Opinion ID: 2067611
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Object to Accomplice Neal's Testimony

Text: Roberts claims he was denied effective assistance of counsel because his attorney did not object to Neal's testimony and did not request that the jury be instructed that it should not infer Roberts' guilt from Neal's exercise of his right to remain silent. We disagree that counsel erred. Roberts cites Aubrey v. State (1974), 261 Ind. 692, 310 N.E.2d 556, in support of his argument. Aubrey denied his involvement in a robbery committed by three masked men. The State called an alleged accomplice to the stand who repeatedly exercised his right to remain silent. The trial judge refused to admonish the jury that the accomplice's silence was not evidence of Aubrey's guilt. This Court vacated the conviction, holding that it was reversible error to refuse the instruction because the natural, even inevitable, inference which is raised in the jury's mind when an alleged accomplice refuses to testify is that the withheld testimony would be damaging, not only to the witness, but also to the defendant. Id., 310 N.E. at 599. The language from Aubrey is not dispositive here. Roberts' counsel made strategic use of Neal's appearance. Counsel testified at the post-conviction hearing that he wanted the jury to compare Neal's demeanor to Roberts'. Unlike Aubrey, Roberts had admitted a limited involvement in the homicide, but claimed Neal had forced him to commit the crime. At trial, counsel cross-examined the reticent accomplice at length, not receiving answers but framing his questions in a way clearly calculated to promote the defense theory that Neal was the real culprit. Neal's refusal to testify could have bolstered the theory of the defense, and counsel took advantage of that possibility in his cross-examination. In this case, the fact that the alleged accomplice took the Fifth did not necessarily prejudice Roberts. Counsel's approach to Neal as a witness was a strategic choice. Roberts now disapproves of the strategy, but his criticism does not support a charge of ineffectiveness of counsel. Elliott v. State (1984), Ind., 465 N.E.2d 707. Tactics which appear sound in the midst of a trial, with all its variables and unknowns, may often appear faulty with the benefit of hindsight. Davis v. State (1981), Ind., 428 N.E.2d 18. There is a substantial basis for concluding that the choice made by Roberts' counsel was a good one. As he later testified, Now if it's bad trial tactics, it's bad trial tactics, but at the time I thought I was a wizard. Finally, Aubrey is inapposite because it involved the court's refusal to give a proper limiting instruction tendered by the defense in response to the negative inference created by an accomplice's testimony. Here, no such request was made, and Roberts has not shown that counsel erred or that he was harmed.