Court Opinion

ID: 9563198
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:37:43.260375+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:46.339218
License: Public Domain

ROYNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
. The right to counsel — to effective counsel — ensures a fair trial by requiring that counsel vigorously advance a defendant’s claim of innocence. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 344, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963); Strickland, 466 U.S. at 684-86, 104 S.Ct. 2052. But here counsel not only failed to defend Darryl Allen at all stages of his trial, counsel actually harmed him by eliciting testimony from the arresting officer, Joseph Farmer, that Allen said nothing to defend himself after his arrest. The state appellate court held that Allen was not prejudiced by this error, and the majority agrees. Because I believe that the state appellate court unreasonably applied Strickland in what was essentially a one-witness case, I am compelled to dissent.
' I join with the majority’s holdings in section 11(A) and 11(C) regarding Allen’s argument that the state court applied the wrong standard to his claims of ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. But I part ways with the majority in section 11(B), which holds that the state appellate court did not unreasonably apply Strickland in concluding that the evidence against Allen was “overwhelming.” I conclude that the state court did unreasonably apply Strickland in this regard. I reach this- conclusion even though I agree that the testimony of an eyewitness like Cheryl Smithson can be sufficient to affirm a conviction. See United States ex rel. Hampton v. Leibach, 347 F.3d 219, 255 (7th Cir.2003) (holding that even vulnerable eyewitness testimony can be “more than sufficient to convict”). As the majority rightly points out, Smithson observed the robber at close range, she fingered Allen *604without hesitation in a photographic array and at trial, and she said she had seen him before.
But the relevant issue here is not the sufficiency of evidence, but whether Smithson’s testimony overwhelmingly supports a conviction. It does not. See Krist v. Eli Lilly & Co., 897 F.2d 293, 297 (7th Cir.1990) (noting that confidence in a memory does not necessarily support its accuracy); Elizabeth F. Loftus et al., Eyewitness Testimony: Civil and Criminal § 4-14 (4th ed.2007) (noting that a victim can confuse recent acquaintances with the perpetrator of a crime). The evidence against Allen was particularly weak: The surveillance video — the state’s only physical evidence— does not corroborate Smithson’s testimony that the perpetrator had entered and left the store shortly before the robbery, and the video was not clear enough to support her identification. The state’s only other evidence — testimony intended to show that Allen fled the state after he committed the crime — was meager: unremarkably, Allen was found in Atlanta, where his sister lives, during the Christmas holidays.
We have repeatedly held that one eyewitness’s testimony such as Smithson’s was not “so overwhelming that the outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion,” Hampton, 347 F.3d at 255; see Wright v. Gramley, 125 F.3d 1038, 1043 (7th Cir.1997) (describing as “weak” state’s case relying almost exclusively on testimony of two eyewitnesses); United States ex rel. Freeman v. Lane, No. 89 C 4642, 1990 WL 70558 at *6 (N.D.Ill. May 16, 1990) (evidence of guilt not overwhelming where conviction was based on testimony of lone eyewitness and no physical evidence corroborated witness’s testimony), aff'd, Freeman v. Lane, 962 F.2d 1252 (7th Cir.1992); see also Anderson v. Johnson, 338 F.3d 382, 393-94 (5th Cir.2003) (describing as “relatively weak” case relying on two eyewitnesses’ testimony); Towns v. Smith, 395 F.3d 251, 260-61 (6th Cir.2005) (describing single eyewitness’s shaky identification as “scant” evidence of defendant’s guilt).
With no other evidence linking Allen to the crime, and with the video surveillance not corroborating Smithson’s identification, Detective Farmer’s testimony that Allen was uncooperative and did not respond to post-arrest questioning acquired undeserved importance. As the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 180, 95 S.Ct. 2133, 45 L.Ed.2d 99 (1975), “the jury is likely to assign much more weight to the defendant’s previous silence than is warranted.” Allen’s counsel was incompetent for eliciting this testimony because its only probable effect was to sway the jurors to find guilt. Without evidence of Allen’s post-arrest silence, the jury would have had to decide whether Smithson’s identification was accurate and strong enough to convict — an arduous task. But Farmer’s testimony of Allen’s uncooperative behavior, and his refusal to answer questions related to the case, communicated to the jury that he was conscious of his guilt — a criminal with something to hide.
Under these circumstances, it is not reasonable to describe the case against Allen as so overwhelming that there is not a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unexplained decision to probe the arresting officer about Allen’s post-arrest silence, the outcome would have been different. Indeed, on analogous facts we have concluded that two eyewitness identifications — one by a witness who previously knew the defendant — did not constitute evidence of such an overwhelming character that it could sustain a conviction where the prosecution had commented on the defendant’s post-arrest *605silence. See United States ex rel. Ross v. Fike, 534 F.2d 731, 734 (7th Cir.1976).
In fact, in the earlier trial in which the same evidence was presented absent the evidence of post-arrest silence no guilty verdict was reached and the trial ended in a mistrial. Given the limited evidence of guilt in this ease, it was an unreasonable application of Strickland to hold that the evidence was overwhelming and, therefore, that prejudice was not shown. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.