Opinion ID: 2717105
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Other factual contests.

Text: The State also challenges a random assortment of other factual findings by the district court regarding Strunck’s testimony: that he failed to subpoena Fernando so he could call her in defense, prepared the case expecting the state court to reject Fernando’s testimony “in toto,” and characterized some of Taylor’s proposed testimony as harmful. But these immaterial statements, if they are incorrect, do not undermine the district court’s conclusion or encourage us entirely to dismiss the court’s factual findings. See United States v. Houston, 745 F.3d 863, 865 (7th Cir. 2014) (minor discrepancies in factual findings are not a basis for finding clear error). No. 13-2515 15 C. Whether the district court correctly concluded that Mosley’s attorney rendered ineffective assistance. Lastly, the State challenges the district court’s grant of Mosley’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We review the court’s order granting Mosley’s petition de novo. Stitts, 713 F.3d at 891. In order to establish that his attorney was ineffective, Mosley needed to prove that counsel’s performance was objectively unreasonably and that, because of that performance, he was prejudiced. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688, 694. Prejudice means that without counsel’s errors, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different. Id. We defer to strategic decisions counsel made, even if that strategy ended unsuccessfully, Shaw v. Wilson, 721 F.3d 908, 914 (7th Cir. 2013), but a strategic decision limited by poor investigation or preparation may be “too ill-informed to be considered reasonable,” Stitts, 713 F.3d at 891; see United States v. Best, 426 F.3d 937, 946 (7th Cir. 2005) (“Few decisions not to present testimony can be considered ‘strategic’ before some investigation has taken place.”). The State contests the district court’s ruling on both elements of ineffective assistance, asserting that Mosley established neither element. i. Strunck’s performance. The district court concluded that counsel’s performance was objectively unreasonable. A number of facts were important to the district court’s determination. To start, Strunck testified that he expected his motion for a judgment of acquittal to be granted. Because of his confidence in the motion, he did not prepare a defense case: He had not subpoenaed Fernando 16 No. 13-2515 for recall as part of his case, he was unprepared to call any other witness to testify, and he had not met Taylor to discuss what she knew, even though Mosley had told him that she could provide exculpatory information. (The district court did not make a finding regarding Strunck’s awareness of Jones before the trial.) Instead, Strunck called only one witness, Ishi Coward, whose testimony was shaky and rejected by the trial judge based on her demeanor. Taylor, the district court found, would have testified that Mosley left the apartment building 45 minutes before the fire started and was in the schoolyard across the street. But because Strunck did not know that information, the court found, he did not make an informed decision not to call her. His failure properly to investigate Taylor thus deserved no presumption of reasonableness and demonstrated that his performance as Mosley’s lawyer was lacking. We agree with the district court. We noted in our opinion in Mosley’s earlier appeal that if what Taylor said in her affidavit were true, then Strunck “could not possibly have made a reasonable professional judgment” not to call her “as a matter of strategy.” Mosley, 689 F.3d at 848. At the evidentiary hearing Taylor testified largely in conformity with her affidavit. It is her testimony that Mosley was across the street when the fire started that would have bolstered Coward’s identical testimony, and Coward’s testimony needed support because the trial judge believed that she wavered too much to be believed. Moreover, Mosley’s location when the fire started was the critical issue in the case. An additional witness placed Mosley away from the scene of the fire at the time it began, yet counsel was unaware that such a witness existed. The district No. 13-2515 17 court did not resolve whether Strunck was aware of Jones, but his failure properly to investigate Taylor’s testimony and uncover this exculpatory information, we agree, renders his performance objectively unreasonable. ii. Prejudice. The district court also concluded that Mosley was prejudiced by his attorney’s inaction and unreasonable investigation. The state’s case, the court recounted, principally relied on the testimony of Fernando. But her testimony, in the court’s words, reflected “an almost impossible factual scenario,” in which the two boys who allegedly were instructed by Mosley to burn down the building moved from outside the building up to the second-floor staircase, poured gasoline and set the fire, and the fire progressed enough to fill the hallway with smoke all within a matter of a few seconds. The court noted that the only counter to this hard-to-believe testimony was Coward’s testimony, and she also was a weak witness. The trial judge rejected her testimony, leaving only the word of the State’s witnesses, but as the district court pointed out, the state judge seemed concerned with counsel’s presentation. Because the defense case needed an evidentiary boost, the district court concluded, it was reasonably probable that Taylor’s additional testimony would have altered the result of the trial. We noted in our earlier opinion that if Taylor’s affidavit were taken at face value, in addition to suggesting counsel’s performance was deficient, there is a reasonable probability that the result of the trial would have been different, and thus Mosley was prejudiced by counsel’s failure to call her. Mosley, 689 F.3d at 851–52. The truth of her affidavit now has come to 18 No. 13-2515 bear. Taylor’s testimony did not entirely track Coward’s—Taylor testified that Mosley was in her apartment 45 minutes before the fire, whereas Coward testified that Mosley was in the schoolyard the entire evening; Coward said she was with Mosley and other adult females, but Taylor recalled seeing no adult females—but it did match her affidavit. And the state judge found Coward less believable than Fernando. The defense case needed more evidence to support its lone witness. We do not know how Taylor would have held up on the stand. But there is at least a reasonable probability that had she testified, the trial judge would have accepted her testimony, which bolstered Coward’s words on the critical issue of Mosley’s location at the time the fire started and further discredited Fernando’s fantastical account, thereby changing the verdict. Counsel’s failure to interview Taylor, however, squelched that opportunity and doomed the defense case. We conclude that Mosley was prejudiced by his counsel’s unreasonable representation.