United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued July 11, 2006

Decided July 24, 2006

Before

Hon. WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

Hon. RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

Hon. MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

No. 05-3326

WALTER BLOUNT,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

DEIRDRE BATTAGLIA,

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Northern District of

Illinois, Eastern Division

No. 04 C 4007

Matthew F. Kennelly,

Judge

O R D E R

Illinois prisoner Walter Blount is serving a 65-year sentence for his role in a

gang-related drive-by shooting. After exhausting his state-court remedies, he

petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied

the petition but granted a certificate of appealability on the issue of whether Blount

received ineffective assistance of counsel. Blount contends that he was prejudiced

by his attorney’s failure to request jury instructions about (1) testimony by an

accomplice-witness, and (2) a witness’s prior inconsistent statements. Because the

Appellate Court of Illinois reasonably concluded that Blount was not prejudiced by

his lawyer’s performance, we affirm the district court’s judgment. 

UNPUBLISHED ORDER

Not to be cited per Circuit Rule 53
No. 05-3326 Page 2

I.

On July 9, 1997, 71-year-old Mary Harris was attempting to disperse a crowd

of young people who had gathered outside her home at 1608 South 19th Street in

Maywood, Illinois. Unfortunately, the house was located within the territory of the

Black P-Stones, a street gang, and earlier in the day members of that gang had

fired shots at a member of the Four Corner Hustlers, a rival gang. As Harris was

attending to her property, a Chevrolet Citation pulled slowly into a nearby

intersection. The front-seat passenger stuck a gun out the window and fired

between four and six shots into the crowd. One bullet struck and killed Harris, and

another critically injured an 18-year-old in the group. The car sped away.

Walter Blount was later fingered as the driver of the car. He was tried in the

Circuit Court of Cook County on charges of murder, attempted murder, and

aggravated battery with a firearm under a theory of accomplice liability. In Illinois,

a person is guilty of a crime committed by another if, before or during the crime,

and with the intent to promote or facilitate the crime, he “solicits, aids, abets,

agrees or attempts to aid [another person] in the planning or commission of the

offense.” 720 ILCS 5/5-2(c). 

The chief witness against Blount at trial was Brian Holmes. Holmes, a fellow

member of the Four Corner Hustlers, admitted that he was a passenger in the

backseat of the car during the shooting. He gave a statement to police at the time

of his arrest. After he was charged with first degree murder, he agreed to testify

against both Blount and Marcus Blackwell, the shooter, in exchange for a reduced

sentence. He later pleaded guilty to aggravated battery with a firearm and was

sentenced to six years in prison. 

Holmes testified that on the day of the shooting, he, Blount, Blackwell, and

KeShawn Huston had been riding around Chicago all day before returning to

Maywood. At around 9:30 p.m., they ran into fellow gang member Brian Moore,

who told them that some Black P-Stones had shot at him earlier that day. Blount,

Blackwell, Holmes, and Huston drove to pick up a .380 semiautomatic handgun

that was stashed in some bushes, and proceeded into the rival gang’s territory, with

Blount driving and Blackwell in the front passenger seat. According to Holmes,

Blount drove through the intersection of 19th and Van Buren Streets three or four

times before remarking “I think that’s them,” in reference to the crowd of people

outside Mary Harris’s home. Blount then drove through the intersection once

again, slowly, and Blackwell fired the shots out the window. 

Three other eyewitnesses testified against Blount. Kecia Williams, Nayania

Poole, and Antoinette Hughes had been standing in front of Harris’s house before

the shooting. At around 11:15, when Harris asked the group to leave, the girls
No. 05-3326 Page 3

began walking away from the house. Soon after, they saw a burgundy Chevrolet

Citation heading north on 11th Avenue at a slow speed. Hughes asked Blount for a

ride home; he smiled at her but kept on driving. 

Finally, Maywood police officer John Mazariegos testified that he responded

to a report of shots fired at about 11:20 p.m. The report identified the suspects as

three black males in a red Chevrolet hatchback. Officer Mazariegos observed the

car the next morning and began pursuit. When the car was about one block in front

of him, and still moving, three occupants jumped out and fled. Though the officer

did not apprehend the men at the time, Blackwell, Blount, and Holmes were later 

arrested. At a lineup, witnesses Willams, Poole, and Hughes all identified Blount

as the driver of the car on the night of the shooting, and Williams and Hughes

identified Holmes as a back-seat passenger. 

The jury found Blount guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to a 45-year

term of imprisonment for murder and a consecutive 20-year term for attempted

murder and battery. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed. Blount then filed a

petition for postconviction relief, arguing in relevant part that his trial counsel was

ineffective for failing to request two jury instructions relating to Holmes’s

testimony. The first admonishes jurors that testimony of an accomplice-witness is

“subject to suspicion and should be considered by you with caution.” See Ill. Pattern

Jury Instr. Crim. 3.17. The second advises that a witness’s believability may be

challenged with evidence that on a prior occasion he made statements inconsistent

with his trial testimony and instructs that such evidence “may be considered by you

only for the limited purpose of deciding the weight to be given the testimony you

heard from the witness in this courtroom.” See Ill. Pattern Jury Instr. Crim. 3.11. 

Blount cited as major inconsistencies several facts from Holmes’s trial testimony he

had not mentioned in earlier statements to police. 

The trial court summarily denied Blount’s petition. The state appellate court

affirmed, concluding that Blount could not establish prejudice as a result of his

attorney’s failure to request either jury instruction. With respect to the first

argument, the court reasoned that the jury had been instructed to weigh each

witness’s credibility and had been made aware of Holmes’s plea deal through crossexamination. Moreover, “an overwhelming amount of evidence established that

defendant was the driver when the shooting occurred.” As to the second argument,

the court reasoned that the inconsistencies Holmes cited did not go to a “material

matter” as required to instruct the jury on the issue of prior inconsistent statements

by a witness. The Supreme Court of Illinois denied Blount’s application for leave to

appeal. 

Blount then filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, raising the same

ineffective-assistance claim. The district court first determined that, whether or
No. 05-3326 Page 4

not the evidence of Blount’s guilt was “overwhelming,” the state appellate court did

not unreasonably apply federal law in concluding that Blount was not prejudiced by

the lack of a jury instruction on accomplice-witness testimony given the sum of the

evidence and the other jury instructions. Likewise the district court held that

Blount was not prejudiced by counsel’s failure to request an instruction on prior

inconsistent statements, concluding that “[f]our of the alleged omissions . . . were, at

most, relatively insignificant details” and the fifth was not an inconsistency at all. 

The court denied Blount’s petition but granted a certificate of appealability.

II.

On appeal Blount renews his argument that his trial attorney was

ineffective, contending that if his lawyer had ensured the inclusion of the two

instructions in the charge to the jury, Holmes’s testimony would have been

undermined and he would not have been convicted. 

The district court’s decision to deny the habeas corpus petition is subject to

de novo review. See Barrow v. Uchtman, 398 F.3d 597, 602 (7th Cir. 2005). A state

prisoner seeking habeas corpus relief must establish that the criminal proceedings

in his case resulted in a decision that was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable

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

of the United States,” or “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in

light of the evidence presented in the State court proceedings.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d);

Charlton v. Davis, 439 F.3d 369, 374 (7th Cir. 2006). This court looks to the

decision of the last state court to rule on the merits of the petitioner’s claim: here,

the state appellate court’s decision affirming the denial of postconviction relief. See

Charlton, 439 F.3d at 374. 

Blount’s ineffective-assistance claim is governed by the principles established

in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). He must show that counsel’s

performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and that the

substandard performance prejudiced him—that is, that but for counsel’s errors

there is a reasonable probability that the result of the trial would have been

different. See id. at 687-88, 694. We do not apply the principles of Strickland

directly, but instead we analyze whether the state courts reasonably applied federal

law in concluding that Blount’s counsel was not ineffective. See Conner v. McBride,

375 F.3d 643, 657 (7th Cir. 2004). Our review is “quite deferential,”and we will not

disturb the state court’s decision as long as it is objectively reasonable, even if it is

substantively incorrect. See Barrow, 398 F.3d at 603. 

Blount devotes a significant portion of his brief to arguing that counsel’s

performance was deficient, despite the Illinois appellate court’s focus on the lack of

prejudice. He seems to suggest that, because he was entitled to the instructions
No. 05-3326 Page 5

under “controlling State law,” he need not show prejudice. Although the Illinois

courts have expressed doubt that valid strategic reasons exist for failing to request

the accomplice-witness instruction, see People v. Davis, 819 N.E.2d 1195, 1200 (Ill.

App. 2004), that failure does not amount to per se ineffectiveness as Blount

suggests. A defendant must still show that counsel’s decision not to request the

instruction prejudiced him. See id at 1201. 

To the extent that Blount addresses the question of prejudice with respect to

the accomplice-witness instruction, he argues from the faulty premise that the jury

could not have considered Holmes’s testimony at all if counsel had tendered the

proper jury instruction. For example, he labels Holmes the “sole, real accusatory

witness against defendant” and states that “[w]ithout [Holmes’s] testimony,

defendant is merely a person driving a car when a passenger shot without any

evidence defendant is accountable.” But what the jury would have done “without”

Holmes’s testimony is irrelevant. The admissibility of Holmes’s statements is not at

issue; the jury instruction addressed only how that testimony was to be weighed. 

Regarding the accomplice-witness instruction, the Illinois appellate court

concluded that Blount suffered no prejudice because there was considerable

evidence against him, his trial was fair, the jury knew of Holmes’s plea agreement

with the state, and, the court emphasized, another instruction admonished the jury

to weigh Holmes’s credibility. Pattern Instruction 1.02 advises the jurors that they

are the sole “judges of the believability of the witnesses” and instructs them to

consider, when evaluating a witness’s credibility, “any interest, bias, or prejudice he

may have.” Jury instructions are viewed in their entirety. See Charlton v. Davis,

439 F.3d 369, 375 (7th Cir. 2006) (explaining that no prejudice resulted from

counsel’s decision not to request an instruction the substance of which “was covered

by other instructions”); see Conner, 375 F.3d at 667. Most importantly, the jury

knew that Holmes had received a substantial benefit in exchange for testifying

against Blount; that fact was drawn out on cross examination and repeated during

closing argument. We will not disturb the Illinois appellate court’s reasonable

conclusion that counsel’s failure to request the accomplice-witness instruction did

not sway the outcome of the trial. 

Blount also argues he was prejudiced by counsel’s failure to tender IPI 3.11,

regarding Holmes’s prior inconsistent statements. He asserts that Holmes made

five key statements at trial that Holmes had not made previously: that Blount and

the others had driven around for nine hours on the day of the shooting; that

Blackwell retrieved the gun from a bush in an alley; that Brian Moore was the

reason for the shooting and was in the car when it happened; that Blount stated “I

think that’s them” before the shooting; and that KeShawn Huston was a passenger

in the car. 
No. 05-3326 Page 6

As a preliminary matter, it should be noted that Holmes did not testify that

Brian Moore was one of the four men in the car during the shooting. Moreover, the

Illinois appellate court noted that on the day of his arrest, though not in his initial

statement to police, Holmes told the assistant state’s attorney that Blount had

stated “I think that’s them,” so there was no inconsistency. The court ultimately

concluded that Blount was not prejudiced because counsel lacked a solid basis on

which to request the jury instruction: although it is warranted by a witness’s prior

omissions as well as affirmative statements, it is required only if the inconsistency

goes to “a material matter.” E.g., People v. Eggert, 754 N.E.2d 474, 477 (Ill. App.

2001). The court deemed the inconsistent statements Blount identified as

peripheral, not material. 

The Illinois appellate court reasonably applied federal law in concluding that

Blount was not prejudiced. The instruction would not have been given if requested. 

Moreover, it is difficult to see how the instruction would have helped Blount had it

been given. The instruction restricts the jurors’ use of evidence, allowing them to

consider prior inconsistent statements only for the “limited purpose of deciding the

weight to be given the testimony” at trial. Blount, however, portrays IPI 3.11 as if

it orders the jury to weigh inconsistent statements against Holmes’s credibility

(much like IPI 3.17 advises that an accomplice’s testimony is inherently suspicious). 

For example, he faults his attorney for “not instructing the jury as to the effect of

inconsistent statements,” deems the omission of this instruction a “failure to

instruct concerning impeachment,” and argues that the instruction “could cause the

jury to doubt Holmes’s credibility.” Blount’s argument reflects a misunderstanding

of the reason for the instruction: simply to limit the purposes for which the jurors

might consider the evidence. And, we have already noted, IPI 1.02 broadly

instructs the jury on weighing the credibility of witnesses. See People v. Larry, 578

N.E.2d 1069, 1075 (Ill. App. 1991) (no error in not giving IPI 3.11 because IPI 1.02

covered the “applicable principle of law”).

In light of the deferential standard we must apply, Blount has not

established that the Illinois appellate court unreasonably concluded that no

prejudice resulted from counsel’s failure to request the instructions. Accordingly,

the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.