Opinion ID: 858005
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State Court Unreasonably Applied Strickland

Text: Regarding Trial Counsel’s Alibi Investigation The state appellate court framed Stitts’s investigation claim as being about whether trial counsel performed any alibi investigation at all, not whether trial counsel’s investigation was adequate (e.g., “Stitts has failed to show that trial counsel did not investigate his claimed alibi defense.”).2 Framed in this something-or-nothing manner, the state court decision concluded that trial counsel’s interview of Stitts’s father was sufficient. But nothing in Strickland suggests that the ineffectiveness issue is about whether or not any investigation was done in all cases, but whether or not the extent of trial counsel’s investigation was adequate depending on the facts in each particular case. As Strickland explained, “strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation. In other words, counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690-91 (emphasis added). For example, in Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510 (2003), trial 2 The State does not argue that Stitts framed his argument solely in terms of whether trial counsel failed to investigate his alibi defense at all. Nor could it successfully do so. In Stitts’s appellate brief presented to the Indiana Court of Appeals, Stitts argues at length that trial counsel should have investigated more, not that he failed to investigate at all. (R. 278-85.) Stitts frames the argument similarly in the federal proceedings. No. 12-2255 11 counsel limited his investigation of the defendant’s troubled childhood (i.e., mitigating evidence) to two documents, and the Supreme Court found that the state court unreasonably applied Strickland when it deemed this limited investigation to be sufficient. See id. at 527. In doing so, the Court expressly rejected the argument that trial counsel at least performed some investigation, explaining that: In assessing the reasonableness of an attorney’s investigation, . . . a court must consider not only the quantum of evidence already known to coun- sel, but also whether the known evidence would lead a reasonable attorney to investigate further. Even assuming [trial counsel] limited the scope of their investigation for strategic reasons, Strickland does not establish that a cursory in- vestigation automatically justifies a tactical decision with respect to sentencing strategy. Rather, a reviewing court must consider the reasonable- ness of the investigation said to support that strategy. Id. at 527. Similarly, the Court rejected the dissent’s protest that trial counsel “did investigate,” explaining again: “But as we have made clear, the Maryland Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the scope of counsel’s investigation into petitioner’s background met the legal standards set in Strickland represented an objectively unreasonable application of our precedent.” Id. at 528-29 (emphases in original); see also Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 383 (2005) (state court unreasonably applied 12 No. 12-2255 Strickland when it found that counsel’s limited investigation was adequate). The state court’s conclusion that trial counsel was not ineffective simply because he performed some investigation therefore flies in the face of “clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Our recent decision in Brady v. Pfister, ___ F.3d ___, No. 11-3365, 2013 WL 1285863 (7th Cir. Apr. 1, 2013) discussed whether, in situations like this one where the state court’s reasoning was unreasonable, we should then consider whether there is a “chain of reasoning under which the state court’s conclusion can be reconciled with established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court,” id. at , which is the standard applied in Harrington, or whether we should look to lower state court decisions for alternative reasoning and/or whether we should review the claim de novo. Id. at ; see also id. at - (discussing application of Harrington in Johnson v. Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088 (2013)). But even under the most deferential standard applied in Harrington, we find that there are no “arguments or theories” that a “fairminded jurist[]” would believe are consistent with Supreme Court precedent that “could have supported[] the state court’s decision.” Harrington, 131 S. Ct. at 786. When a defendant’s alibi is that he was at a nightclub at the time of the shooting, where there are presumably many people, we cannot fathom a reason consistent with Supreme Court precedent that would justify a trial counsel’s decision to interview only a single alibi witness without exploring whether there might be others at the venue who could provide credible No. 12-2255 13 alibi testimony. There is simply no evidence in the record to suggest that exploring the possibility of other alibi witnesses “would have been fruitless” under these circumstances. Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 525.3 See, e.g., Rompilla, 545 U.S. at 383 (failure to investigate prior conviction file was inexcusable when trial counsel knew that the defendant’s felony history was central to the case, and where “the prior conviction file was a public document, readily available for the asking”); Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 525 (“The scope of their investigation was also unreasonable in light of what counsel actually discovered in the DSS records.”); Raygoza v. Hulick, 474 F.3d 958, 963 (7th Cir. 2007) (state court application of Strickland was unreasonable, noting that “[h]ad [trial counsel] gleaned the information from [defendant’s mother] about the evening party that was easily available for the asking, he would have learned that this was not a case where only the mother was willing to vouch for a defendant’s alibi. To the contrary, witnesses both related and unrelated to Raygoza could have been called.”); Washington v. Smith, 219 F.3d 620, 630-34 (7th Cir. 2000) (state court application of Strickland was unreasonable, where trial 3 And in that respect, the state court’s finding that “[n]othing in the record indicates that trial counsel knew or even could have discovered that Harris could have provided Stitts with an alibi defense prior to trial” was also an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the record, because the mere fact that Stitts claimed to be at the nightclub meant that trial counsel could have discovered Harris, or potentially any number of alibi witnesses, prior to trial. 14 No. 12-2255 counsel did not “attempt to ascertain what [other alibi witnesses] might contribute to his case,” failed “to attempt to contact any other witness besides Ms. Richardson,” and “would have known” to produce another alibi witness if he had actually read the available detective’s report); see also Marshall v. Rodgers, ___ S. Ct. ___, No. 12-382, 2013 WL 1285304, at  (U.S. Apr. 1, 2013)