Opinion ID: 146638
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure To Move for Change of Venue or Continuance

Text: The district court acknowledged that venue was proper in the Eastern District of Tennessee and that it was unlikely that a compelling argument for change of venue could have been asserted until the eve of trial. However, the district court concluded that once Munoz's final co-defendant, George, pleaded guilty, the fundamental character of the case . . . changed dramatically. Munoz, 2009 WL 529859, at . Although the court-imposed deadline for pretrial motions had expired by that juncture, the district court concluded that a reasonably effective lawyer would nonetheless have moved for a change of venue to the Southern District of California, where Munoz residedor at the very least, a continuancebecause it would be difficult to understate the . . . practical and logistical limitations [to Munoz's ability to subpoena trial witnesses] when considering the distance between the Eastern District of Tennessee and the Southern District of California. . . . Id. at . We disagree that Bergmann's failure to move for a change of venue on the eve of trial was necessarily deficient performance. Once again, because Bergmann did not testify, we do not know why he declined to so move. As a long-time member of the local bar, [16] he may well have felt that his familiarity with the trial judge would be a great help to his case or that his own argument style or mannerisms would be received more favorably by a local Tennessee jury. Either would constitute sound trial strategy. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Further, Munoz cannot show prejudice here either. As already discussed, there is not a reasonable probability that Bergmann's failure to investigate and call additional character witnesses changed the outcome of the trial; a fortiori, there is no reasonable probability that the verdict would have been otherwise if Bergmann had secured a change of venue or a continuance, and thereby been able to put additional character witnesses on the stand. Nor is it relevant, as Munoz posits, that the jury pool in Southern California would have included a greater percent of Hispanic people who would have been less likely to group the Mexican-Americans [i.e., Munoz and Tagaban] together and. . . find a `conspiracy' between these superficially similar individuals. Appellee's Br. at 34-35. We are not free to presume that the Tennessee jury acted based upon racial prejudice or stereotyping, as courts considering ineffectiveness claims must proceed on the assumption that the decisionmaker [was] . . . impartially applying the standards that govern[ed] the decision. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052.