Court Opinion

ID: 9497368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:49:38.378847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:09.304670
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because I believe Aaron Cyars’s counsel’s failure to secure a limiting instruction on the appropriate use of prior inconsis*494tent statements constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), and that a contrary-view is unreasonable, I respectfully dissent.
At trial, the prosecution called three key witnesses, James Morrison (“Morrison”), Don Bailey (“Bailey”), and Todd Cyars (“Todd”), to demonstrate that Cyars acted with premeditation and deliberation when he committed the murders. When each witness did not produce any valuable evidence on direct examination, the prosecution proceeded to use unsworn statements allegedly made to police after the murders. These statements contained highly damaging comments that Cyars purportedly made to the witnesses regarding his plan to steal drugs from Taylor’s house and his admission after the fact that he had completed his plan. When confronted with the police statements, each of the three witnesses denied having made the statements or denied the truth of the statements. Because the police statements were introduced solely to impeach the witnesses, they could not be considered as substantive evidence.
Cyars’s trial counsel sought a limiting instruction from the trial judge permitting the use of the police statements of Morrison only for impeachment purposes. Because the judge had never given that kind of instruction before, he asked Cyars’s counsel to draft a proposed instruction that he could consider before issuing such an instruction. However, Cyars’s trial counsel failed to present any limiting instruction and never again renewed his request. As a result, the jury was never instructed on the proper use of the prior inconsistent statements, and was therefore permitted to give whatever weight it wished to the prior inconsistent police statements. These statements were the most damaging evidence of premeditation.
The Michigan Court of Appeals relied on the contents of these police statements when that court upheld the sufficiency of the evidence to support Cyars’s conviction for first-degree murder. Specifically, it stated:
There was evidence that before the shooting, defendant told two of the prosecution’s witnesses that he intended to take drugs from one of the decedents’ homes in order to repay a debt owed to drug dealers for whom defendant worked. There was also evidence that sometime after the shooting, defendant told those same witnesses that he had completed what he earlier planned to do.
Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) at 13. The Magistrate Judge found that the only source for these conclusions of the Michigan Court of Appeals was the unsworn police statements of Morrison and Todd. Thus, the Michigan Court of Appeals made substantive use of the very evidence that the jury should have been instructed to use only for impeachment purposes. This demonstrates both that there was little evidence of premeditation, and that even judges, let alone juries, are likely to be confused without proper instructions.
The Michigan Court of Appeals, despite its mistake of using the prior inconsistent statements for substantive purposes when evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence, did nonetheless recognize as black-letter law the principle that “Prior inconsistent statements not ‘given under oath subject to the penalty of perjury’ are hearsay and would only be admissible for impeachment purposes, not as substantive evidence.” J.A. at 14-15. Nonetheless, the Michigan Court of Appeals determined that there was no showing of prejudice. Specifically, that court wrote:
*495Defendant has not shown that the prior inconsistent statements of the witnesses, properly limited with an instruction, could have proved his theory of self-defense or disproved the elements of the offenses. Because the weight and strength of the untainted evidence presented in this case overwhelmingly supports defendant’s convictions, and because the error is relatively innocuous (indeed, it was not error for the prior inconsistent statements to be put before the jury, only that the jury could not consider those statements as substantive evidence), we conclude that defendant was not prejudiced in this regard.
J.A. at 15-16.
In this appeal, the question for this court is whether Cyars has shown ineffective assistance of counsel warranting the grant of habeas relief. We apply the analysis of Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052, with its two prongs, deficient performance and prejudice. First, Cyars must demonstrate that his trial counsel’s failure to request the limiting instruction constituted “deficient performance.” Then, he must prove that he suffered prejudice as a result of the deficient performance of counsel. Under this latter prong, Cyars must show that “there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Caver v. Straub, 349 F.3d 340, 347-48 (6th Cir.2003) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052).
The majority of this court assumes that Cyars has shown deficient performance of counsel. It is without doubt that that prong has been satisfied. Turning to the second prong, the majority concludes that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ opinion is a reasonable application of the prejudice prong of Strickland. This conclusion is unreasonable where the Michigan Court of Appeals itself has misused the very evidence that can only be used for impeachment purposes, and where there is slim other evidence to support a finding of premeditation. Moreover, the Michigan Court of Appeals completely misstated and misapplied the law when it required Cyars, in order to demonstrate prejudice under Strickland, to show that “the prior inconsistent statements of the witnesses, properly limited with an instruction, could have proved his theory of self-defense or disproved the elements of the offenses.” J.A. at 15.
For these reasons, and as thoroughly and ably articulated by Magistrate Judge Steven Pepe in his exhaustive Report and Recommendation, a conditional writ of ha-beas corpus should issue.
I respectfully dissent.