Opinion ID: 4203011
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Direct Appeal and Collateral Attacks

Text: On direct appeal, Winfield’s new counsel raised a single challenge, claiming the trial judge abused his discretion by 6 No. 16-3316 neglecting to consider the potential for rehabilitation in arriving at Winfield’s sentence. The appellate court rejected that argument in light of the judge’s statements that he was aware of his obligation to consider Winfield’s rehabilitative potential, even though he apparently discounted that element entirely. The Illinois Supreme Court later denied Winfield’s petition for leave to appeal that decision. Some two months later, Winfield filed a pro se petition in state court for post-conviction relief, arguing that his appellate counsel provided ineffective assistance on direct appeal by failing to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence at trial. After the appellate court denied Winfield’s appeal from the trial court’s “inadvertent” dismissal of his petition, Winfield retained counsel, who filed an amended petition presenting two new grounds: “(1) his trial attorney was ineffective for failing to call two alibi witnesses and (2) his appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise the issue of his trial attorney’s incompetence.” Following an evidentiary hearing at which two of Winfield’s alibi witnesses and his trial counsel testified, the state court denied Winfield’s petition based on alternative findings that: (1) he did not inform counsel about his alibi witnesses or (2) his counsel’s decision to not call the alibi witnesses was sound strategy. The appellate court affirmed, and the Illinois Supreme Court again denied Winfield’s petition for leave to appeal. In his timely-filed, pro se petition for habeas relief to the federal district court below, Winfield renewed his argument that his state counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to raise a sufficiency of the evidence challenge on direct appeal. In answering the petition, the state not only agreed that Winfield had presented his ineffective assistance challenge to No. 16-3316 7 the Illinois courts timely, but conceded that those courts had not adjudicated his claim on the merits. Some years later, the district court appointed counsel and permitted limited discovery on the process Winfield’s state appellate counsel used to select issues for direct appeal. Winfield’s appointed counsel then filed an additional brief in support of his habeas petition, arguing that appellate counsel should have challenged the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the attempted murder conviction under Illinois’ corpus delicti rule.1 In so arguing, this reply brief again specifically noted the state’s agreement that the more lenient standard of review applied, something the state did not dispute in its surreply brief. Proceeding on the parties’ agreement that it was to “dispose of the matter as law and justice require,” Toliver v. Pollard, 688 F.3d 853, 859 (7th Cir. 2012), rather than impose AEDPA’s heightened burden, the district court granted Winfield’s habeas petition and ordered the state to reopen his appeal. United States ex rel. Winfield v. Acevedo, 179 F. Supp. 3d 809 (N.D. Ill. 2016). Specifically, the district court held that appellate counsel’s performance was deficient under the standard established in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 488 (1984), emphasizing counsel’s failure to challenge whether independent evidence sufficiently corroborated Winfield’s written statement. 179 F. Supp. 3d at 815-16. In response, the state moved to alter or amend the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil 1 As a general principle, the “corpus delicti” of a crime is “proof— apart from the defendant’s confessions or admissions—that a crime actually occurred.” United States v. Kerley, 838 F.2d 932, 939 (7th Cir. 1988). 8 No. 16-3316 Procedure 59(e) and, in the alternative, for a stay of the order pending appeal. Contrary to its previous position before the district court, the state’s 59(e) motion asserted that the Illinois courts had considered the merits of Winfield’s ineffective assistance claim, and thus argued for the first time that AEDPA’s more stringent standard of review should apply. However, the district court refused to permit the state to “disavow its earlier position on the correct standard of review,” relying on this Circuit’s holding in Havoco of America, Ltd. v. Sumitomo Corp. of America, 974 F.2d 1332 (7th Cir. 1992), that Rule 59 is not the appropriate mechanism “to raise new arguments that could and should have been raised before judgment was entered.” Id. at 1336. Accordingly, the court rejected the state’s motion for reconsideration based on its new argument that the post-conviction appellate court actually “addressed the merits of [the ineffective assistance claim] and its decision is therefore entitled to AEDPA deference.” Given the “close call on the question of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel,” the district court nevertheless granted a stay of its order pending appeal.