Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-09-04006/USCOURTS-ca7-09-04006-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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*

After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is

unnecessary.  Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record.  See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2)(C).

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted May 5, 2010*

Decided May 12, 2010

Before

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge

JOHN L. COFFEY, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 09‐4006

WILLIAM JAMES MERENESS,

           Petitioner‐Appellant,

v.

JIM SCHWOCHERT,

Respondent‐Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 09‐C‐00076

William E. Callahan, Jr.,

Magistrate Judge.

O R D E R

William Mereness, a Wisconsin inmate, was convicted of first‐degree intentional

homicide and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of release.  After the state courts

affirmed his conviction and denied his motion for post‐conviction relief, Mereness filed a

petition for a writ of habeas corpus.  See 28 U.S.C. § 2254.  A magistrate judge, presiding by

consent, denied the petition but granted a certificate of appealability to determine whether a

violation of Mereness’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation prejudiced him at trial.  We

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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conclude that the state courts reasonably applied Supreme Court precedent in concluding

that the Confrontation Clause violation was harmless, and therefore affirm the judgment.

Jennifer Mereness was bludgeoned to death at her Janesville, Wisconsin, home on

November 22, 2002.  Her estranged husband, William Mereness, became the prime suspect

and the evidence against him was vastly circumstantial.  Jennifer, a high school teacher, had

left school that Friday around 11:00 a.m. due to illness; construction workers in her

neighborhood testified that they saw a woman arrive at Jennifer’s house around 11:30 a.m.

and then heard screams a few minutes later.  Those workers then followed a man who fled

the house on foot but could not catch up to him.

When the police questioned Mereness, he attempted to explain his whereabouts on

November 22.  Mereness was a district manager for Wal‐Mart and did not keep regular

office hours.  He told the police officers that on Friday, November 22, he drove his teenage

son to school and returned home to prepare for a telephone conference scheduled for that

morning with his supervisor.  At the last minute, she cancelled the conference call, and thus,

he got an early start on a weekend trip to his cabin in Minocqua, Wisconsin.  He claimed to

have left Janesville around 10:00 a.m.  To support this claim, he produced a receipt for a

candy bar he purchased in Minocqua at 3:34 p.m. and asserted that it takes around 5 hours

to drive from Janesville to Minocqua.  

However, evidence presented at his trial refuted Mereness’s statements.  His boss

testified that she had cancelled their telephone conference days earlier and had been led to

believe that Mereness would be inspecting the Wal‐Mart in West Allis, Wisconsin, that day.

A police officer testified as to the time it took to drive from Mereness’s home to the Wal‐

Mart in Minocqua, where Mereness purchased the candy bar, and stated that it took him

only 31⁄2 hours.  Furthermore, the state used Mereness’s cell phone records to establish that

he was in Janesville in late morning on the day of the murder.  In addition, Mereness’s

brother, who had permission from Mereness to spend time alone with his son at the cabin

that weekend, testified that Mereness told him on Thursday night that he would be joining

them at the cabin on Friday.  Mereness also asked his brother to purchase groceries with

cash at a Minocqua grocery store between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. on the day of the murder and

to get a receipt, but then at noon, he told his brother that he did not need the groceries.

The state also presented evidence that shortly after the murder Mereness replaced a

jacket matching that worn by the man seen leaving Jennifer’s house.  Mereness had paid for

the new jacket with a personal check, but afterward he returned to the store and insisted on

getting the check back and paying with cash.  Additionally, an expert witness testified that

glass fragments recovered from Mereness’s car matched the glass in a broken basement

window of Jennifer’s house.

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But the most damning evidence presented at the trial was testimony concerning the

statements Mereness made to his parents.  A week after Jennifer’s death, Mereness left his

parents’ house in Appleton, Wisconsin, and attempted to commit suicide by driving his car

into a concrete wall.  An Appleton detective, Peter Helein, who later interviewed Mereness’s

mother testified that she had described Mereness as depressed and further that Mereness

had confided to her two days before the wreck that he feared going to prison for Jennifer’s

murder.  The detective continued that on the day of the wreck, Mereness’s parents found

him in a bathtub at their home with a roll of plastic wrap and a carving knife.  According to

the detective, Mereness had said he wanted to die, and when his mother asked if he killed

Jennifer, he replied, “Yes, I’m really sorry.”  Mereness’s mother had died before trial, so the

judge allowed the prosecution to introduce her hearsay statements through the detective.

Mereness sought to paint his mother as unreliable by introducing evidence that she had

fought a life‐long battle with mental illness that required constant medication and

intermittent hospitalization.

But Mereness’s mother was not alone in the bathroom when he confessed.  His father

was also present, and at trial he testified that his wife had asked Mereness, “Did you do it?”

and he replied, “Yeah, I did it.”  His father said that he then left the bathroom because he

hoped to insulate himself from the conversation so that he would be shielded from

testifying against his son.  After leaving the bathroom, he stated that the three of them

discussed options in the kitchen.  Mereness’s father testified that he shared with his son the

three paths he might choose from: confess to the police, go to trial, or kill himself.  It was

shortly after this discussion that Mereness drove his car into the concrete wall.

Before trial Mereness moved to exclude his mother’s statements on the grounds that

they were inadmissible hearsay and that their use would violate his Sixth Amendment right

to confrontation.  The trial court, relying on Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 65 (1980), and State

v. Weed, 666 N.W.2d 485, 494‐95 (Wis. 2003), concluded that the statements were admissible

under Wisconsin’s hearsay rules and sufficiently reliable to satisfy the Confrontation

Clause.  Mereness renewed his constitutional claim in a posttrial motion, see WIS. STAT.

§ 974.02, and by then the Supreme Court had decided Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 59

(2004), which holds that testimonial hearsay cannot be admitted at a criminal trial unless the

declarant is unavailable and the defendant had an opportunity to cross‐examine.  The trial

court agreed with Mereness that under Crawford the statements should not have been

admitted but nevertheless concluded that the error was harmless because the state

presented enough credible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to sustain the conviction.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals, after reviewing this ruling as well as Mereness’s direct

appeal, endorsed the trial judge’s analysis noting that the officer’s admitted testimony

merely duplicated the untainted evidence offered by Mereness’s father.  The Supreme Court

of Wisconsin declined review.

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In his § 2254 petition Mereness argued that the Crawford error was not harmless

because the jury’s knowledge that he confessed to his mother would necessarily have had a

substantial and injurious effect on the deliberations.  Mereness repeats that argument, but

our role, like that of the district court, is limited to ensuring that the state courts did not

unreasonably apply clearly established federal law in rejecting the Crawford claim.  See 28

U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); Ray v. Boatwright, 592 F.3d 793, 796 (7th Cir. 2010).  The parties agree

that the admission of the detective’s hearsay account of the exchange between Mereness and

his mother violated the Confrontation Clause, see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 59; United States v.

Turner, 591 F.3d 928, 932 (7th Cir. 2010), but confrontation errors are subject to harmless‐

error analysis, Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 680 (1986); United States v. Ghilarducci,

480 F.3d 542, 549 (7th Cir. 2007).  And when a state court has concluded that the

constitutional error was harmless, the first, and perhaps only, question in the § 2254

proceeding is whether the state court reasonably applied Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18,

24 (1967), in making that determination.  Mitchell v. Esparza, 540 U.S. 12, 18 (2003); Johnson v.

Acevedo, 572 F.3d 398, 404 (7th Cir. 2009).  If the state court reasonably applied the Chapman

standard, “then the federal case is over and no collateral relief issues.”  Johnson, 572 F.3d at

404.  

Here, the state appellate court adopted the trial judge’s analysis of Mereness’s

posttrial motion and reasoned that the Crawford error should be deemed harmless if it was

clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to the verdict.  The court,

citing State v. Norman, 664 N.W.2d 97, 108‐09 (Wis. 2003), listed relevant factors to consider

including the frequency of the error, whether the erroneously admitted evidence was

corroborated or duplicated by other untainted evidence, and the overall strength of the

state’s case.  The state court’s reliance on these factors is consistent with Chapman and Van

Arsdall, and although a state court need not cite the relevant Supreme Court cases to rule

consistently with those standards, see Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002); Johnson v. Pollard,

559 F.3d 746, 752 n.6 (7th Cir. 2009), here the state court acknowledged that authority by

citing state opinions that explicitly apply Chapman and Van Arsdale.  See Weed, 666 N.W.2d at

488; Norman, 664 N.W.2d at 108‐09.

The state court’s application of that precedent was likewise reasonable.  Even

without Mereness’s confession to his parents, the state marshaled significant evidence

pointing to Mereness as the perpetrator, including the cell phone records that put Mereness

in Janesville at the time of her death, glass fragments from the basement window that were

found in his car, his strange replacement of a jacket matching the killer’s, and his

discredited account of his whereabouts at the time of the murder and after.  Moreover, the

statements admitted from his mother were largely duplicated with the admission of his

father’s account of the same conversation.  That his father tried to avoid hearing that

statement, and then shortly after advised his son that he could confess, go to trial, or kill

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himself, makes it clear that Mereness’s admission that he “did it” was, as the state court

found, a confession to the murder.  We agree that although the detective’s account of his

mother’s statement was erroneously admitted, the state court’s conclusion that the error was

harmless was a reasonable application of Chapman and Van Arsdale.

AFFIRMED.

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