Opinion ID: 789280
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Appellate Counsel's Performance was Deficient

Text: 43 But Sanders must also establish that his counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness to satisfy the requirements of the Strickland test for showing his appellate counsel was constitutionally ineffective. The failure of appellate counsel to raise an issue on appeal requires the court to compare the issue not raised in relation to the issues that were raised; if the issue that was not raised is both obvious and clearly stronger than the issues raised, the appellate counsel's failure to raise the neglected issue is objectively deficient. Lee, 328 F.3d at 900-01. 44 On direct appeal, Sanders's counsel raised three issues: (1) the trial court erred in instructing the jury as to the doctrine of transferred intent; (2) the trial court erred in admitting evidence of Sanders's prior bad acts; and (3) the trial court abused its discretion by sentencing Sanders to serve consecutive prison terms. Sanders's challenge to the trial court's imposition of consecutive sentences is clearly weaker than his challenge to the trial court's rejection of Proposed Instruction Two. In Indiana, a trial court has wide discretion to impose consecutive sentences and an appellate court will reverse the imposition of consecutive sentences only when no reasonable person could find such sentence appropriate to the particular offense and offender for which such sentence was imposed. Steele v. State, 569 N.E.2d 652, 653 (Ind.1991). Furthermore, while the two other issues counsel raised are not as weak as the consecutive sentence challenge, neither argument relied on controlling Indiana precedent that would have warranted a new trial, unlike the trial court's failure to properly instruct the jury on sudden heat. Therefore, we find that Sanders's counsel was ineffective for not raising a challenge to the trial court's rejection of the Proposed Instruction Two because it was an obvious and stronger argument than the arguments he made, and there is a reasonable probability that had he made the argument, the appellate court would have ordered a new trial. See Lee, 328 F.3d at 901-02; Winters v. Miller, 274 F.3d 1161, 1167-68 (7th Cir.2001).