Court Opinion

ID: 9853103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:42:42.695342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:40.957388
License: Public Domain

SILER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Before this case was appealed to the Supreme Court and remanded, I dissented from the majority opinion in Richey v. Mitchell, 395 F.3d 660, 688 (6th Cir.2005). I now concur in part and dissent in part, consistent with my previous dissent.
First, I agree with the majority that the State waived certain objections under Holland v. Jackson, 542 U.S. 649, 124 S.Ct. 2736, 159 L.Ed.2d 683 (2004) (per curiam). Therefore, we can consider the evidence provided to the district court but which was not discovered in the state court proceedings. I also concur in the majority’s conclusion that Richey did not rebut the state court’s determination that Gregory DuBois was a qualified expert. Finally, I concur with the majority in determining that the issue of whether Richey’s counsel erred by prematurely placing the forensic expert’s name on the witness list was pro*365cedurally defaulted, so we cannot consider the question. However, I depart from the majority when it concludes that the state courts unreasonably applied the law from Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), in holding that Richey had constitutionally effective assistance of counsel.
As I stated in my previous dissent, Richey, 395 F.3d at 690, I agree that the issue is not totally procedurally defaulted, but I disagree with the majority on the question of deficient performance. It is not necessary to determine prejudice, because I would find that the Ohio Court of Appeals did not unreasonably apply Strickland in concluding that there was no ineffective assistance of counsel. Since we have already determined that DuBois was a properly qualified expert, we cannot now complain that it was error by counsel to employ him in the case. The majority criticizes counsel for his failure to determine if the State’s arson conclusion was impervious to attack. Yet the expert, Du-Bois, later agreed entirely with the State’s experts. Certainly, counsel should have consulted with DuBois earlier in the case, but since DuBois eventually agreed that the State’s conclusion of arson was correct, it would have been of no value to have learned that earlier.
As the majority observes, counsel did not have a duty to shop around for another expert who would refute the conclusions of DuBois and the State’s experts. Years later, Richey found the experts, Andrew Armstrong and Richard Custer, who have now said that they could have undermined the case against Richey. However, counsel does not have a duty to “continue looking for experts just because the one he has consulted gave an unfavorable opinion.” Dees v. Caspiri, 904 F.2d 452, 454 (8th Cir.1990) (per curiam). Unless counsel has reason to doubt the objectivity of an expert, the failure to obtain a new impartial expert will not be objectively unreasonable. See Jones v. Murray, 947 F.2d 1106, 1112 (4th Cir.1991).
Even if the Ohio court applied Strickland incorrectly, that is not sufficient under the law. Instead, Richey must show that the state court “applied Strickland to the facts of his case in an objectively unreasonable manner.” Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 699, 122 S.Ct. 1843, 152 L.Ed.2d 914 (2002). Richey has not shown that here. Therefore, I would not find that the decisions of the Ohio courts were contrary to or unreasonable applications of federal law as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Thus, I would affirm the decision of the district court in denying the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. ' '