Court Opinion

ID: 9497516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:53:08.874458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:14.458262
License: Public Domain

TERENCE T. EVANS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This, at least to me, is a fairly simple case. It is undisputed that Davis killed *1068Coleman by stabbing him in the chest with a knife during a fight more than 8 years ago. While Coleman went to the cemetery, Davis went to court charged with murder in the first degree. He faced a sentence of between 20 to 60 years or up to life in prison if convicted as charged. But, no doubt due at least in part to the efforts of his trial counsel (the one who, if this habeas proceeding is ultimately successful, must have been constitutionally ineffective) Davis escaped conviction on the charge of first degree murder and was found guilty instead of the lesser offense of murder in the second degree. He received a sentence of 18 years.
Davis says he was denied the effective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed to investigate a self-defense claim' — • that Coleman had a knife (one, apparently, with a “round tip”) when he was killed. The Illinois courts that reviewed this claim correctly identified Strickland as the controlling Supreme Court precedent and determined, among other things, that Davis failed to meet its “prejudice prong.” The district court, in denying habeas relief, found, under AEDPA, that the state courts’ resolution of the issue was not unreasonable. I agree with that conclusion and would affirm the denial of Davis’s petition for relief.
Some of the facts, as reported, are bizarre. As the majority puts it, the Coleman/Davis altercation “erupted” when Coleman “attempted to use illegal drugs in Davis’s apartment” and Davis “forbade him from doing so .... ” This scenario seems a tad strange as the majority goes on to report (at page 1055) that Davis himself was “high and incoherent” at the time and “still under the influence of a three-day binge of alcohol, cocaine, and heroin use.”
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The case against Davis had three components: Coleman’s dead body; the testimony of Lovell Love, who was in the apartment during the fight and, as the majority puts it, “awoke from his alcohol-induced slumber and attempted to separate the parties”; and a detective who testified about Davis’s statements after his arrest. The detective testified that Davis said Coleman was not armed during the encounter. Love, in his testimony, agreed.
Given this state of affairs, I would say Davis’s lawyer must have done a fairly good job, for he avoided a conviction on the more serious charge of first degree murder. Despite this state of affairs, the majority orders a remand to the district court to conduct an evidentiary hearing and flesh out what seven uncalled witnesses (only one of whom, Moses Perry, was even in the apartment when Coleman was killed) have to say about the case. This order comes despite the fact that Davis has never properly proffered (with, for example, affidavits) what the unheard testimony would be. We also don’t know if any of the missing seven “witnesses” can even be found. As I see it, Davis has fallen woefully short of meeting the strict requirements for getting a rare federal court evidentiary hearing. The governing statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2), provides:
If the applicant has failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State Court proceedings, the court shall not hold an evidentiary hearing on the claim unless the applicant shows that—
(A) the claim relies on-
(ii) a factual predicate that could not have been previously discovered through the exercise of due diligence; and
(B) the facts underlying the claim would be sufficient to establish by *1069clear and convincing evidence that but for constitutional error, no reasonable fact finder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.
During state postconviction proceedings, Davis failed to put forth affidavits, or anything similar, to substantiate his claim about the substance of the missing testimony.
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Finally, as I see it, Davis cannot satisfy the requirement that the facts underlying his claim of self-defense which could be developed at the evidentiary hearing would be sufficient to establish by, as the statute requires, “clear and convincing evidence” that “no reasonable fact finder” would have found him guilty of second degree murder. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.