Opinion ID: 2785233
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ieca Hunter

Text: We next turn to counsel’s failure to present the testimony of Ieca Hunter. Campbell first presented this claim to the state courts during post-conviction proceedings. The state trial court denied Campbell’s petition without an evidentiary hearing. On appeal, the state appellate court affirmed, holding that counsel’s failure to interview Ms. Hunter was not deficient performance because “there was not a sound basis to believe she had any information that would be helpful to the defense.” Supp. App. 96 The state court based this conclusion on the police report: “Christmas lights obscured her view of the beating and she did not know any of the men involved.” Id. This, too, was a merits adjudication, so again we ask “whether there is any reasonable argument that counsel satisfied Strickland’s deferential standard.” Harrington, 562 U.S. at 105. The state court’s analysis of counsel’s performance regarding Ms. Hunter was also an unreasonable application of Strickland. Under Strickland, again, counsel had “a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691. We see no reasonable argument No. 13-2634 27 that counsel could have reasonably concluded, based solely on the police report, that Ms. Hunter was not worth contacting. The police report said: [Ieca Hunter] stated that she looked out her window and saw approximately five black males fighting with one subject. Ieca stated that she was trying to see what was going on but she has Christmas lights on the outside of her house, and it was affecting her vision. Ieca stat- ed that she saw the victim fall to the ground, so she left her window and went and telephoned 911 for an ambulance. Ieca stated that she did not recognize any of the subjects in [the] street and she would not be able to identify any of them. The only thing that she could tell me was that all of them were black males. Supp. App. 143–44 (paragraph break omitted). The fact that Ms. Hunter could not identify any of the men who were involved in the beating does not mean that she would have been unable to identify people who were present but not involved in the beating. She explained this point in an affidavit attached to Campbell’s petition for state post-conviction relief. She initially had trouble seeing the fight because of Christmas lights hanging on her door, but she opened the door for a better view. She then saw Campbell standing directly in front of her house, approximately 12 feet away. She called Campbell “a familiar person” and someone she “had interacted with” on “numerous occasions.” Although she could not identify the participants in the beating, she could identify Campbell as someone who did not participate: “there was no mistaking him even in the 28 No. 13-2634 dark.” This fact was not addressed in the police report. The police apparently asked her to identify only those who did the beating. Police did not ask whether she could identify other people who were present but not involved. We recognize, of course, that Campbell’s lawyer could not have known by reading the police report that Ms. Hunter could identify Campbell as a non-participant. But he had a duty to perform a reasonable investigation. Contacting one of a few eyewitnesses to the crime falls squarely within the core of that duty. See Stanley v. Bartley, 465 F.3d 810, 813 (7th Cir. 2006) (“The lawyer could not know how complete or accurate a prospective witness’s statement to the police was without talking to the witness.”). From the defense perspective, witness statements to the police are systemically prone to be incomplete. Police investigations are generally focused on identifying individuals involved in the crime and witnesses helpful to the prosecution’s case. Their focus is not necessarily on clearing bystanders. It is also not uncommon for people to withhold information from the police, or at least not to volunteer everything they know when they first speak to police. That is why Strickland typically demands that counsel go beyond discovery provided by the State and conduct her own pretrial investigation. See Crisp, 743 F.2d at 584 (“We do not agree that police statements can generally serve as an adequate substitute for a personal interview.”); see also, e.g., Washington v. Smith, 219 F.3d 620, 632 (7th Cir. 2000) (counsel’s “failure to try to ascertain what exculpatory evidence ‘new’ witnesses might have [was] flagrant example[] of ineffective assistance”); Anderson v. Johnson, 338 F.3d 382, 391–93 (5th Cir. 2003) (deficient performance where counsel “relied No. 13-2634 29 exclusively on the investigative work of the State and based his own pretrial ‘investigation’ on assumptions divined from a review of the State’s files”). We say “typically” because we recognize “there may be unusual cases when an attorney can make a rational decision that investigation is unnecessary.” Crisp, 743 F.2d at 583. But this is not such a case. The police report identified Ms. Hunter as a disinterested eyewitness to the crime. Although the witness’s vision that night was “affected” by Christmas lights and she could not identify the perpetrators, nothing in the report implies that contacting her would have been fruitless or harmful. Her statement to the police certainly was not a “blanket denial” that she knew anything about the incident, as the State characterizes it on appeal. Perhaps she could have described the location of the beating in a way that would have cast doubt on the prosecution witnesses’ version of the events. Or perhaps she could have told counsel about other eyewitnesses who may have had a better view of the incident than she did. Or perhaps, as we must assume for now, she could have identified non-participants, including Campbell. The point is that counsel could not answer those questions by reading the police report, which is why he had a duty to investigate further. See Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 527 (“In assessing the reasonableness of an attorney’s investigation, … a court must consider not only the quantum of evidence already known to counsel, but also whether the known evidence would lead a reasonable attorney to investigate further.”). The State argues that the state court reasonably applied Strickland because the Supreme Court has never clearly established that defense counsel must interview witnesses 30 No. 13-2634 named in police reports. This argument exaggerates Campbell’s position. Neither his position nor our decision is based on a per se requirement that defense counsel must always interview witnesses named in police reports. Rather, it is based on the Strickland standard itself: “a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel’s judgments.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691. Under the circumstances of this case—where (1) there was no physical evidence linking Campbell to the crime, (2) police reports named two other eyewitnesses (Leroy Hunter and Toni Leonard) who identified two of the State’s main witnesses as participants in the crime and did not identify Campbell, and (3) the State agreed to drop murder charges against Peete and Johnson in exchange for their testimony against Campbell—counsel’s decision not to interview Ms. Hunter fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, even after applying deference to counsel’s judgments. The state court’s decision to the contrary was an unreasonable application of Strickland. 9 9Campbell also argues that counsel’s failure to investigate or present the testimony of Minnie Hunter was constitutionally ineffective. The State argues that this claim is procedurally defaulted because Campbell failed to present this claim to the state courts. Campbell’s reply brief argues that he presented the claim by attaching Minnie Hunter’s affidavit to his amended post-conviction petition. That was not enough. Under AEDPA, a habeas petitioner must present both the legal argument and the factual basis for the claim to the state courts to preserve the issue. See Pole v. Randolph, 570 F.3d 922, 939–40 (7th Cir. 2009). Although Campbell presented the factual basis for the claim by attaching the affidavit to the petition, he did not present the legal argument in the petition or in his appellate brief during post-conviction proceedings. Rather, he argued only that counsel’s failure to investigate or present the testimony of Ieca No. 13-2634 31