating prior objections and state-court pleadings, particularly where doing so would effectively exceed the briefing limits.
The court declined to review claims newly presented in Yohey's opening appellate brief, including claims concerning retroactive application of the amended expert-funding statute, access to the crime scene, ineffective assistance based on access to evidence, and suppression of particular EMS, 911, and family-held materials. Ordinarily, the Fifth Circuit does not decide issues not first presented to the district court.
The court also refused to consider arguments first raised in Yohey's reply brief, including an allegedly coerced confession and additional assertions of private suppression of evidence. A reply brief cannot be used to introduce new claims or revive claims omitted from the opening brief.
Issue #2
Whether alleged state-law evidentiary errors could support federal habeas relief when Yohey recast them on appeal as violations of fundamental fairness.
Holding
No. The evidentiary complaints had been presented to Texas courts only as state-law issues, not as federal constitutional claims, and therefore could not be converted into exhausted federal claims on habeas review.
Reasoning
Yohey challenged the prosecution's use of undisclosed rebuttal witnesses and the trial court's handling of his written statement to the psychiatric expert. Texas courts resolved those arguments under Texas evidentiary law, and the federal district court correctly treated them as state-law claims that ordinarily furnish no basis for federal habeas relief.
To satisfy the exhaustion requirement, a prisoner must fairly present the federal constitutional nature of a claim to the state courts. It is insufficient that the state courts had the underlying facts before them or that the prisoner made a similar state-law argument. Because Yohey did not present these claims in a federal constitutional framework in Texas court, his later assertion that they made the trial fundamentally unfair was unexhausted.
Issue #3
Whether the delayed appointment of a psychiatric expert violated Yohey's due-process rights under Ake v. Oklahoma.
Holding
No. The appointment eleven days before trial did not warrant habeas relief because Yohey failed to identify specific critical testimony or concrete prejudice caused by the timing.
Reasoning
Ake requires the State to provide psychiatric assistance to an indigent defendant who makes the required showing that sanity at the time of the offense will be a significant trial issue. Texas ultimately appointed a psychiatric expert for Yohey, so the central complaint was not a total denial of psychiatric assistance but the timing of the appointment.
Ake leaves substantial discretion to the states concerning implementation of that right and does not entitle an indigent defendant to a personally selected psychiatrist or to funds to hire one independently. Yohey made only vague assertions that the delay impaired his defense; he did not specify what critical evidence the expert could have developed or how the delayed appointment affected the result.
Yohey's more particular assertion on appeal—that the delay produced an inaccurate psychological evaluation at the time of the shootings—was not raised in the district court. The court therefore did not consider it.
Issue #4
Whether due process required Texas to provide ballistics and forensic experts for Yohey's defense.
Holding
No. Yohey did not show that the requested non-psychiatric expert assistance was sufficiently necessary or that its denial made his trial fundamentally unfair.
Reasoning
Non-psychiatric experts are not supplied automatically upon an indigent defendant's request. The defendant must show more than a possible benefit: the evidence must be critical to conviction, subject to meaningful expert disagreement, and reasonably likely to assist the defense.
Yohey relied primarily on his first attorney's speculative affidavit suggesting that more than one person might have fired weapons or that further testing might reveal useful information. But Yohey offered no evidence that the autopsy findings were inaccurate or genuinely disputed among experts. Speculation about what testing might show did not establish a reasonable probability that experts would assist the defense.
Given the substantial evidence of guilt, including Yohey's admissions, confession, and trial testimony, the court found no basis to conclude that the absence of forensic or ballistics experts rendered the trial fundamentally unfair.
Issue #5
Whether counsel was constitutionally ineffective because the court's refusal to fund experts allegedly forced counsel to decide whether to spend his own money, or because replacement counsel was inexperienced and substituted for Yohey's preferred attorney.
Holding
No. These allegations did not establish either deficient performance or prejudice under Strickland v. Washington.
Reasoning
Yohey characterized the expert-funding problem as an attorney conflict of interest, but the court held that it was not the sort of conflict that triggers special constitutional treatment. A recognized attorney-client conflict involves counsel's active representation of competing interests, such as multiple clients with adverse interests. Yohey's allegation instead asserted ordinary ineffective assistance and was governed by Strickland's deficient-performance and prejudice requirements.
The decision whether to hire experts generally falls within trial strategy, to which courts give strong deference. Yohey offered only speculation that counsel considered using personal funds, and he identified no non-speculative evidence that privately retained experts would have changed the outcome. Because he failed to demonstrate prejudice, his claim failed without any need to find deficient performance.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees effective assistance, not an indigent defendant's counsel of choice. Thus, Yohey had no constitutional entitlement to retain his original appointed lawyer. Nor does limited criminal-defense experience alone establish ineffective assistance; Yohey did not explain how replacement counsel's alleged inexperience caused objectively deficient representation or prejudiced the defense.
Issue #6
Whether the trial court's refusal to grant Yohey pretrial habeas relief remained a viable ground for federal habeas relief after his conviction.
Holding
No. The subsequent conviction mooted challenges to pretrial custody and pretrial habeas rulings.
Reasoning
Once Yohey was convicted, any asserted defect in the state court's refusal to grant pretrial habeas relief no longer provided a basis to attack his confinement. His custody rested on the judgment of conviction rather than on the earlier pretrial rulings.
Issue #7
Whether the indictment was constitutionally defective because it did not specify which gun caused each victim's death.
Holding
No. The indictment was adequate under Texas law, and federal habeas review could not revisit the Texas courts' jurisdictional determination.
Reasoning
A state indictment supports federal habeas relief only in the exceptional circumstance where it is so defective that the convicting court lacked jurisdiction. That question depends on state law, and federal courts generally do not reconsider it when the state's highest court has effectively upheld the indictment's sufficiency and the trial court's jurisdiction.
The Texas Court of Appeals held that the allegation that each death was caused by 'a gun' adequately notified Yohey of the accusations and permitted him to prepare his defense. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused discretionary review. Under Fifth Circuit precedent, that disposition foreclosed Yohey's federal habeas challenge to the indictment.
Issue #8
Whether the asserted errors cumulatively deprived Yohey of a fundamentally fair trial.
Holding
No. Yohey identified no preserved constitutional errors to aggregate.
Reasoning
Cumulative-error relief in a federal habeas case is available only when the individual errors are constitutional in dimension, are not procedurally barred, and collectively infect the trial so seriously that the conviction violates due process. A collection of unfavorable state-law rulings cannot satisfy that standard.
Yohey's state-law evidentiary and indictment arguments did not become federal constitutional errors merely because he invoked fundamental fairness. His remaining preserved constitutional claims lacked merit. With no qualifying errors, there was nothing for the court to cumulate.