Opinion ID: 1223860
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The performance of Thompson's appellate counsel

Text: Thompson argues, and the district court agreed, that his appellate counsel performed deficiently by not raising a Blakely claim in Thompson's appeal to the Ohio Court of Appeals. In reaching this decision, the district court largely relied on the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation, which contained a fresh review of the factfinding done by the state trial court at Thompson's sentencing, and concluded that this factfinding plainly violated the rule laid out in Blakely. Thompson's appellate counsel was thus found to be deficient for failing to raise this claim. But this analysis fails to consider the context of Thompson's appeal. Blakely extended the holding of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), to the sentencing-guideline scheme used by the state of Washington. Apprendi had held that, [o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. Blakely explained that the `statutory maximum' for Apprendi purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.  Blakely, 542 U.S. at 303, 124 S.Ct. 2531 (emphasis in original). The district court concluded that Ohio's then-applicable sentencing procedures violated Blakely by requiring the state trial court to make at least one of four factual findings considered to be aggravating factors before giving a defendant like Thompson a sentence greater than the statutory minimum. Although judge-made factual findings that simply increase a statutory minimum sentence would not normally violate Blakely, see Arias v. Hudson, 589 F.3d 315, 317 (6th Cir.2009), then-applicable Ohio law declared that the statutory minimum was the appropriate sentence in the absence of any aggravating factors, see State v. Edmonson, 86 Ohio St.3d 324, 715 N.E.2d 131, 133 (1999). The vast majority of Ohio state courts to address the issue of whether Ohio's sentencing procedures ran afoul of Blakely at the time Thompson filed his direct appeal had reached the opposite conclusion from that of the district court. When Thompson filed his briefs for his two appeals on July 7, 2005, 8 of the 12 districts comprising the Ohio Court of Appeals had issued decisions holding Blakely inapplicable to Ohio's sentencing laws. See State v. Trubee, No. 9-03-65, 2005 WL 335833, at -9 (Ohio Ct.App.3d Dist. Feb. 14, 2005) (rejecting a defendant's Blakely challenge to Ohio's sentencing laws); State v. Wheeler, No. 04CA1, 2004 WL 2827714, at -4 (Ohio Ct.App. 4th Dist. Nov. 26, 2004) (same); State v. Iddings, No.2004CAA06043, 2004 WL 3563921, at (Ohio Ct.App. 5th Dist. Nov. 8, 2004) (same); State v. Goins, No. 02 CA 68, 2005 WL 704865, at -19 (Ohio Ct.App. 7th Dist. Mar. 21, 2005) (same); State v. Cooper, No. 84645, 2005 WL 1541000, at -3 (Ohio Ct.App. 8th Dist. June 30, 2005) (same); State v. Rowles, No. 22007, 2005 WL 19440, at -6 (Ohio Ct.App. 9th Dist. Jan. 5, 2005) (same); State v. Reen, No.2003-A-0077, 2005 WL 1009826, at -3 (Ohio Ct.App. 11th Dist. April 29, 2005) (same); State v. Farley, No. CA2004-04-085, 2005 WL 1131745, at -5 (Ohio Ct. App. 12th Dist. May 16, 2005) (same). Two more appellate districts issued decisions reaching the same conclusion while Thompson's appeal was being briefed. See State v. Weese, No. H-05-003, 2005 WL 1845256, at -2 (Ohio Ct.App. 6th Dist. Aug. 5, 2005) (rejecting a Blakely challenge to Ohio's sentencing laws); State v. Sanchez, No. 04AP-1320, 2005 WL 1745315, at -3 (Ohio Ct.App. 10th Dist. July 26, 2005) (same). Only one district had held that Blakely was applicable to Ohio's sentencing laws, State v. Montgomery, 159 Ohio App.3d 752, 825 N.E.2d 250, 252-55 (2005), and even there a different panel within that same district had previously reached the opposite conclusion, State v. Bell, No. C-030726, 2004 WL 1531904, at  (Ohio Ct.App. 1st Dist. July 9, 2004) (holding Blakely inapplicable to Ohio's sentencing procedures). Perhaps more importantly, the division before which Thompson's appeal was pendingthe Ohio Court of Appeals' Seventh Districthad rejected the argument at least twice before. See Goins, 2005 WL 704865, at -19 (reasoning that the Ohio sentencing statutes do not run afoul of Blakely ), and State v. Barnette, No. 02 CA 65, 2004 WL 3090228, at -16 (Ohio Ct.App. 7th Dist. Dec. 28, 2004) (same). Thus, during the entire time that Thompson's appeal was pending, a Blakely claim had virtually no chance of success in the Ohio Court of Appeals' Seventh District. The claims that Thompson's appellate counsel did raisethat the trial court erred by (1) allowing a state's witness to make unsolicited comments to the jury, (2) conducting an inadequate voir dire, (3) sentencing Thompson to the maximum available sentences, (4) permitting the state to wrongly imply that Thompson had a prior criminal record, and (5) permitting the state to improperly shift the burden of proof to Thompson in closing argument seem reasonably worthwhile in contrast. This demonstrates that Thompson's appellate counsel did not perform deficiently by failing to raise a Blakely claim that was virtually certain to be rejected. See Webb, 586 F.3d at 399 (explaining that appellate counsel is deficient only if the unraised claim is clearly stronger than the claims that were raised); see also United States v. Fields, 565 F.3d 290, 294 (5th Cir.2009) ([W]e have held that counsel is not ineffective for failing to raise a claim that courts in the controlling jurisdiction have repeatedly rejected.). The fact that the Seventh District would almost certainly have rejected a Blakely claim in 2005 distinguishes this case from this court's recent unpublished decision in Benning v. Warden, Lebanon Correctional Institution, No. 08-3260, 2009 WL 2868822 (6th Cir. Sept. 8, 2009). Benning found that the petitioner's appellate counsel was ineffective for not raising a Blakely claim in his brief to the Ohio Court of Appeals' First District, filed three months after Thompson's direct-appeal briefs were filed in this case. Id. at -8. The First District, however, was the lone court out of Ohio's 12 districts that had granted relief on a Blakely claim at the time. Id. at . Furthermore, Benning's appellate counsel raised only one relatively weak argument contesting the sufficiency of the evidence in the case, id. (referring to a sufficiency-of-the-evidence argument as a perennial loser), which again contrasts with this case where appellate counsel raised several plausible arguments. In fact, Benning's other holdingrejecting Benning's ineffective-assistance-of- trial counsel claimsupports our conclusion in this case. Benning had argued that his trial counsel was also ineffective for failing to make a Blakely objection during his sentencing hearing. Id. at -7. But at the time of Benning's sentencing hearing, the earlier First District decision rejecting a Blakely challenge was still good law, so any Blakely objection that trial counsel might have made would have been futile. See id. Accordingly, Benning held that [a]lthough prudent counsel would have preserved a Blakely claim under these circumstances, counsel's failure to anticipate that [the Ohio Supreme Court] would overrule binding First District precedent was not constitutionally unreasonable. Id. at . The analysis in Benning thus mirrors our own. Turning back to the present case, there was no point in raising a Blakely claim in the Seventh District except to preserve it for further appeal in the hope that the controlling law would change. And Thompson has been unable to cite any precedent holding that appellate counsel should be deemed ineffective for failing to raise a claim that he or she knows will be found without merit solely to preserve it for a later appeal. We are aware, of course, of the fact that the Ohio Supreme Court concluded that Blakely invalidated portions of Ohio's sentencing laws the year after Thompson's appeal was briefed and argued. See State v. Foster, 109 Ohio St.3d 1, 845 N.E.2d 470 (2006). But Strickland specifically warns of the distorting effects of hindsight when considering the strategic choices made by counsel. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052. In sum, appellate counsel is not ineffective for failing to predict the development of the law. See Lott v. Coyle, 261 F.3d 594, 609 (6th Cir.2001) (holding that a petitioner's appellate counsel was not ineffective for failing to make a particular argument because we cannot conclude that Lott's counsel should have reasonably anticipated the change in the law, even though there were conflicting opinions in the Ohio Court of Appeals on the issue); Alcorn v. Smith, 781 F.2d 58, 62 (6th Cir.1986) (noting that nonegregious errors such as failure to perceive or anticipate a change in the law ... generally cannot be considered ineffective assistance of counsel); see also Green v. Johnson, 116 F.3d 1115, 1125 (5th Cir.1997) ([T]here is no general duty on the part of defense counsel to anticipate changes in the law.); Spaziano v. Singletary, 36 F.3d 1028, 1039 (11th Cir.1994) (We have held many times that reasonably effective representation cannot and does not include a requirement to make arguments based on predictions of how the law may develop. (alterations, citations, and internal quotation marks omitted)). On the other hand, counsel's failure to raise an issue whose resolution is clearly foreshadowed by existing decisions might constitute ineffective assistance of counsel. Lucas v. O'Dea, 179 F.3d 412, 420 (6th Cir.1999) (noting that counsel will be found ineffective for failing to raise an argument that would have been unsuccessful at the time only in a rare case, and holding that counsel was not ineffective for failing to make a particular argument under Kentucky law where the law was in a curious state at the time). Given that the vast majority of precedent in Ohio had already determined that Blakely was not applicable to Ohio's sentencing laws at the time Thompson's appeal was decided, the Ohio Supreme Court's later decision to the contrary was not clearly foreshadowed. If anything, the decision was an abrupt change from prior Ohio precedent. Thompson therefore cannot show that his counsel performed deficiently by failing to raise a Blakely claim, and he thus fails to satisfy the performance prong of Strickland. See Flannery v. Hudson, No. 1:06CV1938, 2008 WL 1787155, at -4 (N.D.Ohio April 17, 2008) (rejecting an ineffective-assistance-of-appellate-counsel claim for failing to raise a Blakely claim in the Ohio Court of Appeals' Fifth District during the same time period as Thompson's direct appeal).