Brady v. Pfister

• Decision Date: 01 April 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–3365.,11–3365.
• Citation: 711 F.3d 818
• Parties: Isaiah BRADY, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Randy PFISTER, Acting Warden, Pontiac Correctional Center, Respondent–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

711 F.3d 818

Isaiah BRADY, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.Randy PFISTER, Acting Warden, Pontiac Correctional Center, Respondent–Appellee.

No. 11–3365.

United States Court of Appeals,Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 17, 2012.

Decided April 1, 2013.

Jodi Garvey, Daniel A. Rufo (argued), Attorneys, Blegen & Garvey, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner–Appellant.

Garson Fischer (argued), Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Respondent–Appellee.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and BAUER and WOOD, Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Circuit Judge.

Isaiah Brady was convicted in Illinois state court of first-degree murder for the shooting death of Andrea McDaniel, his girlfriend and the mother of his eighteen-month-old daughter. Brady no longer disputes that he shot McDaniel, though he claims it was an accident and has proffered four witnesses to corroborate his story. None of them testified at trial, because Brady's lawyer did not call them. This amounted to constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel, in Brady's view. The state courts were not persuaded that this omission was serious enough to undermine his conviction, and the district court held that their decision was not so unreasonable that federal relief was possible. Even assuming that the performance of Brady's lawyer fell below constitutional standards, we conclude that Brady's inability to show prejudice dooms his petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We therefore affirm.

I

A

McDaniel arrived at the emergency room of Provident Hospital in Chicago in the early hours of May 10, 2001, with a gunshot wound to the head. She died two days later. Her death was ruled a homicide, and Brady quickly became a suspect. After several weeks on the run, Brady was arrested in Los Angeles, California, on June 6, 2001, extradited to Illinois, and charged with murder.

Brady was convicted in a bench trial in November 2002. The prosecution's theory was that Brady, who had a history of abusing McDaniel, shot her in the course of an argument that broke out when she attempted to leave him. To prove its case, the state presented witnesses to testify about: (1) Brady's history of domestic violence toward McDaniel; (2) Brady's actions before and after the shooting; (3) physical evidence found in Brady and McDaniel's apartment; and (4) Brady's flight to California.

To establish the first point, the state presented several police officers who had responded to domestic disturbance calls at Brady and McDaniel's apartment in the past. On some occasions, the officers had discovered serious problems. For example, about 11 months before the shooting, officers had to force their way into the apartment as they heard McDaniel screaming for help. Once inside, they observed McDaniel with bruises on her arm and face; she told them that these were the results of Brady's having hit her with a broomstick. After he was placed under arrest and informed of his rights, Brady told the officers that he beat McDaniel because she stayed out at night and did not take care of their children.

Corey Hall, a close friend of McDaniel who lived across the courtyard from Brady and McDaniel's apartment, also provided information about Brady's actions before the shooting. On the night of May 9, 2001, Hall and some friends, including Brady and McDaniel, were sitting on Hall's back porch. Hall testified that Brady had with him a .38–caliber revolver, which Hall saw when it fell out of Brady's pants. Later that evening, Hall joined Brady and McDaniel for tacos in their apartment; he left shortly after midnight. Approximately one hour and 10 minutes later, Hall was on his way to a nearby store when he saw Brady walking in the direction of Brady's own apartment. Hall recalled that Brady seemed nervous.

Three witnesses—Antoinette Dill, Gail Gray, and Wanda Riley—testified about Brady's actions in the wake of the shooting. Dill, who lived on the floor below Brady and McDaniel, watched as Brady removed McDaniel from the apartment. At about 1:30 a.m., Dill heard Brady and another man (who turned out to be Brady's stepfather) speaking near her window. According to Dill, the other man said “she's dead,” to which Brady responded, “she's not dead yet, help me carry her.” Dill then heard a woman screaming for someone to call an ambulance and saying “don't move her.” As Dill left her apartment to offer help, she saw Brady and another man placing McDaniel in the back seat of a black car. A woman (Brady's mother) was sitting in the car and asked Dill to call 911, but Brady responded that there was no time and that they needed to drive McDaniel to the hospital.

Gray, an emergency room nurse at Provident Hospital, was on duty when Brady drove up with McDaniel around 1:35 a.m. Brady identified himself as McDaniel's boyfriend. After taking McDaniel to the resuscitation room, Gray spoke briefly with Brady about McDaniel's medical history. About 10 to 15 minutes after Gray returned to the resuscitation room, a police officer came looking for Brady, but Gray was unable to find him.

Riley, Brady's grandmother, lived around the corner from Provident Hospital. Some time after 1:30 a.m., Brady showed up at her apartment and asked to borrow her car. He told Riley that McDaniel had been shot and that he needed to pick up his daughter, who was apparently still back at the apartment. Riley needed her car for work the following day, and so she refused Brady's request. Brady grabbed her car keys anyway and tried to leave, taking along some clothes that belonged to Riley's son. Riley followed him and recovered the keys. Brady then ran off in the direction of his apartment, leaving the clothes behind. Five minutes later, Brady's mother and stepfather arrived at Riley's home with Brady's daughter.

Several witnesses described the physical evidence. Most importantly for our purposes, Officer Joseph Dunigan testified about the chaotic condition of McDaniel and Brady's apartment immediately following the shooting. There was blood on the rear stairs as well as in the kitchen; bloody towels and clothing lay on the kitchen floor. The master bedroom was a mess: the door was marked and damaged near the handle; clothes and a bloody mattress were strewn about; a television was on the floor; and there was blood on the wall. Dunigan recovered two .38–caliber cartridges from the bedroom.

The final support for the state's case came from Brady's flight to California. Makeeta Burke testified that she met Brady in a Los Angeles bar. Brady told Burke that his name was Rico Holt, that he was from New York, and that he was in California to care for his grandfather. He volunteered that he was on the run from the FBI because some of his friends were drug dealers. Shortly before his arrest, Brady told Burke that he had accidentally killed his daughter's mother when his gun unexpectedly fired as he took it off a shelf. Brady said that he fled to California because the police had come to his home on other occasions when he and McDaniel were arguing. He asserted that he was planning to turn himself in as soon as his family was able to hire a lawyer.

After he was arrested, Brady continued for a time to maintain that his name was Rico Holt. The Chicago police officer who handled Brady's extradition from California testified that Brady identified himself as Holt when they first spoke in the Los Angeles County Jail.

Brady's trial counsel presented only one defense witness: Brady's grandfather, Claude Sanders. Sanders testified that he advised Brady to leave town after the shooting because he had heard that Brady's life was in danger.

The court found Brady guilty of first-degree murder. It credited the testimony of Burke and Hall and concluded that their account supported the inference that Brady (as opposed to someone else, such as an intruder) had shot McDaniel. The court rejected the idea that the shooting was an accident. Believing that Brady's story to Burke was fabricated to maintain his relationship with her, the court found it not to be credible. The court also found that Brady's behavior after the shooting was not consistent with an accident. It noted that Brady did not call paramedics or seek help from his neighbors; instead, he delayed McDaniel's treatment for a “significant time” when he decided to call his mother first. Brady then attempted to obtain fresh clothes and a car, suggesting an intent to flee. He never returned to the hospital to check on McDaniel, nor did he turn himself in or seek legal advice. Suspiciously, he fled to California and assumed an alias. In the court's view, these were not the actions one would expect of a person who accidentally had shot a loved one. The court sentenced Brady to consecutive sentences of 25 years each for murder and for personally discharging the firearm that killed McDaniel, for a total of 50 years.

B

In 2006, Brady filed a pro se post-conviction petition in state court arguing, among other things, that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to present several witnesses. Attached to the petition were affidavits from four people—Marshawn Brady, Sondra Burke, Elliott Moore, and Flora Small—stating what testimony they would have provided had they been called.

Marshawn Brady is Brady's stepfather. In his affidavit, he swore that he and Brady's mother went to the apartment after the shooting to get Brady's daughter. While Brady's mother tended to the daughter, Marshawn forced his way into Brady and McDaniel's bedroom and ransacked the room looking for valuables. Marshawn said that the bedroom was neat when he entered and that he alone was responsible for the disarray Officer Dunigan encountered later that morning.

Sondra Burke, a friend, stated in her affidavit that she saw McDaniel alive at 12:20 a.m., when she picked up Brady from the couple's apartment. She drove Brady to her house, stopping at a payphone along the way so that Brady could call his mother. Brady and Burke spent about 35 minutes at Burke's...