Opinion ID: 1791
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defense Counsel's Failure to Properly Investigate

Text: Although defense counsel's ultimate decision not to call Ceruti was not an unreasonable trial strategy, we hold that counsel's failure to adequately investigate that decision before trial was deficient performance sufficient to satisfy the first prong of the Strickland test. As a preliminary note, the state court of appeals did not separately address this specific issue and instead stated that it was merely a reiterat[ion of English's] argument that trial counsel erred in not calling Ceruti as a witness. English, 2004 WL 1292789, at  n. 3. We find this issue to be distinct (albeit related) from the failure to call Ceruti as a witness and thus afford no deference to the state court opinion as to this issue. But even if we were to impute the state court's analysis of the decision not to call Ceruti to this issue and then apply AEDPA deference, we would still find that English can satisfy the deficiency prong for this claim. For it was objectively unreasonable for English's trial attorney to decide before trial to call Ceruti as a witness, make that promise to the jury, and then later abandon that strategy, all without having fully investigated Ceruti and her story prior to opening statements. This is not a case where counsel simply failed to pursue a potential witness whose testimony could have significantly benefitted his client. Here, counsel was actually prepared to call Ceruti as a witness. The deficiency instead was in English's attorney being `ill equipped to assess [Ceruti's] credibility or persuasiveness as a witness,' or to evaluate and weigh the risks and benefits of putting [her] on the stand at the time when he made the decisions affecting his trial strategy. See Towns, 395 F.3d at 260 (quoting Bryant v. Scott, 28 F.3d 1411, 1419 (5th Cir.1994)). To the extent that counsel was in fact concerned about the aforementioned problems with Ceruti's putative testimony, he could have and should have discovered those problems before trial and then evaluated them before he decided whether or not to call (or even promise) the witness at trial. Conducting a simple pre-trial interview of the other expected witnesses in the case would have exposed at least some of the witness-tampering allegations and would also have allowed English's attorney to test Ceruti's story to see if she was being truthful. See id. at 258 (noting that the duty to investigate includes the obligation to investigate all witnesses who may have information concerning his or her client's guilt or innocence). Yet English's attorney admitted that he failed to interview any of the witnesses outside of the courthouse or prior to trial. Counsel could not have developed a reasonable trial strategy since he based his decisionmaking on what counsel guess[ed the witnesses] might say in the absence of a full investigation, and not on what investigation reveals witnesses will actually testify to. Ramonez v. Berghuis, 490 F.3d 482, 489 (6th Cir.2007). Nor could counsel have made a reasoned professional judgment that such investigation was unnecessary. Towns, 395 F.3d at 260; see also Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (noting that counsel must at least make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary). Counsel simply had no reason to believe that an investigation was unnecessary, and he owed a duty at least to investigate other witnesses to see what they would claim at trial. Towns, 395 F.3d at 258. Such an investigation here would have uncovered before trial exactly what counsel later relied upon during trial to make his ultimate decision not to call Ceruti. [12] Furthermore, a simple review of the preliminary hearing transcript would have revealed the majority of concerns on which counsel later based his decision. The transcript includes the very testimony of Lamont that calls into question Ceruti's story, and it includes Lamont's version of the threats Ceruti allegedly made as well as the allegation that she planted the knife. By failing to make these simple investigations before trial, counsel violated his duty to investigate and was thus objectively unreasonable in his performance.
Having found that counsel's performance was deficient, we proceed to the second Strickland prong to determine whether the deficient performance prejudiced English. The Michigan Court of Appeals never reached this part of the analysis; consequently, we consider it de novo. See, e.g., Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 390, 125 S.Ct. 2456, 162 L.Ed.2d 360 (2005) (Because the state courts found the representation adequate, they never reached the issue of prejudice ... and so we examine this element of the Strickland claim de novo ....). Based on our review of the record, we agree with the district court that but for counsel's ineffectiveness, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different. As defense counsel himself noted at the evidentiary hearing, had he learned of Ceruti's problems as a witness before trial, he never would have promised Ceruti in his opening statement. There were at least three probable consequences of that decision that prejudiced defendant. First, the unfulfilled promise created a negative inference against English generally. As the First Circuit has noted, little is more damaging than to fail to produce important evidence that had been promised in an opening. Anderson v. Butler, 858 F.2d 16, 17 (1st Cir.1988). The jury in this case must have wondered what happened to Ceruti after she was promised as a corroborating witness for English's story, and the jury may well have counted this unfulfilled promise against English and his attorney. See United States ex rel. Hampton v. Leibach, 347 F.3d 219, 259 (7th Cir.2003) (finding unfulfilled promise by defense counsel in opening caused prejudicial negative inference as to defendant and defense counsel's credibility). Second, counsel's deficiency likely caused a negative inference against English's own testimony. English's theory of the incident was the very same version of events that the jury was told would be corroborated by Ceruti but never received. Thus, any negative inference would also have specifically damaged the credibility of English's version of events (and not just the credibility of English generally). Finally, English was prejudiced by the inflammatory testimony relating to Ceruti that was presented during trial. The record strongly suggests that the state trial judge never would have admitted the otherwise inadmissible testimony regarding Ceruti's witness tampering and alleged false evidence planting if she had not been identified by defense counsel as a potential witness. Instead, because Ceruti was going to be a material witness, the jury was allowed to hear damaging testimony about Ceruti's actions that likely reflected negatively on English due to his association with her. Moreover, the actual evidence of English's guilt in this case is not overwhelming. The government presented no physical evidence other than the knives that Defendant admitted to possessing and using. Additionally, the government presented no unbiased witnesses [13] as to the issue of self-defense in this case that ultimately boiled down to a swearing match between Higdon and English. Higdon's potential bias is obvious considering his past relationship with Ceruti and Ceruti's current relationship with English. Lamont, meanwhile, was a friend of Higdon and had been living with him at the Clark Street apartment. Finally, Whitehouse was Higdon's brother-in-law at the time of trial. All it would have taken is for `one juror [to] have struck a different balance' between the competing stories. Ramonez, 490 F.3d at 491 (citing Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 537, 123 S.Ct. 2527). And in this case, the lack of overwhelming evidence of guilt, combined with the negative consequences of defense counsel's failure to conduct a sufficient pre-trial investigation, sufficiently creates a reasonable probability that at least one juror would have struck a different balance had defense counsel not performed deficiently. Accordingly, we hold that English has also satisfied Strickland 's prejudice prong with respect to his failure-to-investigate claim.