Opinion ID: 2785233
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Leroy Hunter and Toni Leonard

Text: We begin with the failure to present testimony by Leroy Hunter and Toni Leonard. On direct appeal, the state appellate court rejected this claim on the merits, holding that the defense lawyer’s decision not to call Mr. Hunter or Ms. Leonard was not deficient performance. Because this was a merits adjudication, AEDPA deference applies and we ask “whether there is any reasonable argument that counsel satisfied Strickland’s deferential standard.” Harrington, 562 U.S. at 105. 8 The state court’s analysis of defense counsel’s performance was an unreasonable application of Strickland. On the record before the state court, it was unreasonable to conclude that counsel made a reasonable decision not to call Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard as a matter of trial strategy. The state court relied on the fact that counsel chose to argue that it was too dark at the time of the beating to make any reliable identifications. See People v. Campbell, 773 N.E.2d 776, 8The State agrees that the state appellate court did not reach the issue of prejudice and addressed only the issue of performance. See Appellee’s Br. 18 (“Because the state court addressed only one prong of the Strickland standard, this Court defers to the state court’s judgment on that prong, but reviews Strickland’s prejudice prong de novo.”). No. 13-2634 19 785 (Ill. App. 2002) (“Defendant’s counsel chose to argue it was too dark that night to make identifications, for which there was some evidence, rather than mount a defense based upon the conflicting testimony of unreliable witnesses.”). Under the state court’s view, once Campbell’s lawyer selected this strategy, it was reasonable for him to decide not to present testimony from any eyewitness claiming that he or she could identify anyone—participant or non-participant— on the street that night. The fundamental problem with the state court’s analysis—which made it not just incorrect but unreasonable—is that it ignored counsel’s duty to perform a reasonable pretrial investigation before committing to a defense strategy. In Strickland itself, the Supreme Court distinguished between “strategic choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts relevant to plausible options,” versus “strategic choices made after less than complete investigation.” 466 U.S. at 690–91. Strategic choices in the first category are “virtually unchallengeable,” but those in the second category are “reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation. In other words, counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.” Id. In the second circumstance, the “decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel’s judgments.” Id. at 691. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized the importance of this distinction. In Wiggins v. Smith, for example, counsel failed to investigate the defendant’s background and 20 No. 13-2634 to present mitigating evidence at his sentencing proceedings, settling instead on the argument that the defendant was not directly responsible for the crime. 539 U.S. 510, 515–16 (2003). The state court held that trial counsel had not performed deficiently because “counsel had made ‘a deliberate, tactical decision to concentrate their effort at convincing the jury’ that [the petitioner] was not directly responsible for the murder.” Id. at 518, quoting Wiggins v. State, 724 A.2d 1, 15 (Md. App. 1999). Even through the deferential lens of AEDPA, the Supreme Court held that this was an unreasonable application of Strickland. Where the Strickland claim involves an allegedly inadequate investigation, the proper question “is not whether counsel should have presented a mitigation case,” but rather “whether the investigation supporting counsel’s decision not to introduce mitigating evidence of [the petitioner’s] background was itself reasonable.” Id. at 522–23. As the Court put it, “Strickland does not establish that a cursory investigation automatically justifies a tactical decision with respect to … strategy. Rather, a reviewing court must consider the reasonableness of the investigation said to support that strategy.” Id. at 527. The Court then concluded that the state court’s analysis of Strickland was unreasonable in two respects: (1) the state court merely assumed that counsel’s decision not to investigate further was reasonable without actually assessing counsel’s decision to stop investigating when they did, and (2) the state court applied deference to counsel’s strategic decision not to present a mitigation defense despite the fact that counsel based this choice on an unreasonably limited investigation. Id. at 527–28. No. 13-2634 21 Here, the state court engaged in a similarly unreasonable application of Strickland. The court merely assumed that the lawyer’s decision not to interview Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard was reasonable and then gave deference to his “strategic” decision to argue that it was too dark for anyone to make reliable identifications. As Wiggins also makes clear, the proper inquiry under Strickland is not whether it was reasonable for counsel to present the too-dark-to-identify theory, but whether the investigation supporting counsel’s decision not to call Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard was itself reasonable. If counsel’s decision not to investigate Mr. Hunter or Ms. Leonard was itself unreasonable, then his decision not to present their testimony—and to rely on the toodark-to-identify theory instead—was too ill-informed to be considered reasonable. See Stitts v. Wilson, 713 F.3d 887, 891 (7th Cir. 2013) (“If trial counsel’s investigation of a potential alibi defense was unreasonably limited, then trial counsel’s decision not to present an alibi defense is too ill-informed to be considered reasonable.”); Mosley v. Atchison, 689 F.3d 838, 848 (7th Cir. 2012) (“If … Mosley’s lawyer never found out what [the potential witnesses’] testimony would be, he could not possibly have made a reasonable professional judgment that their testimony would have been cumulative or bolstered the State’s case and could not have chosen not to call [them] as a matter of strategy.”); Crisp v. Duckworth, 743 F.2d 580, 584 (7th Cir. 1984) (“Though there may be instances when the decision not to contact a potential defense witness is justified, an attorney who fails even to interview a readily available witness whose noncumulative testimony may potentially aid the defense should not be allowed automatically to defend his omission simply by raising the shield of ‘trial strategy and tactics.’”). 22 No. 13-2634 Giving defense counsel’s judgments the deference they are due, we see no reason in the record why a decision not to interview Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard would have been reasonable under the circumstances. Under the prevailing norms at the time of Campbell’s trial, counsel had an obligation “‘to conduct a prompt investigation of the circumstances of the case and to explore all avenues leading to facts relevant to the merits of the case.’” Bobby v. Van Hook, 558 U.S. 4, 7 (2009), quoting the American Bar Association Standards for Criminal Justice in effect in 1985. The police reports that were disclosed to counsel clearly presented two disinterested eyewitnesses who would have (1) described a version of the fatal beating substantially different from that argued by the State, (2) testified that two of the State’s three eyewitnesses were, despite their denials, directly involved in the beating, and (3) testified they did not see Campbell participate in the murder. Mr. Hunter’s version of the events would have squarely contradicted Peete’s testimony that he was not involved in Shepherd’s beating. In fact, Mr. Hunter identified Peete as one of the attackers. He told police that Peete struck Shepherd three or four times with something that looked like a pipe or a big stick. He also told police that on the day after the incident, he saw Peete return to the scene of the crime and spit on the bloodstain where Shepherd had been lying. Ms. Leonard’s version of the events would have contradicted the testimony of the State’s other two eyewitnesses. Not only would she have contradicted Johnson’s testimony that he was not involved in the murder, she would have squarely contradicted Rita Butler’s testimony about how the fight began. Butler testified at trial that the fight began when No. 13-2634 23 Shepherd approached Campbell and the two men began trading blows. But Ms. Leonard told police that the fight began when Shepherd started arguing with Jeffrey Dillon and Lynntez Holt—not Campbell. According to Ms. Leonard, Dillon struck first, followed by Holt, and then Shepherd attempted to fight back. Strickland, of course, “permits counsel to ‘make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary.’” Harrington, 562 U.S. at 106, quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691. Resources are limited, and trial counsel must eventually shift from pretrial investigation to trial preparation. But here, nothing in the record suggests that counsel made a reasonable decision not to interview Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard. The obvious exculpatory value of both eyewitness accounts appears on the face of the police reports, which were disclosed to counsel before trial. And nothing in either police report suggests that interviewing either Mr. Hunter or Ms. Leonard would have been fruitless or harmful. Cf. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691 (noting that when counsel has “reason to believe that pursuing certain investigations would be fruitless or even harmful, counsel’s failure to pursue those investigations may not later be challenged as unreasonable”). Because the State’s case hinged on eyewitness testimony, counsel’s “decision that it was unnecessary to look for and contact such eyewitnesses cannot be described as reasonable.” United States ex rel. Hampton v. Leibach, 347 F.3d 219, 251–52 (7th Cir. 2003). The state court gave two other reasons to support its conclusion, but both were based on an unreasonable characterization of the legal significance of Mr. Hunter’s and Ms. Leonard’s potential testimony. The state court noted that 24 No. 13-2634 “none of the testimony which [Campbell] claims Hunter and Leonard would have given would have exonerated” Campbell because all they could do was “further implicate Johnson and Peete as involved in the murder, a fact of which the jury was already aware because it knew Johnson and Peete had been charged with the murder.” People v. Campbell, 773 N.E.2d 776, 785 (Ill. App. 2002). The court also mentioned that any “testimony that [Campbell] did not start the beating would not contradict the State’s theory that [Campbell] participated in the beating.” Id. But the jury heard no evidence that Johnson or Peete participated in the murder. Live testimony from a disinterested witness is quite different from any inference the jury might have drawn from the bare fact that the two men had been charged initially but then had the charges dropped. And the potential testimony of Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard would have done far more than “further implicate” Johnson and Peete. According to their statements and affidavits, Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard would have presented a version of the facts markedly different from that presented by the prosecution. It is true that under Mr. Hunter’s and Ms. Leonard’s testimony, it would not have been physically impossible for Campbell to have participated in the beating. It is at least theoretically possible that Campbell could have participated in the start of the beating but left the scene before Mr. Hunter looked out his window. And because Ms. Leonard could not identify everyone at the scene, it is also theoretically possible that Campbell was simply one of the men she saw but could not identify. But the theoretical possibility that Campbell participated in the beating in spite of these eyeNo. 13-2634 25 witness accounts does not undermine the probative value to the defense of their potential testimony. Both witnessed the beating, and neither identified Campbell. Each witness described a fight that differed dramatically from that described by the prosecution at trial. Viewed separately, then, each witness’s testimony would have been very helpful to the defense. Viewed together, their testimony would have been even more powerful. The only weakness in Mr. Hunter’s testimony identified by the State is that he did not see the beginning of the fight. But Ms. Leonard said that she did see the beginning and that Campbell was not involved when the fight started among Dillon, Holt, and Shepherd. Thus, Ms. Leonard’s testimony could have filled in the key gap in Mr. Hunter’s testimony. The version of the events presented by Ms. Leonard and Mr. Hunter, if credited, would be entirely exculpatory to Campbell. Accordingly, as the dissenting justice recognized on direct appeal, the testimony of Mr. Hunter and Ms. Leonard would not have simply undermined the credibility of Johnson and Peete or “further implicated” them in the crime (though it would have done those things, too). It would have completely contradicted the prosecution’s version of the facts. See Campbell, 773 N.E.2d at 789 (Knecht, J., dissenting) (“[Mr.] Hunter’s testimony would have virtually destroyed Peete’s credibility and contradicted the State’s version of the facts surrounding the beating.”). Neither of these additional reasons could support a reasonable determination that failing to investigate Mr. Hunter or Ms. Leonard was not deficient performance. In sum, the state court concluded that counsel’s failure to call two exculpatory witnesses reflected a tactical judgment 26 No. 13-2634 not to present their testimony and to pursue an alternative strategy instead. But it did not address the adequacy of the pretrial investigation, which was clearly established under Strickland as the critical threshold question. Because we must assume that counsel failed to investigate two exculpatory eyewitnesses who were known to him based on police reports disclosed before trial, there is no reasonable argument that counsel satisfied even the deferential Strickland standard.