Opinion ID: 2313088
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Counsel's Failure to Obtain Parker's CPO Hearing Testimony

Text: We have no doubt that appellant's second claim of ineffectiveness sufficiently alleges deficient performance. Defense counsel had an undoubted duty to investigate the complainant's allegations and the possibility of impeaching her. [70] Counsel's duty to conduct a reasonably thorough investigation presumptively would have obliged her to obtain and review the readily available transcript of Parker's testimony at the CPO hearing, which previewed much of her testimony at trial. [71] No justification has been offered for counsel's failure in this regard. The ineffectiveness claim founders, however, on appellant's inability to plead prejudice with requisite particularity. We see no reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different had defense counsel obtained Parker's testimony from the CPO hearing. Appellant's main claim of prejudice is that his counsel lost the opportunity to impeach Parker's trial testimony. He identifies only one respect in which impeachment might have been possible. At trial, as in the grand jury, the prosecutor specifically asked Parker whether she had any contact with appellant on March 13, two days after he assaulted her. Parker answered that appellant called her on the phone that day and said, Bitch, if I go to jail, I'm going to fuck you up. This was the factual basis for one of the threats counts in the indictment. Appellant argues that defense counsel could have impeached Parker with her failure to mention the March 13 threat when she testified at the CPO hearing. But an attempt to impeach Parker with that omission would have accomplished little, in our view. At the CPO hearing, Parker was not asked about her March 13 contact with appellant. While Parker was asked  at the CPO hearing and at trial  why she did not appear for appellant's first assault trial, on neither occasion did she claim that appellant's threat dissuaded her. Rather, while Parker insisted at trial that she was afraid of appellant, she consistently explained that the reason she did not come to court was that she never received a notice to do so. Moreover, if defense counsel had impeached Parker with her omission at the CPO hearing, the government could have rehabilitated her and refuted the defense suggestion that she fabricated the March 13 threat in response to appellant's testimony. As appellant concedes, it is a matter of record that Parker reported the March 13 threat when she met with a victim/witness advocate in the United States Attorney's Office on September 12, 2000  two weeks before Parker heard appellant testify at the CPO hearing. [72] Appellant also argues that defense counsel's unfamiliarity with the CPO hearing testimony resulted in her being surprised by Parker's insistence at trial that her relationship with appellant ended in March. It is clear enough from the Monroe-Farrell inquiry that counsel indeed was surprised by this testimony. But appellant does not show that counsel's unpreparedness on this point made any difference to the outcome of the trial. Appellant's new trial motion proffers no testimony or other evidence that counsel could have obtained to contradict Parker  nothing, most strikingly, from appellant's mother or the day care personnel who were discussed in this connection before trial. While defense counsel might have questioned Parker and appellant somewhat differently about their relationship had she been better prepared, appellant does not describe any line of questioning that would have been more effective in the end. We see no reasonable likelihood that a difference in counsel's treatment of this essentially tangential issue would have changed the result of appellant's trial.