Opinion ID: 2717105
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether the district court properly ana-

Text: lyzed Mosley’s claim under § 2254(a). The State first argues that the district court’s analysis was flawed because it reviewed Mosley’s petition under § 2254(d), which asks whether the state court’s factual or legal findings were unreasonable, rather than under § 2254(a), which asks whether the petitioner is unconstitutionally in the custody of the State. The State points to several instances in the district court’s order on remand where the judge referred to § 2254(d) and held that the state court’s conclusions were unreasonable. This issue first was raised in the State’s motion under Rule 59(e) to amend the judgment. We review the judge’s denial of that motion for abuse of discretion. Obriecht v. Raemisch, 517 F.3d 489, 492 (7th Cir. 2008). The district judge acknowledged that she had cited to the incorrect statute but amended her order, clarifying that the decision was under § 2254(a). Moreover, despite the judge’s references to whether a conclusion of the state court was unreasonable, she concluded her opinion: “Mosley has shown that his counsel’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness,” and that there is “a reasonable probability that Taylor’s testimony . . . would have changed the outcome of the trial.” It is clear that the district judge understood that her task on remand was to make an independent assessment of Strunck’s performance under § 2254(a), as we directed. See Mosley, 689 F.3d at 854. The court determined anew that Mosley was being held unconstitutionNo. 13-2515 11 ally, see Stitts v. Wilson, 713 F.3d 887, 895–96 (7th Cir. 2013), and granted the writ pursuant to § 2254(a). The errors of the district court in referring to § 2254(d) and the conclusion that the state court acted unreasonably were immaterial to its final determination. We thus see no abuse of discretion in its order. B. Whether the district court’s factual findings are clearly erroneous. The State next questions various factual findings of the district court; specifically, its findings regarding the testimony of Taylor and Strunck. The State insists that the court’s findings are irreconcilable with the record. We review factual findings by the district court for clear error, Jones v. Basinger, 635 F.3d 1030, 1040 (7th Cir. 2011), reversing only if the district court’s findings are “implausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety,” Ray v. Clements, 700 F.3d 993, 1013 (7th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). We will not disturb the court’s choice between competing acceptable views of the evidence, Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 574 (1985), and we defer to the court’s factual findings, particularly because it heard the testimony and observed the witnesses as they testified, see Ray, 700 F.3d at 1013; United States v. Jackson, 300 F.3d 740, 745 (7th Cir. 2002). The State does not quarrel with that standard. We review each of the State’s assertions of error below.
The State first argues that the court incorrectly found that, based on Taylor’s testimony, Mosley was in the apartment building 45 minutes before the fire started but across the street in the schoolyard when the fire started. According to the State, 12 No. 13-2515 Taylor testified that she knew Mosley’s location at only two specific instances: when he left her apartment 45 minutes before the fire, and after the fire started when she noticed Mosley and the others running to the building as it burned. The State notes that Taylor testified that she did not again look out the window between those two instances and asserts that, in the interim, Mosley could have returned to the apartment and given the instruction to burn down the building. Taylor testified at the hearing that Mosley had visited her the evening of the fire, offering to bring her ribs for dinner. When Mosley left, Taylor said, she saw him go across the street to the schoolyard, approximately 20 to 25 feet from her building. She watched Mosley in the schoolyard for only “two minutes at the most” before walking to the bathroom to bathe her son. From her bathroom window, Taylor could not see the schoolyard. She did not again look out the window to the schoolyard, but neither did she hear yelling or talking from outside through her windows, which were open and directly above Fernando’s. From this, the district court concluded that Taylor, if called at the trial, would have testified that “Mosley was in the building 45 minutes before the fire and then was across the street in a group of men and children at the time the fire started.” The district court later framed Taylor’s testimony as establishing that Mosley left her apartment 45 minutes before the fire started “and went across the street to the schoolyard,” thus saying nothing about whether he remained there until the fire began. From Taylor’s testimony it is possible to conclude that Mosley had enough time to instruct the other gang members to burn down the building. But it also is plausible that he did No. 13-2515 13 not leave the schoolyard until the apartment building was in flames. That either theory is possible from Taylor’s testimony does not make the district court’s finding clearly incorrect. Ray, 700 F.3d at 1013; Stankewitz v. Wong, 698 F.3d 1163, 1169 (9th Cir. 2012). Although Taylor did not watch Mosley every minute after he left her apartment, it is an acceptable conclusion that he remained in the schoolyard until he noticed the fire and ran over to help. Thus, the court’s finding was not clear error.
testimony. The State next argues that the district court erroneously found that attorney Strunck did not know the content of Taylor’s possible testimony and, thus, erroneously held that his decision not to call her could not have been strategic. The State points out that, although Strunck did not recall speaking with Taylor, he testified that he “would have been aware of her” because he added her to the list of defense witnesses and asked an investigator to contact her, just as he had with Coward. As with Coward, the State says, Strunck would not have listed Taylor as a potential witness without knowing what she would say. Thus, the State concludes, there is no reason to believe that Strunck was not aware of what Taylor’s testimony would have been. But as the State acknowledges, Strunck testified that he could not recall ever talking to Taylor despite her inclusion on the witness list. He testified that his usual practice was to write contemporaneous notes during his conversations with potential witnesses, yet he had no notes from any conversation with 14 No. 13-2515 Taylor. Strunck pointed out that his file may have been incomplete, a possible explanation for the missing notes. But neither did he recall any facts about Taylor at all, including her apartment’s location directly above Fernando’s, her two-yearold son who allegedly was rescued by Mosley, or her friendship with Mosley. We recognize that the bench trial from which these details are being recalled occurred in 1997. But Strunck also testified that this case “stuck with me.” That he cannot recall any of the details of Taylor’s testimony, which we now know would have been very helpful to the defense, does not help the State’s argument that he did know what she would have said and intentionally kept her off the stand. Either the case was not that memorable or else he remembers only what he knew in 1997, which the district court concluded does not include any statement by Sharon Taylor. Based on Strunck’s testimony, we disagree with the State that the district court’s finding that Strunck was not aware of Taylor’s testimony is erroneous.
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.