Hartsfield v. Dorethy
| Decision Date | 03 February 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 18-1736,18-1736 |
| Citation | 949 F.3d 307 |
| Parties | Phillip HARTSFIELD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Stephanie DORETHY, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Geneva Lynette Penson, Attorney, LAW OFFICE OF GENEVA L. PENSON, LLC, Aurora, IL, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Nicholas Moeller, Joshua M. Schneider, Attorneys, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Chicago, IL, for Respondent-Appellee.
Before Flaum, Rovner, and Scudder, Circuit Judges.
Fifteen years ago, an Illinois jury convicted Phillip Hartsfield of first-degree murder and home invasion. Hartsfield unsuccessfully challenged his convictions on direct appeal and collateral attack in the Illinois courts. In 2014, Hartsfield petitioned a federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus alleging seven claims. The district court denied his petition and Hartsfield appealed. We certified one of the issues Hartsfield presented for review: whether the state court reasonably held that Hartsfield’s counsel did not usurp his personal right to testify at trial. We now affirm the judgment of the district court.
On January 4, 2004, Alberto Martinez found his brother Alejandro shot dead in his bed. Police responding to the home recovered two .40-caliber shell casings inside Alejandro’s bedroom. The medical examiner identified four gunshot wounds
on Alejandro’s body and recovered one bullet. Police also noticed that the back door to the Martinez home had a crack along its narrow edge, as if it had been kicked or punched open. Later, the People of the State of Illinois ("the State") charged Phillip Hartsfield and Mohammed Abukhdeir with first-degree murder and home invasion. The co-defendants simultaneously tried their cases before separate Cook County juries.
The State put Claudia Garcia, Candy Richmond, and Kristina Kasper on the stand. Together, the women’s testimony established that they had attended a party at the Martinez home that lasted into the early morning hours on January 4. Alejandro Martinez and several other men were at the party. While there, Kasper called Hartsfield, with whom she was having a sexual relationship. Kasper got angry after she heard another woman on the phone with Hartsfield. After she hung up on Hartsfield, the men at the party asked Kasper why she was dating "a black guy," and an argument broke out between the women and the men. As the women left the house between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m., the argument continued, and one of the men struck Kasper and her friend Richmond as they got into their car.
Garcia drove Kasper and Richmond home. During the car ride, Kasper and Richmond made several phone calls. According to Garcia, Richmond gave someone Martinez’s address over the phone and threatened to have someone killed. Richmond subsequently denied making such a threat. As stated by Kasper, either she or Richmond called Hartsfield and gave him Martinez’s address.
Another woman, Katherine Chrzan, testified at Hartsfield’s trial. She claimed she was pregnant with Hartsfield’s child in January 2004. Specifically, on January 4, Chrzan explained that Hartsfield was driving with Abukhdeir in Chrzan’s car and they picked her up from a friend’s house around 4:30 a.m. While in the car, Hartsfield received a phone call, and Chrzan heard a woman raise her voice. Hartsfield told the woman that he would be there in 20 minutes. Hartsfield drove to his house and brought Chrzan up to his bedroom while Abukhdeir waited in the car. Before Hartsfield left the room, he retrieved a shotgun from underneath his bed. Hartsfield departed his house around 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. and returned at 9:00 or 9:30 a.m.
At approximately 7:00 a.m., Hartsfield and Abukhdeir picked up Richmond and Kasper in Chrzan’s car. Hartsfield drove to Martinez’s home, where he and Abukhdeir knocked on the front door. When no one answered, they returned to the car and opened the trunk. Richmond saw Hartsfield pick up a silver automatic handgun. Hartsfield and Abukhdeir then walked down the gangway beside Martinez’s home, returning five minutes later.
Back at the car, Richmond heard Abukhdeir say that "he had blood all over him," and when she looked, Richmond saw blood on Abukhdeir’s knuckles. Hartsfield told Abukhdeir to "shut the fuck up," to which Abukhdeir responded: "If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have gotten through the back door."2 Richmond also heard Abukhdeir say: "I hope you did it right." Kasper claimed she did not hear the men’s conversation. After they left Martinez’s home, Hartsfield stopped the car and put the gun in the trunk. He drove Kasper home first and Richmond second.
The next evening, Chrzan discovered her gas tank was almost empty and asked Hartsfield where he had driven her car earlier that morning. Hartsfield answered that he went to Chicago. He added that if he told her what had happened, she "wouldn’t want to come around anymore," and that "if he ever went to jail for murder, he would kill himself." Shortly afterward, Chrzan overheard Hartsfield on the phone, asking if "Sally" was registered. Chrzan understood that "Sally" was a gun.
John Waszak, a friend of Hartsfield and Abukhdeir’s, was an additional witness at their trials. He testified that on January 6, 2004, he was at the home of a man named Billy Thompson with Hartsfield and Abukhdeir. While there, Abukhdeir gave Waszak a knotted sock, which contained a .40 caliber gun barrel, spent casings, and live shells. Waszak recognized the gun as "Sally" because he had previously sold it to Abukhdeir. Waszak eventually threw the sock into the Des Plaines River. On cross-examination, defense counsel elicited testimony about inconsistencies between Waszak’s testimony and his statements to police; Waszak’s extensive criminal history; and the implausibility of Waszak dropping the sock off a bridge on a busy street.
After the State rested, Hartsfield did not put on a case. The jury convicted him of first-degree murder and home invasion. The judge sentenced him to consecutive terms of 45 and 6 years in prison.
Hartsfield directly appealed his convictions and sentence arguing that the State failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed, holding that a rational jury could have found Hartsfield guilty, high-lighting that the circumstantial evidence against Hartsfield was strong. The Illinois Supreme Court denied Hartsfield’s ensuing petition for leave to appeal.
Next, Hartsfield collaterally attacked his convictions and sentence. He petitioned the state trial court pro se contending that his trial counsel ineffectively assisted him when counsel (1) usurped his right to testify and (2) declined to call Thompson as a witness to impeach Waszak. The court appointed counsel, who amended Hartsfield’s petition reiterating those same claims. Hartsfield attached to his petition affidavits from himself, his mother, and Thompson.
In his first affidavit, Hartsfield insists that he told counsel "many times" that he wished to testify, to which counsel replied that he did not want Hartsfield to testify. Hartsfield further maintains that counsel asked his mother to "convince" him not to testify, and Hartsfield told her that counsel would not let him testify. At trial, counsel told Hartsfield that he would "get his chance" when the judge admonished him about his right to testify, but the judge never did that. When Hartsfield attempted to speak up, counsel "shushed" him. For her part, Hartsfield’s mother stated that counsel asked her to convince Hartsfield not to testify and that Hartsfield informed her that counsel would not let him testify; indeed, that counsel "shushed" him.
In his second affidavit, Hartsfield described what his testimony would have been if counsel would have permitted him to testify in his own defense. Hartsfield asserted he spent the night before the murder with Abukhdeir and Chrzan. According to his account, he left Chrzan asleep in his bedroom and then drove to Chicago by himself. Around 7:00 a.m., he unsuccessfully attempted to reach another woman with whom he was having a sexual relationship. Chrzan called Hartsfield at 8:00 a.m. asking where he was. After driving downtown, Hartsfield turned around and arrived home around 8:30 a.m. Hartsfield fell asleep and did not wake up until 6:00 p.m.
The state trial court dismissed Hartsfield’s postconviction petition. The appellate court affirmed that judgment, applying Strickland v. Washington , 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), to both ineffective assistance of counsel allegations. Important here, the appellate court held that defense counsel made "a tactical decision" in advising Hartsfield, who was aware that it was ultimately his decision not to testify. It found that the record did not support Hartsfield’s complaint that counsel prevented him from speaking up.
Relatedly, it ruled that Hartsfield’s failure to contemporaneously assert his right to testify barred his ineffective assistance claim. Even if counsel deficiently performed, the court reasoned, that did not prejudice Hartsfield because it was not reasonably likely that his proposed testimony that he was driving around at the time of the murder would have affected the jury’s verdict, especially given the strong circumstantial evidence against him. The Illinois Supreme Court denied Hartsfield’s petition for leave to appeal that followed.
In 2014, Hartsfield petitioned a federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, claiming that: (1) the State failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; (2) counsel usurped his right to testify; and (3) counsel was ineffective for failing to call Thompson as a witness. The district court denied the petition and declined to issue a certificate of appealability in 2018.
We, however, granted Hartsfield’s application for a certificate, limited to the question...
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