Williams v. Lemmon

Decision Date04 March 2009
Docket NumberNo. 06-3271.,06-3271.
PartiesRonald D. WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Bruce LEMMON, Superintendent of the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Michael K. Ausbrook (argued), Bloomington, IN, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Stephen R. Creason, Steve Carter, Kelly A. Miklos (argued), Office of The Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and MANION and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

An Indiana jury found Ronald Williams guilty of murder, and the state trial court sentenced him to 75 years' imprisonment. Williams's conviction and sentence were upheld on direct appeal and on collateral review in the Indiana courts. Williams then petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied that petition. We issued a certificate of appealability on the question whether his trial counsel rendered constitutionally deficient assistance. On appeal Williams faults trial counsel for failing to interview one of two other people who arrived at the scene where the murder was committed.

I.

In May 1998 Matthew McGarvey traveled by car with friends to a neighborhood in Indianapolis, Indiana, to buy crack cocaine. When they arrived at approximately 11:00 PM, McGarvey left the car and went alone to make his purchase. Within minutes he suffered a head injury that caused his death. McGarvey's friends were parked roughly 200 feet from where he was beaten and did not see or hear what happened. But Adair Smith and Howard Deford, also looking to buy drugs that night, had a better view.

Deford and Smith drove away after seeing McGarvey on the ground; they did not call the police. Authorities first learned about them several weeks later when a detective went to Smith's residence to question her live-in boyfriend about an unrelated homicide. Smith wanted to cooperate, hoping that it would help her boyfriend. Knowing that the officer would be interested in information about the McGarvey murder, she volunteered that she and Deford had happened upon the scene and witnessed McGarvey on the pavement surrounded by attackers. Williams, she said, struck McGarvey on the head with a black metal pole while others punched and kicked him.

Police promptly asked Deford for his version of the incident. Deford, who had been driving, said that the attack had ended before he saw anything. All that he could say of his own knowledge was that McGarvey was prone on the street, while other men (the same people who Smith had named) were laughing as they left. Despite this denial of personal knowledge, he also narrated details of the attack; according to Deford, Smith had told him these details. Some of the details that Deford furnished did not match those in Smith's statement, but Deford said that Smith had told him that "she'd seen a bunch of guys kicking this guy on the street ... [and] a guy named Blackie [Williams] hit him with a pipe."

Williams and five codefendants were charged with murder. Smith was deposed about three weeks before trial. Contradicting what she had told the detective, Smith testified that McGarvey was still standing when she and Deford turned a corner and saw him for the first time. All of the defendants she said, were kicking and punching him, and he fell to the ground after Williams hit him on the head with a black pole. Smith repeated several times during her deposition that Deford had "seen it all," but she also maintained that "by law, he's blind." Although Williams's appointed counsel, Mark Inman, participated in Smith's deposition and had read Deford's statement, he did not interview or subpoena Deford.

The defendants were tried jointly, with Smith as the state's primary witness. At the February 1999 trial, Smith repeated her assertions that she saw McGarvey "getting beat up" by the defendants. Smith insisted that while seated in Deford's car she saw Williams hit McGarvey on the head with a black pole. She also identified several other attackers and specifically described how each punched, kicked, or otherwise assaulted him. Smith conceded, though, that she had been smoking crack and marijuana on the night of the incident, and that she told the detective initially that she saw seven men beating McGarvey, not six as she said at trial. She conceded that when first interviewed she told the detective that McGarvey was on the ground, not standing, when she and Deford arrived. Smith also admitted that she agreed to speak with the detective in an effort to get her boyfriend "out of trouble." Deford was not called by any party. The jury found Williams guilty of murder. Four of Williams's codefendants were convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and the other was acquitted.

Williams appealed, arguing that (1) the state's evidence was insufficient to support his conviction, (2) the trial court abused its discretion in excluding evidence that Smith had "previously worked for the State as a confidential informant while using drugs"; and (3) the trial court should have dismissed the indictment because the prosecutor waited until trial to disclose the notes of police witnesses. The Court of Appeals of Indiana upheld Williams's conviction, as did the state supreme court. See Williams v. State, 749 N.E.2d 1139 (Ind.2001). The state appellate court also upheld the convictions of his codefendants. See Gardner v. State, 724 N.E.2d 624 (Ind. App.2000).

Williams petitioned the state judiciary for post-conviction relief, arguing that his trial counsel had furnished ineffective assistance. Williams submitted an affidavit from Deford averring that he would have testified favorably to Williams if he had been called at trial. The trial court conducted a two-part evidentiary hearing on Williams's petition. At the first part in March 2004, Inman testified that he had not interviewed Deford because Smith had said that Deford is legally blind. Nothing in the record suggests that Inman independently verified this allegation. At the hearing Inman stated that he typically would not interview a potential witness whose testimony would be "inculpatory or ... neutral." But Inman admitted that Deford's statement to the police that his knowledge of the murder was limited to what Smith had told him contradicted her testimony that Deford had witnessed the entire incident. Inman also conceded that it would have made sense to interview Deford. When asked whether he had any explanation for not contacting Deford, Inman replied that he did not.

Deford was subpoenaed but became ill, so at the second part of the hearing in June 2004 Williams entered into evidence the discovery deposition given by Deford on April 20, 2004, during the post-conviction proceedings. Deford had said in 1999 that he was working as a tow-truck driver. Had he been called at Williams's trial, he said, he would have testified that neither he nor Smith saw McGarvey being attacked. According to Deford, Smith could not have seen the assault because McGarvey was lying on the ground by himself when he and Smith arrived at the scene; Deford said that he had assumed that McGarvey was intoxicated. Deford acknowledged that he saw a group of men, including one of Williams's codefendants, standing in the street that night, but he said that the closest man "was about 10, 15 feet away" from McGarvey. Deford wore thick eyeglasses during the videotaped deposition, but he was not asked whether his vision impaired his perception of the crime scene.

The trial court denied Williams's petition for post-conviction relief. The court reasoned that Deford's testimony would not have changed the trial's outcome because his statement to the police in July 1998 that he "did not actually see anything" conflicted with his deposition testimony that Smith could not have seen the defendants attack McGarvey. See Williams v. State, No. 49G03-9807-PC123641 (Marion Superior Ct. Aug. 9, 2004) (unpublished decision). The court also declared that Deford's deposition testimony was "not credible, especially considering the visual impairment he faces." And, the court continued, Deford's absence had not prejudiced Williams because at trial Smith was "impeached with her prior inconsistent statements." The Court of Appeals of Indiana agreed with these conclusions. That court asserted that Inman "chose not to investigate Deford because his testimony would have been incriminating or neutral," and concluded that Inman's decision was "a matter of trial strategy" it would not second-guess. See Williams v. State, No. 49A04-0409-PC-482, 2005 WL 405247 (Ind.App. Feb.3, 2005) (unpublished decision). It follows, the court said, that Williams "failed to establish prejudice because he did not demonstrate that, but for counsel's error, the result of the proceeding would have been different."

Williams then sought collateral review in federal court. The district court observed that "Smith's trial testimony of Williams' attack on McGarvey was devastating to Williams. Any information casting doubt on Smith's account could have been useful to Williams's defense." But the district court concluded that the Indiana court had correctly applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), and that it was not unreasonable for that court to find that Inman's decision not to call Deford did not constitute deficient performance because his testimony "would have been incriminating or neutral." Quoting the court of appeals's conclusion, the district court determined that Williams failed to establish prejudice "because he did not demonstrate that there was a reasonable probability that, but for trial counsel's error, the result of the proceeding would have been different." The district court therefore denied Williams's petition.

II.

Williams maintains that he received ineffective assistance because his lawyer did not interview Deford, who, five years...

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