Opinion ID: 4564881
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Federal District Court Habeas Petition

Text: Anderson then filed a federal habeas petition again alleging ineffective assistance of counsel on the same grounds as his failed state habeas petition. This time, however, Anderson added that he would have insisted on a trial—and not entered a plea deal—if he had known the double jeopardy defense was unavailable. He still did not challenge the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision to reject his double jeopardy defense. The federal district court noted that to succeed, Anderson must prove that the Nevada Supreme Court’s denial of his state habeas petition was objectively unreasonable and clearly erroneous. The district court also acknowledged that the Nevada Supreme Court used the correct Strickland standard in evaluating the petition. In analyzing Anderson’s claim, the district court considered it significant that, after the Nevada Supreme Court rejected Anderson’s double jeopardy appeal, his trial counsel wrote Anderson “admitting that he gave poor advice and that he regretted it.” Opining that that “going to trial was clearly the more advantageous choice,” the district court explained that Anderson “was woefully let down when his conviction was affirmed because—not surprisingly— jeopardy had not yet attached.” 18 ANDERSON V. NEVEN The district court summarily rejected that Anderson received any real benefit from the State’s dismissal of the two charges, as Anderson likely would have been “grant[ed] probation” for one, while the other simply “was a misdemeanor.” The district court ultimately concluded that the Nevada Supreme Court’s review of Anderson’s state habeas petition had “failed to consider the likelihood of success that Anderson would have had at trial on his doublejeopardy defense,” (emphasis added), and granted habeas relief on Anderson’s ineffective assistance claim.
The State asked the district court to reconsider its order, explaining that, contrary to the basis for the court’s grant of habeas relief, the Nevada Supreme Court actually had addressed Anderson’s double jeopardy claim on the merits, and rejected it. This did not sway the district court, but the court did attempt to shore up its factually flawed basis for habeas relief in an order denying reconsideration. In this second order, the district court concluded that the Nevada Supreme Court’s double jeopardy ruling applied United States Supreme Court precedent incorrectly, but in so arguing the district court incorrectly relied on language from a plurality decision it referred to as “the Court in Dixon.” The district court further acknowledged that “there is a possibility that the State would have been able to prove a different predicate offense [at trial] for the felony DUI charge against Anderson,” but because “there is also [a] probability that it would not have been able to do so[,] that is sufficient to undermine the outcome of Anderson’s criminal proceeding.” The court afforded no deference to Anderson’s counsel’s weighing of these possibilities, or Strickland’s admonition that petitioners claiming ineffective assistance of counsel must show that the likelihood of a ANDERSON V. NEVEN 19 different result is “substantial.” Rather, the court concluded that the “reasonable probability” that Anderson might have prevailed at trial on a double jeopardy defense was enough to establish prejudice to Anderson under Strickland. The district court did not attempt to connect its new analysis to the actual arguments in Anderson’s federal habeas petition, and “decline[ed] to reconsider [its] prior ruling.”