Opinion ID: 182781
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: S.’s father on March 9 or 10, and he said he knew

Text: nothing about A.S.’s whereabouts. The investigator also checked the county hospital, jail, and morgue. The state also reported in its motion that it learned from A.S.’s mother on March 10 that A.S. had left home the day before and had not returned. At this point, the state’s attorney’s office enlisted the help of a detective and a victim’s advocate to help locate A.S. The detective duplicated many of the previously unsuccessful search efforts, including visiting the residences of A.S.’s mother and father. On one visit, the mother informed the detective that A.S. could be staying with an exboyfriend in Waukegan, Illinois, a city located forty miles north of Chicago. When the detective went to the Waukegan address, the ex-boyfriend’s mother informed him that she had not seen A.S. in several months and that A.S. was not staying with her or her son. During another visit to A.S.’s mother’s home, A.S’s mother advised the detective that A.S. had called her two weeks earlier and told her that she did not want to 6 No. 09-1666 testify and would not return to Chicago. The victim’s advocate also called A.S.’s mother, who told the advocate that A.S. might be with an ex-boyfriend in Waukegan and that A.S. was enrolled in cosmetology school in another city. Cross then objected to the state’s motion to declare A.S unavailable, arguing that the state had not acted in good faith and had not made all feasible efforts to locate A.S. such as looking into certain prominent places that A.S. allegedly frequented. Cross also argued that A.S.’s absence was temporary and did not amount to unavailability. Finding that the state had acted in good faith and expended reasonable efforts to locate A.S., the trial court granted the state’s motion to substitute A.S.’s testimony from the first trial at Cross’s retrial. At Cross’s second trial, a law clerk from the state’s attorney’s office read A.S.’s testimony into the record. The law clerk’s rendition did not reflect A.S.’s hesitance or lengthy pauses from the first trial, and at times, the law clerk spoke with an inflected tone of voice. When Cross objected to the law clerk’s “acting,” the trial court instructed the state to “tell her to answer the questions [because] there’s a slight inflection on some of her answers.” At the conclusion of the trial, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of two counts of sexual assault, and not guilty of aggravated sexual assault. The trial court sentenced Cross to 30 years’ imprisonment for each count to be served consecutively. On direct appeal to the Illinois appellate court, Cross challenged several aspects of his conviction, including No. 09-1666 7 the trial court’s suppression of evidence relating to A.S.’s alleged prostitution and drug use and the state’s use of the transcript of her former testimony, which Cross argued was a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. Although the appellate court “acknowledge[d] concerns” about the absence of live testimony— particularly where the absent witness is the sole eyewitness whose credibility may be crucial—the appellate court affirmed the trial court’s finding that A.S. was unavailable based on her apparent desire to avoid being located. The appellate court also agreed with the trial court’s determination that the state had met its burden of demonstrating that it engaged in a good faith diligent search to locate A.S., ultimately affirming Cross’s conviction and sentence. The Illinois Supreme Court denied Cross leave to appeal, and Cross filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court of the United States. After briefing by both parties, the Supreme Court denied the writ. Cross then filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition with the district court in which he raised Sixth Amendment and due process challenges to several of the trial court’s evidentiary rulings, including its finding that A.S. was unavailable. The district court rejected these arguments and denied the petition, finding in part that Cross had failed to demonstrate that the state courts’ findings concerning A.S.’s unavailability were an unreasonable application of federal law. Cross now appeals from the district court’s denial of his habeas petition and raises only one issue for our review—whether the state appellate court reasonably applied federal law in its 8 No. 09-1666 determination that A.S. was unavailable and that the state made a good faith effort to find her.