and afternoon it please the court i'm prepared to answer any questions regarding all the arguments today but i tend to focus on the first one is the first argument we alleged we have made a truly persuasive demonstration of  attention through the state during post conviction perceives after the hearing and the judge made his decision but the four had gone up to appeal there were still some so the proceedings were stayed and this evidence consisted of a witness chad adams who said that evening and that it was mr moss very much even some user who actually committed this crime and not john stevenson this evidence was presented to mr adams deposition as well as the depositions of other individuals some of whom were able to confirm at least some of what mr adams said in his deposition he passed a polygraph that was presented to the the state courts and they did not they didn't have a hearing the trial court made no finding if he didn't weigh the evidence and when it went to the indiana supreme court they said well this could have been presented earlier although there was absolutely no evidence to that effect and in fact the evidence suggested otherwise and didn't review the merits of the claim they dealt with it mainly in a footnote i find that disturbing we raised the claim here and federal court in the district court and the district court certainly discussed the the the issue more thoroughly than the state courts had again and i have to disagree respectfully with the district court said that it was too confusing there was too much conflicting evidence for her to reach a decision she would not did not need to have an evidentiary hearing it was too complex i don't think the issue is conflicting and all the evidence is that complicated is completing all or complicated this was a very very long trial there were a lot of witnesses but there were killed it there were many reasons given multiple reasons given at trial to disbelieve this testimony but they didn't have anyone who would say otherwise chad adams came comes  he does not happen is and he was not the person like prime minister he was caught with a murder weapon he is someone who has no agenda has no reason to lie is not a friend of john stevenson this is someone who the jury very well could have believed it certainly at a minimum would have created a reasonable doubt in the context of this case you know mossberg if he actually didn't know mossberg or very well his cousin or that you get to the extent that he bought the car from him and he went over there with him so he didn't know i mean put it in the sense that he met him that night but he was a he believe assessment was he was a good friend with any of the people that were there terrified he thought he would be killed if he said anything and that is a theme that arises a lot in this case there were a lot of threats made in this case the best counsel was threatened twice in this case and had to notify the police about that there were many instances where other individuals that were threatened including the domes there were there was and what he said made sense which was you know mosque further told donald goodman supporting through that while he was a good man and see him covered in blood that he would kill him or his family if there was anything here that's a legitimate reason not to come forward this is a young man and he has a baby on the way and he was afraid and i'm not saying that's how we would want everyone to hack but it's certainly very plausible and explains why he didn't there's certainly no reason for him to come forward now with this information unless it's true in fact he doesn't actually come forward he is overheard talking about it and the police come to him and that's when he gives the information there's no indication of any agenda that he could have  have regarding this information that he's not making up things out of thin air he's not telling a totally different series of events he's not using a timeframe that's completely implausible or anything ups he's telling it he's saying things that are consistent w in the entire brief for your conclusion of the entire parade well there are four different claims here the first two were asking for a conviction to be referred and in the second two they are only pertain to the death sentence so if it's in i would like you to reverse this conviction on claim one or claim that they want to throw out the convictions or have a new trial or what acquitted or what i don't think that there is any claim that i raised in here that is sufficient for me to ok giving up on the convictions you just want to but your honor i am definitely not giving up on the convictions i do not think mr stevenson committed committed this crime i think there is compelling evidence that he did not commit this crime i also do not believe that he had a fair trial that he had that's usually what the orders say from i understood from my recollection how old is he now i believe he's around fifty fifty and the stand well regarding the last two issues and i'm going to talk about them together if that's all right because they we've argued that the prejudice mysie considered together the last two issues mr ste thought that was ok by the time of this trial there was no way a death sentence it's a foregone conclusion under those circumstances and again a supreme court said that the only thing that they were i had was they put up briefly a woman who was from the indiana state prison ever met john stevens and you said oh well they're war there are many people have committed multiple murders there's general population we are able to control them she said that very simply and in his argument which we reproduced in or are they panics of our brief which was very incoherent went off on a lot of tangents but it did cover that us guy who relies heavily on the district court's observation that there could have been evidence in mitigation that wouldn't open the door to other condom i rely on that i do believe that before we get there that strictly that this standard under strickland the supreme court has been crystal clear that a court that a no matter how good or bad this the strategy is and less counsel's done a thorough investigation they cannot we cannot get we don't give deference to that in this case counsel definitely did not do it thorough investigation he did not investigate the the prior crimes that he thought were so important that he wanted to use as an excuse to not do the rest of the investigation not do a thorough investigation background so i don't think well he raised the bar but route it is my decision that or my position that but there was a plausible alternative he could have and there was testimony about this from other very expert experience only lawyers you know it is possible to there are many cases where the prior convictions come in and counsel deals with that they're dealing with a much more serious crime they use the mitigation for that well what i was saying was the crime here is more serious than the prior convictions but yes there are cases where there are more serious crimes there are cases where there have been four victims or cases where little children have been murdered so yes there are more serious crime you it is absolutely relative and i don't mean any disrespect to the individuals or their families in this particular case just to be clear about that but what i was actually saying was the more serious crime in this case the homicide that he was on trial for it was far more serious than the prior convictions that they were afraid of letting it so he could have done that i'm not saying that with this court order you're in could hold that that would be the only thing to do i think he had he could have made a reasonable choice to go one way and say i'm going to go and put everything in and deal with these prior convictions or he could have done the opposite of the other and just put in the evidence that would not have opened the door but he was not prepared to make that decision it was logically impossible for him to make that decision because he had not done a complete investigation that is my argument on the part of this problem and i believe that between the jury  you know the only argument he did may was you know trying to use the leds that stevenson could be managed in prison and would be not be a future danger but what the jury was seeing throughout the trial was a someone who was trying to stun belt which as the indiana supreme compassion mitigating factors that jurors have considered and have used to decide not some send someone to death in other cases this kind of evidence was available for him to in either  scenario i'm going to go back to issue two claim two regarding the jurors in this case the germans conduct in this case in this case we had the jury foreman who was a journalist who prepared a four hundred thirty page notebook every night he would go home and type it on his computer is a very extensive he had a reason for wanting to stay on this jury failing to disclose that he had a relationship someone that he knew was a member of the victim's family there's no question i don't think in this record that that would have had him struck because there were a jurors with far more tenuous relationship with members of the w th for example the lead investigating officer nephew was dating one verse nice they didn't even know about it and there is no evidence a jerk about it but that person was  don't think there's any question that we've met that standard the other issue because it wasn't just one was the jurors were discussing during this trial prior her and it's the prior and she to get a misconduct the various conduct the council was so afraid of coming in and it was definitely an admissible it's inadmissible because it's prejudicial and on that in that instance the there were jurors overhearing the discussion going on the trial court had been very clear they taken months to select this jury they had given he had given a very clear water which the jurors had to sign each juror had to sign it the understood the instructions and the understood they weren't supposed to do th obviously this is evidence that as unwise heart mr stevenson had no opportunity to confront and i can see no clear distinction between there and in this case i see no material distinction court there in here did not apply the appropriate standard and we would ask for that in that case in that instance for there to be his conviction to be reversed or to remain and as the court did in wise are to the state court for a hearing on that she's been examined pretty carefully by several courts and the issues are pretty clear what would you say this is the strongest argument you have perhaps well in this in the penalty phase the or excuse me in the guilt and innocence phase the juror if the jurors are at least not supposed to be considering the character of the offender they're supposed to be considering just simply the facts and the fact prove beyond a reasonable doubt to commit the penalty phase it's all about the character of the offender and having seen someone unusually which is not the norm being tried and in a stun belt which as the  be perceived is even worse than shackles because it seems like he's someone who cannot be controlled and even a court or someone who's in the custody of the sheriff and cannot be controlled i think is very prejudicial at that stage so even if it were not right as this court held it's not was not prejudicial to guilt they certainly could also certainly be much more prejudicial at the penalty phase of the trial it also undermined the only argument counsel made the only coherent argument counsel made on his behalf which was that he wouldn't be future danger i also think that having a trial or having a someone where you have evidence that is this compelling suggesting that not suggesting stating clearly that he didn't do it should at least have a court be willing to have a hearing and weigh the evidence and that has not happened by anyone in this case i also think it should be taken very seriously when jurors are not impartial clearly not impartial and clearly not following their instructions so i would urge the court to consider vacating his conviction that is what i to answer your earlier question and that is what i think would serve justice in this case court room strangle people whatever you do when you go crazy in a court i believe it had to do primarily with the nature and the circumstances of the crime and the well the nature and circumstance the crime have to do with knives or guns which would not be the concern of the court yes but there are also threats to well one of those i think that he would go berserk is there some basis in his background for thinking that he's violent in the sense of not requiring at dawn or a knife to go around attacking people or what well part of the facts were that mr stevenson had threatened some of the witnesses so i think there between courtroom security in the trial court and the prosecutor i don't but i don't understand i don't understand why it would be the interest of the prosecutor maybe would be that's what you're saying why is it would be the interest of the prosecutor i don't think your baby realistic at all i don't think jers if they're sitting in the jury box have not been under the pressure of any particular different defendant and facing a capital trial so it may be something that a jury would not find the defendant to be guilty mainly because he he had an outburst in the courtroom you know what you're saying they wouldn't fire guilty because he had to be to be biased based solely on the fact that he had an didn't have any problem with for him but if he defended his benefice to the ability to whatever is available to attack people i thought he should be if security was a concern on the the guilt phase this is a very long trial it was a very long trial on i suspect when the longest trials in vienna capital history and we have a case where arguably one could question the decision of the fans cultural army approach to mitigation so what gives me concern is if we have less than stellar performance on mitigation at the penalty phase and we have they started out with initial continuing to underscore at least in the eyes of some jurors perception of dangerousness which doesn't seem to have played out during the course of our long trial do you think at that phase that there might be sort of an actual prejudice attendant the decision to give the ultimate penalty because we have this stand both nation together with what i consider some concern on the medication the short answer your honor's you know specifically regarding the stand out here for main i don't think there's any indication that they not only should meet with reporters is every criminal defendant in this court required to have a stand though that information i would need a frame of reference but no no not any longer your honor because the indiana supreme court ruled that i'm talking about the period of this trial ok the during the period of this trial was my from the in the i want to be clear though in the post conviction here and there was testimony from some of the courtroom person now about the use of the stand up and says my recollection based on their testimony that this was in fact a new no your honor it's currently stay where you want to execute a fifty year old or because he committed triple murder and he was found by a jury of recommended the death penalty and that was ordered by the trial because the ones that are executed have gone through the rigors of the appellate system and the trial has been deemed reliable and does not has not been in violation of the constitution now you know but wait a second the ones who are executed are people who have to live with i sorry your honor i misunderstood your question i thought you were comparing that to other capital defendants that don't are not ultimately executed and one reason for under that hypothetical it would be the sentence your honor would be what it would be the sentence the difference between the two my question is why does one person get life from the other another person is actually here where they're both murder and you have this adam's testimony might clear that this is an open and shut case i disagree your honor that there is ambiguity as to whether stevenson was the one who committed the murder if there's one salient point that i could point out regarding the standout is that the jury rejected two out of the three aggravators that the state proposed and so if there was any one point that showed that the jury was not biased by the use of the stand valves that the jury conscientiously looked through the evidence and found simply that he committed multiple murders intentionally committed not to my brother multiple murders and so that shows conclusively that the jury was not however you need in this case the reason john stephenson was sentenced to death is because his lawyer didn't do what he needed to protect you have to speak out and i'm sorry in this case the reason the john stevenson was sentenced to die when other rest of the trial what are the would you say the two or three strategic errors that you feel that the counsel that you feel did not represent the stevenson adequately steven the guilt phase of the trying to kill phrase we have no claims other than the claim that had already been rejected which is that the claim regarding the stand up there were a handful very few claims race that conviction we did not even raise the doubt several court actually there doesn't seem to be a very strong argument for in a cosi a counsel at the guilt phase no there's no argument i absolutely i see i think i think when you make the claim about counsel i would think you would to an attic investigation there are two different lawyers by the way they were below i understand that there were two lawyers i'm sorry they were two different lawyers where they experience for miss the trial lawyer excuse me th was had been a prosecutor and work ownie for since the late seventy's and he had no experience on death penalty cases which is why he left the mitigation phase to the other attorney and the other attorney had tried her i think that there as i said in the beginning when we when i started to talk about this there are not very many cases that you're going to see certainly not at this late a time frame where counsel has not put up any evidence on behalf of this client there were obviously as even the just occurred notes there are evidence that could be presented including evidence of sexual abuse evidence of a alcohol drug problem again very young in life something that there was a lot of evidence that could have provided a context for that and understood how that affected his behavior i think that this was very strong i think that combined with the fact that you have a that they did not object to the stand that they did that they allowed their client to be tried before the jury in a stunned when his dangerousness would certainly be an issue at least at the penalty phase become a combination of those i would also point out that our argument regarding the j