Opinion ID: 2828567
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Police-Tactics Expert

Text: Defendant first contends that his trial attorneys were ineffective by choosing the wrong expert on police tactics. He asserts that criminologist George Kirkham (whom the court had authorized the defense to retain as an expert) could have established that the Tact Team’s raid was ill-conceived in that it prevented him from knowing that it was law-enforcement officers, rather than drug dealers or other trespassers, who had invaded his property. Instead of using Kirkham, Defendant’s trial attorneys called as an expert witness Cloyce Van Choney, a former FBI SWAT-team leader who had testified for the prosecution in the two state trials. Defendant contends that this was an inexplicable mistake because his attorneys knew that Choney was extremely hostile and would 8 inevitably change his testimony in the federal trial to the defense’s detriment. We disagree. “[T]he decision of which witnesses to call is quintessentially a matter of strategy for the trial attorney.” Boyle v. McKune, 544 F.3d 1132, 1139 (10th Cir. 2008). And “[t]he selection of an expert witness is a paradigmatic example of the type of strategic choice that, when made after thorough investigation of the law and facts, is virtually unchallengeable.” Hinton v. Alabama, 134 S. Ct. 1081, 1089 (2014) (per curiam) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). We are satisfied that the decision to call Choney was a strategic choice within the bounds of professionally reasonable conduct. Even though Defendant’s trial attorneys did not contact Kirkham, they had good reason to use Choney instead. As they said to the trial court at the ex parte hearing to establish a trial budget, Choney’s testimony on cross-examination at the first state trial was extremely helpful to the defense in establishing that the methods used by the Tact Team were contrary to best practices. See R., Vol. 3 at 98–101. At the second state trial, he apparently refused to testify for the defense. But when the defense said it would read to the jury his testimony from the first trial, the prosecution called him and his testimony was, as acknowledged in Defendant’s opening brief on appeal, a “debacle” for the prosecution. Aplt. Br. at 19. Although Defendant contends that, given Choney’s hostility, he would inevitably change his testimony in the federal trial, he had not done so between the two state trials. Defendant’s trial attorneys could have reasonably believed his testimony would be much 9 the same the third time around. “[F]or counsel to repeat a winning strategy in a later trial for the same type of crime, involving the same defendant, strikes us as eminently reasonable.” Laws v. Armontrout, 863 F.2d 1377, 1393 (8th Cir. 1988) (en banc). To the contrary, had they departed from that strategy, Defendant may well have argued that it was ineffective to do that instead. See Guerrero v. United States, 84 F. App’x 933, 934– 35 (9th Cir. 2003) (remanding for § 2255 hearing on ineffectiveness claim when attorney departed from strategy that led to hung jury in first trial); cf. Putman v. Head, 268 F.3d 1223, 1229, 1244–45 (11th Cir. 2001) (rejecting habeas applicant’s argument that trial counsel in second trial should have followed the same strategy used in first trial). Although Defendant contends that his trial attorneys could have avoided the risk of Choney’s testimony going awry by calling Kirkham instead, there is no guarantee that Kirkham’s testimony would have survived cross-examination. See Boyle, 544 F.3d at 1138–39 (medical experts if called may have made damaging concessions on crossexamination). They could have rationally concluded that it was preferable to use Choney—a known commodity who had testified favorably twice in the past—rather than a new expert. Defendant’s claim thus fails Strickland’s first prong because the decision to call Choney was within “the wide range of professionally competent assistance.” Byrd, 645 F.3d at 1168 (internal quotation marks omitted). 10