Opinion ID: 852687
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Call a Defense Witness

Text: Grinstead says his lawyer should have called Jack Lillie as a witness. Lillie was a bartender at the Palace Bar where Grinstead, Edmonson, and Cross were drinking together before the murder. Although Lillie testified at the post-conviction hearing that he could not remember the incident, Grinstead claims that at the trial Lillie could have collaborated testimony that Grinstead gave Lillie a pitcher of beer before he, Edmonson, and Cross left the Palace Bar, and that he asked Lillie to hold the pitcher because they would be back shortly. (Br. Pet'r.-Appellant at 15-17; R. at 1079; P.C. Tr. at 35-37.) This testimony, Grinstead insists, would have supported [his] contention that there was no plan or conspiracy to take Cross out and rob and kill him, [and as his version of the events suggested] that they left the bar together to give Cross a ride to a house where he [Cross] planned to buy marijuana. (Br. Pet'r.-Appellant at 16.) Contending that Lillie would have remembered the incident better at the time of the trial, as he said he would (P.C. Tr. at 37), is plausible but plainly speculative. Counsel could well have decided that hoping for testimony about this point was not worth the effort, especially given that during the cross-examination of one of the State's witnesses, counsel was able to elicit testimony that collaborated Grinstead's assertion that he and Edmonson had initially left the bar with Cross in order to drive Cross to a location where he could smoke marijuana. (R. at 236-37, 1079-80.)