Opinion ID: 774738
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Request for Amendment of the Certificate of Appealability

Text: 8 Rittenhouse raises two other claims that are not included in the district court's certificate of appealability. He asks us to consider his claims that: (1) he was denied the effective assistance of trial counsel when his attorney failed to object to instructions that he contends contained a mandatory presumption of legal responsibility and (2) he was deprived of the effective assistance of appellate counsel when his counsel did not raise an issue regarding the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on his mere presence theory of defense. 9 In accordance with 28 U.S.C. sec. 2253(c), a habeas petitioner may appeal only those issues for which a certificate of appealability has been granted. See Porter v. Gramley, 112 F.3d 1308, 1312 (7th Cir. 1997). Thus, the State asks this court not to consider the two claims included in Rittenhouse's brief that were not encompassed by the certificate of appealability. This court has recently explained, however, that we shall continue to consider requests to amend a certificate of appeal ability even when they are presented in a petitioner's briefs to this court. Ouska v. Cahill- Masching, 246 F.3d 1036, 1046 (7th Cir. 2001). A party can make such a request by specifically asking us to consider the issue in its brief or by simply including issues in its briefs that were not specified in the certificate. Id. at 1045. In this case, Rittenhouse did both: he included his additional claims in his initial brief without requesting that we amend the certificate, and in his reply brief, he explicitly asked us to consider these other issues. 10 In order to issue a certificate of appealability [w]here a district court has rejected [a habeas petitioner's] constitutional claims on the merits, the showing required to satisfy sec. 2253(c) is straightforward: The petitioner must demonstrate that reasonable jurists would find the district court's assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong. Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484, 120 S. Ct. 1595, 146 L. Ed. 2d 542 (2000). In this case, the district court rejected Rittenhouse's claim that he was denied effective assistance of trial counsel when his attorney failed to object to certain instructions that allegedly contained a mandatory presumption of legal responsibility. Thus, Rittenhouse must now demonstrate that reasonable jurists would find the district court's conclusion that he was not denied the effective assistance of trial counsel to be debatable or wrong. He has made no such showing. 11 Rittenhouse's first ineffective assistance claim stems from a phrase that was included in nine different instructions submitted to the jury at Rittenhouse's trial to which his trial counsel did not object: 12 To sustain the charge of criminal sexual assault as charged in count IV involving the penis of Jeffery Whitehead and vagina of Mal Chaplin, the State must prove the following propositions: First: That Whitehead, one for whose conduct the defendant is legally responsible, committed an act of sexual penetration upon Mal Chaplin . . . . 13 Rittenhouse asserts that the emphasized language contains an improper presumption of legal responsibility and that this error is magnified by the fact that his culpability for the sexual assault and murder charges was based on a theory of legal accountability for the actions of Whitehead and Chaszar. Thus, Rittenhouse claimed before the Illinois courts that he was provided with ineffective assistance of trial counsel when his counsel failed to object to the inclusion of the emphasized language in the jury instructions. 14 In reviewing Rittenhouse's habeas petition, the district court evaluated the Illinois Appellate Court's decision rejecting Rittenhouse's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. See Rittenhouse, No. 98-3286, slip op. at 5-14. In so doing, the district court reviewed the appellate court's use of the framework provided by the Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), to review ineffective assistance of counsel claims. The district court likewise reviewed the appellate court's application of Strickland to the facts of this case, as well as its ultimate conclusion that the jury instructions: 15 taken as a whole, informed the jury of its responsibility to determine, first, whether defendant was accountable for the conduct of his codefendants in sexually assaulting the victim and, second, once it found defendant accountable, to find defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. These instructions did not direct a verdict in favor of the State. Thus, defense counsel cannot be deemed ineffective for failing to object to the State's tendered instructions. 16 People v. Rittenhouse, 294 III.App.3d 1126, 242 III.Dec. 584, 721 N.E.2d 863(1998). The district court concluded that [t]he Appellate Court properly stated the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel set forth in . . . Strickland, Rittenhouse v. O'Sullivan, No. 98-3286, slip op. at 13 (C.D. Ill. Sept. 14, 2000), and that the Illinois court's conclusions were not an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent to the facts, id. at 14. We agree with the district court's analysis. 17 Although we acknowledge that the language Rittenhouse challenges might have been worded more clearly, other portions of the instructions ensured that the jury was informed that it could not presume that Rittenhouse was legally responsible for the actions of Whitehead and Chaszar: 18 It is not necessary for the State to show that it was or may have been the original intent of the defendant or another for whose conduct the defendant is legally responsible to kill Mal Chaplin. The State still must prove that the defendant had the requisite intent to promote or facilitate the commission of the underlying offense of criminal sexual assault in order to hold the defendant legally responsible for first degree murder, based upon the commission of criminal sexual assault. 19 (emphasis added). Additionally, the instructions reiterated to the jury that it was the State's burden to prove each element of every charge beyond a reasonable doubt, which included Rittenhouse's legal responsibility for the actions of Chaszar and Whitehead. Furthermore, Rittenhouse's counsel, as well as the State's Attorney, emphasized in closing argument that the question for the jury was whether Rittenhouse could be held legally responsible for the actions of his co-defendants. Thus, we find that the jury instructions Rittenhouse challenges, taken as a whole, were not improper, and that his counsel's failure to object to this language was not so serious that [he] was not functioning as the 'counsel' guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment or that Rittenhouse was prejudiced by his counsel's performance. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. Therefore, we find that the district court's assessment of the Illinois Appellate Court's determination that Rittenhouse's counsel did not provide ineffective assistance of counsel in failing to object to these instructions is not an assessment that reasonable jurists would find to be incorrect or even debatable. Consequently, we will not amend the district court's certificate of appealability to include this issue. 20 Rittenhouse also asks us to amend the certificate of appealability to include his claim that he was deprived of the effective assistance of appellate counsel when his attorney did not challenge the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on his mere presence theory of defense. The problem with this claim, however, is that although Rittenhouse presented it to the Illinois courts during the course of his post-conviction proceedings, he did not present it when he filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court. Thus, he has waived this claim on appeal. See Drake v. Clark, 14 F.3d 351, 355 (7th Cir. 1994) ([T]he law is clear that any claim not presented to the district court is waived on appeal.) (internal quotation omitted). Therefore, we decline to amend the certificate of appealability granted by the district court, and we will now turn to the claims included in that certificate.