Ward v. Sternes

Decision Date08 July 2003
Docket NumberNo. 02-3104.,02-3104.
PartiesJames E. WARD, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Jerry L. STERNES, Respondent-Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Daniel D. Yuhas, Martin J. Ryan (Argued), Office of the State Appellate Defender, Fourth Judicial District, Springfield, IL, for Petitioner-Appellee.

Russell Kenneth Benton (Argued), Office of the Attorney General, Criminal Appeals Division, Chicago, Il, for Respondent-Appellant.

Before MANION, KANNE, and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.

KANNE, Circuit Judge.

When asked "Are you black?" and "Are you white?" by a neurologist, petitioner James E. Ward, an African-American male, earnestly answered "Yes" to both questions. Similarly, with "Yes" and "No" answers Ward indicated that a hammer was good for both cutting wood and pounding in nails, that good rubber boots both keep water out and let water in, that two pounds of flour weigh more than and less than one pound of flour, and that both boats and stones sink in water. Ward has a condition known as aphasia, resulting from blunt head trauma he suffered in 1993, which manifests itself in this disconnect between questions asked of Ward and the answers he gives.

In this appeal from the grant of Ward's habeas corpus petition, we ask whether an Illinois appellate court committed unreasonable error when it concluded that Ward's statement, "I guess, I don't know," constituted a knowing and intelligent waiver of his fundamental right to testify at his trial for the 1994 murder of his wife. The district court held that the state appellate court applied an overly deferential standard of review to the trial court's ruling that "I guess, I don't know" meant "Yes, I waive my right to testify," and erroneously supplanted trust in the defense counsel's recommendation that Ward not testify for Ward's personal understanding of his fundamental rights. The state argues that in granting Ward's motion, the district court failed to give statutorily required deference to the Illinois appellate court, which might have reached a different conclusion than the district court would have, but did not reach that conclusion unreasonably. Like the district court, we find that the Illinois appellate court committed unreasonable error when it upheld the trial court's ruling that Ward actually understood his right to testify and personally, knowingly, and intelligently waived that right. We therefore affirm.

HISTORY

In the early morning hours of September 9, 1994, Suriego Walker, Ward's stepson, awoke to the sounds of screaming coming from the living room of his house. When he got there, Suriego saw his stepfather Ward stabbing his mother Evelyn repeatedly with a kitchen knife. He struggled with Ward and disarmed him. After he was subdued, Ward rambled and mumbled, at times incoherently, at times pleading with Suriego to kill him.

For the better part of the previous evening in fact, Ward had been wandering about the house incoherently rambling getting himself angry and calming himself down in a repeating cycle. Ward started behaving this way after losing a fight to Suriego's cousin, Leroy Turner. We don't know why the fight broke out, only that it happened while Ward was intoxicated, after he, Evelyn, and a friend, Tony Clark, had been drinking beer throughout the afternoon at the house. (Ward had a blood alcohol level of .234 at the time of his arrest.) We do know, however, that the fight ended with Turner hitting Ward in the head first with a chair and then with a brass object, knocking Ward temporarily unconscious. When Ward came to, he was bleeding from his temple. Over the next few hours, he intermittently and violently accused his wife and the others present of "jumping him." It was after one of these outbursts that Ward began stabbing Evelyn.

Ward was arrested and charged with his wife's murder. On April 4, 1995, Ward was declared unfit to stand trial. But at a hearing on February 21, 1996, Ward's fitness was deemed restored. His symptoms were judged to be controllable through the use of psychotropic drugs, but the fitness report cautioned that "one must exercise patience and listen closely to what Ward is saying" as a result of his language-processing handicap. On August 19, 1996, Ward's trial began.

Only disputed issue at Ward's trial was his sanity. Because of an earlier, traumatic injury that Ward had suffered in 1993, nine months before the murder, Ward had sustained "very marked" abnormalities to the left frontal and temporal lobes of his brain. Neurologists testified at trial that the temporal lobe controls language and that the frontal lobe governs inhibition. They further testified that Ward's temporal-lobe injury resulted in his aphasia (as described above) and that the frontal-lobe injury severely impeded his ability to control his impulses. The district court observed that it's also possible that the additional injuries that Ward suffered on the day of the killing inflicted further brain damage, as Ward showed no ability to recall the events of that day beyond his fight with Turner.

The defense called two psychiatrists to testify that Ward was legally insane when he killed his wife. Both testified that Ward suffered from dementia as a result of the 1993 blunt head trauma and that the dementia made him unable to control or appreciate the criminality of his conduct during his wife's murder.

In response, the state argued that Ward's inability to restrain his impulses on the day of the murder was caused by his voluntary intoxication rather than any mental defect. On cross-examination, one of the defense's psychiatrists, Dr. Lawrence Jeckel, agreed with the prosecution's suggestion that alcohol was a "necessary component" of Ward's inability to control his actions. But the other psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Traugott, testified that Ward's dementia would have made it highly unlikely that he would have been able to control his violent impulses towards his wife even if he had been sober. Dr. Traugott further opined that, due to his condition, Ward probably lacked the ability to control his use of alcohol or drugs anyway. The state introduced no expert testimony to rebut that of Drs. Traugott and Jeckel.

On August 21, 1996, the defense concluded its case without putting Ward on the stand. The state questioned whether Ward had voluntarily waived his right to testify and requested that the court make a record of the waiver. Ward's counsel admitted that it wasn't his client, but he who had made the decision to keep Ward off the stand. He further told the court that he didn't believe he could have an informed discussion with Ward about the decision, since most of his prior exchanges with his client were one-sided, generating only an occasional "uh-uh" response from Ward. On the court's suggestion, however, defense counsel agreed to discuss the matter with him.

In chambers the next day, the court asked Ward whether his attorney had talked to him about not testifying in court and whether he agreed with that decision:

THE COURT: [Defense counsel] has indicated that it is his best advice and professional judgment that you not be called to testify yourself and he stated that he has talked to you about that. Is that true?

WARD: Yeah.

THE COURT: Do you agree with that?

WARD: I don't know what's all going to happen to me. I just been sitting around here. My wife is gone and my kid is gone and they beat me up all the time. I don't know what I'm going to do now.

THE COURT: Well, we are really not here to discuss that. We just want to make sure that you're in agreement that it is a good decision that you not testify.

WARD: I guess. I don't know.

THE COURT: [After dismissing Ward] That's the best we will ever do.

Satisfied with this colloquy, the trial court allowed the defense to rest without putting Ward on the stand. The jury rejected Ward's insanity defense and returned a verdict finding Ward guilty, but mentally ill ("GBMI verdict").

Immediately after trial, Ward asked his attorney why he had not been allowed to testify. Counsel then filed a post-trial motion alleging that Ward had not validly waived his right to testify, because he had not understood his counsel's advice.

A hearing on this post-trial motion was held on September 23, 1996. The court asked Ward whether he recalled being asked if he wanted to testify at trial. He replied, "No, I didn't know. I just said yes. That's all I know. I didn't know what I can remember, what they saying, so just said yes." When asked whether he knew "what it means to testify," he replied, "I don't know. I'm trying to find something to tell me what I know it is, but I couldn't understand what it is." So the court asked, "Did you want to tell your story?" and Ward replied, "Yes."

The court then asked Ward why he didn't tell his story. Instead of giving a reason, Ward told the court his story, and the transcript of the hearing is filled with four pages of Ward's repeating account of the events that evening, which starts and ends with the fight between him and Turner and never describes his wife's murder. The court cut him off, and after hearing arguments, denied Ward's post-trial motion:

It was clear that [defense counsel] had advised [Ward] strongly not to testify. We went back in chambers and had the defendant back there and questioned him about that, and he responded in a way that he has responded to most questions from the Court or counsel during the course of these proceedings, that yes, he was just trying to do the best he could and he would go along with that. I found at the time that he understood what [defense counsel was] talking about... and that in his own way he concurred in that, and I have no reason to change my mind at this time.

Ward received a 40 year sentence.1 On direct appeal, Ward argued (1) that the jury's rejection of the insanity defense was against the manifest weight of the...

To continue reading

Request your trial
169 cases
  • US EX REL. HARRIS v. Shaw
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
    • 13 Enero 2010
    ...of the state court be against the clear and convincing weight of the evidence before it. Conner, 375 F.3d at 649; Ward v. Sternes, 334 F.3d 696, 703-04 (7th Cir.2003). See also Mahaffey, 588 F.3d at 1146 (quoting United States v. Stephens, 514 F.3d 703, 712 (7th Cir.2008)) (reversal require......
  • Warrichaiet v. Jansen
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Wisconsin
    • 28 Julio 2006
    ...on the merits deferentially and set the state court decision aside only if the court committed unreasonable error. Ward v. Sternes, 334 F.3d 696, 704 (7th Cir.2003). Findings of fact made by the state courts are presumed correct and are rebutted only by clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S......
  • United States Ex. Rel. Lealton Chears v. Acevedo
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
    • 23 Noviembre 2010
    ...indistinguishable from those at issue in the applicable Supreme Court precedent, reached a different result.” Ward v. Sternes, 334 F.3d 696, 703 (7th Cir.2003). Here, contrary to Chears' assertion, the state appellate court's decision did not defer to the trial judge's analysis. ( See R. 29......
  • Corcoran v. Buss
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit
    • 31 Diciembre 2008
    ...constitutional rights does not "l[ie] well outside the boundaries of permissible differences of opinion." See Ward v. Sternes, 334 F.3d 696, 703 (7th Cir.2003). The decision was neither incorrect nor unreasonable to warrant the district court's grant of Corcoran habeas B. Competency to Waiv......
  • Request a trial to view additional results
1 books & journal articles
  • Review Proceedings
    • United States
    • Georgetown Law Journal No. 110-Annual Review, August 2022
    • 1 Agosto 2022
    ...988 F.3d 284, 296 (6th Cir. 2021) (presumption of correctness overcome by suff‌iciently high probability of jury bias); Ward v. Sternes, 334 F.3d 696, 705 (7th Cir. 2003) (presumption of correctness overcome because state court’s f‌inding of waiver contradicted by record); Lucero v. Holland......

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT