Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-18-01867/USCOURTS-ca3-18-01867-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Administrator New Jersey State Prison
Appellee
Attorney General New Jersey
Appellee
Omar Saunders
Appellant

Document Text:

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

____________

No. 18-1867

____________

OMAR SAUNDERS,

Appellant

v.

ADMINISTRATOR NEW JERSEY STATE PRISON; 

ATTORNEY GENERAL NEW JERSEY

____________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of New Jersey

(D.C. No. 1-15-cv-02683)

District Judge: Honorable Jerome B. Simandle

____________

Submitted under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

March 3, 2020

Before: SMITH, Chief Judge, HARDIMAN, and KRAUSE, Circuit Judges.

(Filed: March 4, 2020)

____________

OPINION*

____________

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.

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HARDIMAN, Circuit Judge.

Omar Saunders appeals a District Court order denying his petition for a writ of 

habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He claims his trial counsel was ineffective for 

failing to interview and call two witnesses. Because the state courts that first rejected 

Saunders’s claim did not apply federal law unreasonably, we will affirm.

I

The New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, determined the following 

facts, see State v. Saunders, 2008 WL 538970, at *1–*4 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2008)

(per curiam).

1

On May 31, 2002, four men—Omar Saunders, Donnell Jakes, Jose Alvarez, and 

Angelo Lopez—rode in Alvarez’s white car from Camden to a club in Philadelphia. At 

the club, Jakes suggested Saunders could not hold his liquor, and the two argued. After 

leaving, they argued about who should drive. Saunders drove and dropped Lopez off.

Saunders then stopped near the intersection of Pierce and North 26th Streets. He exited

the car and walked to a nearby corner, while Alvarez and Jakes walked to a grassy area to 

urinate. Alvarez saw Saunders holding a bottle of Corona beer. A few minutes later, 

Saunders ran toward Alvarez and gave him the car keys.

1 The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) requires us 

to presume these facts are correct because Saunders has not attempted to rebut them by 

clear and convincing evidence. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).

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Saunders continued running toward Jakes, hugged him, and then began walking 

back toward Alvarez. Suddenly, Saunders turned around, removed a gun from his pocket, 

and shot Jakes twice in the head at point-blank range. Jakes fell to his knees, and 

Saunders fired one more shot. The shooting occurred somewhere between 3:00 and 3:30 

a.m. Saunders ran home, while Alvarez got into his car and circled the area for twenty to 

thirty minutes to see if Jakes was getting help. Alvarez later said he avoided the police 

because he was on parole. An investigator found a shell casing near Jakes’s body and a 

Corona beer bottle across the street. No murder weapon was found.

Later that day, Saunders threatened Alvarez not to talk to anyone about the 

homicide. But Alvarez soon reported the homicide to the prosecutor’s office and agreed 

to record a phone conversation with Saunders. In that conversation, Alvarez accused 

Saunders of “pop[ping] that boy,” but Saunders denied it. Saunders, 2008 WL 538970, at 

*2. Later, Alvarez said, “You wild out on the kid you know what I mean?” Id. Saunders 

replied, “True [indeed] now listen.” Id. Finally, Alvarez asked Saunders whether he 

disposed of the gun, to which Saunders replied, “Hell yeah!” Id. Throughout the 

conversation, Saunders suggested that he and Alvarez meet in person and that they 

coordinate their stories.

When investigators talked to Saunders several months later, he blurted out, “I 

don’t own a gun now and I’ve never owned a gun.” Id. at *4. He continued, “Donnell and 

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me . . . had several arguments and we made peace.” Id. Saunders claimed he left Camden 

because Jakes’s family had “kicked [his] door in.” Id.

II

At Saunders’s trial for first-degree murder and related offenses, Alvarez testified

consistent with the facts just described. Lopez testified that when Saunders and Jakes 

were arguing, Saunders said to Jakes, “I’m letting you live right now. I’ll kill you.” Id. at 

*3. Lopez also said Saunders refused to make peace with Jakes. The State’s other 

witnesses included three people who lived near the scene of the shooting. David 

Monserrate testified that at about 3:00 a.m., he heard four gunshots, saw Jakes on the 

ground, and saw a man matching Saunders’s description running away. Paul Rodriguez 

heard three gunshots at about 3:30 a.m. and saw a person drive away in a white car. And 

Aida Rodriguez saw the car pass the crime scene three times with its headlights off.

In his defense, Saunders sought to establish an alibi. His father Alphonso Harris

testified that, on the morning of the homicide, Saunders came home around 3:00 a.m. and

ate a snack. Because Saunders was intoxicated, Harris helped Saunders to bed. Harris 

also testified that Saunders maintained his innocence in private. But Harris denied that 

anyone from Jakes’s family had kicked his door in or otherwise threatened him. Saunders 

also suggested that Alvarez killed Jakes. For example, Saunders’s counsel asked Alvarez 

whether he had fought with Jakes before the homicide, but Alvarez said no.

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The jury found Saunders guilty, and the court sentenced him to thirty-five years’ 

imprisonment, with an 85 percent parole disqualifier. The Appellate Division affirmed, 

see id. at *17, and the New Jersey Supreme Court denied certification, see State v. 

Saunders, 957 A.2d 1170 (N.J. 2008) (table).

Saunders sought post-conviction relief (PCR) in state court. He claimed his trial 

counsel was ineffective for failing to interview and call his relatives Malcolm Rease and 

Stephen Chalk, who would have testified that Alvarez tried to fight Jakes shortly before 

the murder.

The PCR court held an evidentiary hearing. Saunders testified that he asked his 

counsel to speak with Rease and Chalk about the fight between Alvarez and Jakes, but his 

counsel did not do so because Saunders could not pay his full retainer.

Saunders’s counsel testified that he generally hires an investigator to speak with 

witnesses to avoid becoming a witness in his own cases. Still, he spoke with Arthur 

Rease (Malcolm’s brother), Harris, and Harris’s girlfriend, thinking their testimony 

would help establish Saunders’s alibi. He could not recall whether Saunders asked that he 

speak with Malcolm Rease or Chalk. But he admitted that, if Saunders did ask, he did not 

interview them “because primarily Mr. Saunders didn’t have the ability to pay for an 

investigator.” App. 94. He also doubted the Public Defender’s Office would have helped 

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Saunders to pay. In any event, he thought the fight between Alvarez and Jakes was 

irrelevant to Saunders’s alibi defense.

The PCR court denied Saunders’s petition. Applying Strickland v. Washington, 

466 U.S. 668 (1984), it held Saunders’s counsel performed adequately because he “made 

strategic judgments . . . given [his] limited funds” and decided testimony about the fight 

was not worth presenting. Supp. App. 47. The court also held that Saunders could not 

show prejudice. It credited counsel’s testimony that “much of the information that Rease 

and Chalk could provide was merely ‘street chatter.’” Supp. App. 48. It also noted that 

neither witness was available for cross-examination at the evidentiary hearing or claimed 

to know who murdered Jakes. Finally, it characterized the evidence of Saunders’s guilt as 

“overwhelming.” App. 51 n.3.

The Appellate Division affirmed the denial of Saunders’s petition “substantially 

for the reasons set forth by [the PCR court].” Saunders, 2014 WL 1686841 at *2 (N.J. 

Super. Ct. App. Div. 2014). The New Jersey Supreme Court denied certification. State v. 

Saunders, 104 A.3d 1077 (N.J. 2015) (table).

Saunders petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the 

United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Saunders v. D’Illio, 2018 WL 

1251629 (D.N.J. 2018). The District Court denied his petition, finding it “clear that the 

PCR court reasonably applied federal law.” See id. at *14.

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We granted Saunders a certificate of appealability to review his ineffectiveness 

claim as it relates to Malcolm Rease and Stephen Chalk.

III2

Under AEDPA’s deferential standard of review, we cannot grant Saunders’s

petition unless the state court decision was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable 

application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of 

the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Put differently, a state prisoner must show that 

the state court’s ruling was “so lacking in justification that there was an error well 

understood.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 103 (2011). 

Our review of the record leads us to conclude that the PCR court did not apply 

Strickland unreasonably when it held that Saunders could not show prejudice. A 

petitioner must show a reasonable probability of a different result but for counsel’s 

unprofessional errors. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. The court concluded that even if 

the jury had heard from Rease and Chalk, the result of Saunders’s trial probably would 

not have changed. Its conclusion was not “lacking in justification.” Harrington, 562 U.S. 

at 103. It explained that neither Rease nor Chalk could contradict Alvarez’s eyewitness 

testimony. It also characterized the evidence of Saunders’s guilt as “overwhelming.” In 

2 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. §§ 3231 and 2254(a). We 

have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 2253(a).

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particular, the recorded phone call with Alvarez, Saunders’s statements to police, Lopez’s 

testimony, the three eyewitness accounts, and Saunders’s flight from Camden all 

inculpated Saunders. So the state court’s finding of no Strickland prejudice was not 

unreasonable.

* * *

For the reasons stated, we will affirm the District Court’s order denying 

Saunders’s petition.

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