Opinion ID: 2717105
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Federal Proceedings—Evidentiary Hearing and

Text: First Appeal Mosley then petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, maintaining that his trial counsel had rendered ineffective assistance. The district court held an evidentiary hearing, at which Jones, Taylor, and Mosley’s trial attorney testified. Jones’s and Taylor’s testimony largely was consistent with their affidavits submitted in Mosley’s state post-conviction petition. Jones added that she saw Mosley run into the burning apartment building to aid rescue efforts. She also said that she received an affidavit in the mail detailing her recollection from the night of the fire. The affidavit contained blank areas that she filled in, and she then signed the affidavit and mailed it back to the sender, though she could not recall who that was. Taylor remembered Mosley visiting her the night of the fire and offering to bring her dinner. After he left, about 45 minutes before the fire began, she looked out of her window and saw Mosley in the school- 6 No. 13-2515 yard with others, but she did not recall seeing any adult females. She testified about Mosley’s aid in rescuing her young son but said she never saw Mosley enter the apartment building after the fire had started. She denied speaking in person with Mosley’s attorney but conceded that Mosley had written her affidavit and that she had signed it despite some of the factual inaccuracies because she wanted to help Mosley. Mosley’s attorney, Robert Strunck, testified that he had not planned to call any witnesses at the trial because he was convinced that his motion for judgment of acquittal would be granted. He was “shocked” when the motion was denied and asked for a short continuance, during which he spoke with Coward and decided to call her as a witness because her testimony placed Mosley in the schoolyard all evening. He did not recall speaking with Taylor but testified that her testimony placing Mosley briefly inside the apartment building would have contradicted his theory that Mosley was in the schoolyard the entire night. Strunck also described as harmful Taylor’s testimony that Mosley was in the schoolyard with only men and children, which contradicted Coward’s testimony that adult females also were present. After the hearing but before the district court rendered its decision on Mosley’s petition, the Supreme Court decided Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011), which holds that review of state-court proceedings under § 2254(d)(1) is limited to the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the merits of the claims in the petition. Based on that ruling, and argument from the State, the district court disregarded the new evidence from the evidentiary hearing No. 13-2515 7 and limited its analysis to the state trial record, including the affidavits from Jones and Taylor. Yet based on that limited review, the district court concluded that Mosley had met the standards of § 2254(d)(1) in two respects. First, the court determined that the state court had unreasonably determined that Strunck’s failure to call Jones and Taylor was part of his trial strategy. Second, the court ruled that the state court’s conclusion regarding the prejudice element of Mosley’s Strickland claim was contrary to federal law because the state court had required that Mosley show the outcome of his trial would have been different, but Strickland requires only that he show a reasonable probability of a different outcome. The court thus conducted a de novo review of Mosley’s claim and concluded that there was, in fact, a reasonable probability that but for counsel’s poor performance at trial, the outcome would have been different. The State appealed that decision. We agreed with the district court that counsel’s failure to call Jones and Taylor could not have been a matter of strategy: According to the state record, Strunck never interviewed either witness and did not know whether their testimony would have been helpful. The presumption of reasonableness that attaches to counsel’s strategic decisions, we held, does not apply to “consequences of inattention.” Mosley, 689 F.3d at 848. Moreover, we noted that it was unreasonable for the state court to conclude that the testimony from Jones and Taylor was cumulative. Their testimony, we explained, would have bolstered Coward’s, which was shaky and rejected by the trial judge. Both wit- nesses placed Mosley across the street at the time the fire started, an observation that contradicted the State’s theory that 8 No. 13-2515 he was near the apartment building ordering the other boys to burn it down. The state court’s conclusion that counsel did not perform deficiently, we agreed, was unreasonable. We also agreed that the state court’s conclusion that Mosley was not prejudiced by counsel’s actions was contrary to controlling precedent. The state court, we noted, repeatedly misstated the appropriate prejudice standard under Strickland, again warranting de novo review. We concluded that “if the Jones and Taylor affidavits are taken at face value, Mosley was prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to call the two witnesses.” Mosley, 689 F.3d at 851. Though we affirmed the district court’s judgment that Mosley had met the requirements of § 2254(d), we vacated the court’s grant of the writ and remanded. Whether Mosley is entitled to relief under § 2254(a), we explained, depends on whether he “is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” That is a different question than whether the state court’s decision is unreasonable under § 2254(d). We thus instructed the district court to make findings of fact based on either the evidence presented at the earlier evidentiary hearing, at a new hearing, or both, and to determine if Mosley met the standard of § 2254(a).