Opinion ID: 200697
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Unreasonable Application of Strickland

Text: 50 In his habeas petition to the district court, and now on appeal, Castillo argues that the trial court's resolution of the ineffective assistance of counsel claim was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Castillo's complaints fall into two broad categories. Under the first, Castillo alleges that Fernandez's failure to know the law resulted in the following errors: (1) stipulating that the substance found in the apartment was cocaine and that the total amount of cocaine exceeded 200 grams; (2) rejecting jury instructions on the lesser included offenses of simple possession and possession with intent to distribute; and (3) requesting a harmful joint venture jury instruction. Under the second, Castillo alleges that Fernandez's failure to know the facts caused her to (1) call Castillo to the stand after inadequate preparation; and (2) fail to call two witnesses (Ms. Mercado and Ms. Dominguez). 51 The trial court viewed Castillo's performance-related allegations that counsel was ill-prepared and unqualified as mere Monday-morning quarterbacking. Commonwealth v. Castillo, No. 9477 CR 3461, slip op. at 6. The trial court found that Fernandez's performance was not measurably below that of an ordinarily fallible lawyer. Id. at 5. The court cited as evidence of the adequacy of her performance Fernandez's appropriate presentation of a number of pretrial motions, her effective cross-examination of the prosecution's witnesses, and a well-argued motion for a finding of not guilty at the close of the Commonwealth's case as well as at the end of trial. The court's evaluation of counsel's performance from its contemporaneous perspective during trial is an appropriate application of Strickland's caution against the distorting effects of hindsight. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052. 52 The trial court deemed Fernandez's decision not to call Ms. Mercado and Ms. Dominguez a strategic decision which the court will not second guess and well within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance. These witnesses could not offer testimony on the critical issue of what transpired within the apartment but could only corroborate Castillo's history and stated reasons for being in Massachusetts. Moreover, there were details of their proposed testimony (such as their accounts of where he got the $467 in cash) that conflicted with Castillo's testimony. The trial court's determination that the decision not to call them to the stand was reasonable was an appropriate application of Strickland's insistence on the wide latitude counsel must have in making tactical decisions. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Similarly, the court viewed Fernandez's rejection of instructions on lesser offenses offered by the judge to be consistent with counsel's not-manifestly-unreasonable theory that Castillo had no knowledge of any drugs in the apartment. This determination is consistent with the acknowledgment in Strickland that [t]here are countless ways to provide effective assistance in any given case, and that there is a presumption that, under the circumstances, the challenged action might be considered sound trial strategy. Strickland 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (internal quotations omitted). 53 The most troubling of Fernandez's alleged errors is her stipulation to the quantity of drugs found in the apartment. By stipulating to 200 grams, Fernandez not only ensured that, if found guilty, Castillo would be sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years, but she also established as proven a fact from which the jury could draw the reasonable inference of intent to distribute. The trial court found this decision not to contest the quantity of drugs to be consistent with counsel's theory that Castillo did not know anything about the drugs present in the apartment, a theory of the case that the trial court concluded was not manifestly unreasonable. 54 We acknowledge that Fernandez's decision to stipulate to the presence of the 200 grams or more of cocaine seems, from hindsight, somewhat puzzling. She could have concurrently maintained the theory that Castillo did not know about the drugs while requiring the Commonwealth to meet its burden of proof as to the quantity of cocaine found in the apartment. She received no apparent advantage from this concession. On the other hand, with 169 grams of cocaine found in the clear plastic bags thrown out the window, and several additional bags of cocaine in the brown paper bag on the table where Castillo was standing (along with the cocaine the jury might have assumed was flushed down the toilet), proof of the 200 gram minimum, in the absence of the stipulation, would probably not have taxed the prosecution greatly. Defense counsel might well have reasoned that a refusal to stipulate would only draw attention to the various quantities of drugs in the immediate area and thereby hurt, not help, her client. 55 In any event, given the consistency of this stipulation with Castillo's defense (an unawareness of the presence of drugs in the apartment), we can not say that the trial court's determination that this defense strategy was not manifestly unreasonable (and therefore did not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel) rises to the level of unreasonableness required by the AEDPA statute. Indeed, in light of Strickland's implicit endorsement of the Fifth Circuit's patently unreasonable approach to the analysis of decision-making and its presumption that the challenged action might be considered sound trial strategy, Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052, the conclusion is inescapable that the trial court's rejection of Castillo's ineffective assistance claim does not constitute an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. 56 Affirmed.