Meyers v. Gomez
| Decision Date | 06 October 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-2786 |
| Parties | Michael Meyers, Petitioner-Appellant, v. David Gomez, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) |
ARGUED FEBRUARY 17, 2022
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:17-cv-05687 - Charles P. Kocoras, Judge.
Before ROVNER, HAMILTON, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.
Michael Meyers was one of seven men charged and convicted with the 1989 murders of Dan Williams and Thomas Kaufman in Chicago. He appeals the district court's denial of his habeas corpus petition. He presents two claims: (1) that the Illinois Appellate Court unreasonably applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052 (1984), in rejecting his claim that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to interview and present the testimony of an alibi witness; and (2) that his conviction was based on the State's knowing use of perjured testimony in violation of Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 79 S.Ct. 1173 (1959), a claim he contends he fairly presented to the state courts but that those courts wrongfully rejected as a factual matter based on a credibility determination he says makes no sense. We affirm.
In November 1989, Jerry Williams and other members of Chicago's Del-Vikings gang accosted a woman named A.W struck her in the head with a pistol and beat her interrogated her about the location of rival Gangster Disciples gang member Kevin Young (with whom A.W. had a relationship), and then raped her.
Two days later, at approximately 10 p.m. on November 9, 1989, a group of seven masked men at the (since demolished) Stateway Gardens public housing complex shot and killed Dan Williams in the apparent and mistaken belief that he was Jerry Williams. Their bullets also struck and killed Thomas Kaufman, a security guard in a nearby building on the Illinois Institute of Technology ("IIT") campus. The seven men charged with the murders-Kevin Young, Meyers Thomas Carter, James Young, Michael Johnson, Eric Smith, and James Bannister-were all members of the Gangster Disciples gang. Meyers and five of his co-defendants were tried jointly 17 months after the shooting, in March-April 1991.[1]
A.W. testified at the trial that she met with Kevin Young and Carter in an apartment at 3547 South Federal in Stateway Gardens five hours before the shooting and identified to them the men who had assaulted her. Kevin Young and Carter then left the apartment and later returned with three other men: Meyers, James Young, and Johnson. The five men left the apartment around 10 p.m. dressed in black and carrying guns; A.W. stayed behind. The five men returned to the apartment about 20 minutes later, wearing ski masks (in one case, a stocking cap) over their faces. At that time, Kevin Young took all but one of the guns and placed them in a radiator. (James Young took the remaining gun with him.) In her testimony, A.W. admitted that she had lied to the police after the shooting when she told them that she was spending time with a cousin on the night of the shooting and had not seen Kevin Young or any of the other defendants at that time.
The state's key witness at the trial was Deanda Wilson, who was 12 years old at the time of the shooting and 14 by the time of the trial. Wilson socialized with members of the Del-Vikings gang. Wilson said that on the night of the shooting, he and a friend were standing in a hallway on the first floor of the Stateway Gardens building located at 3517-19 South Federal Street, one story above ground level. (His grandmother lived in that building.) Wilson and his friend were on the 3519 side of the building. He heard people yelling "here come Ace Dog," the street name for Kevin Young. A861. [2] He went outside to the first-floor landing or balcony-or "porch," as the witnesses referred to it-overlooking a playlot and saw a group of seven men dressed in black approaching from the 3547 South Federal building, where Wilson lived with his mother and brother. Kevin Young was wearing a baseball cap and the other six were wearing knitted or skull caps with their faces exposed. Wilson knew all seven men and recognized them; all were members of the Gangster Disciples. He ran up to the second-floor porch of the building and from there saw that Meyers (whom he knew by the street name "Ice Mike"), Kevin Young, and Carter were now standing at the front of the ground-floor breezeway of the 3517-19 building that separated the two sides of the building. Smith and Bannister were standing directly below Wilson in front of a janitor's closet. James Young and Johnson were standing on a first-floor porch on the 3517 side of the building. Wilson noticed Dan Williams standing to the side of the playlot in front of the building, and he heard someone yell, apparently to Williams, "Come here, motherfucker." A872. Williams responded, "I ain't have nothing to do with it." A872. Someone else yelled, "Didn't I tell your mother fucking ass to come here[?]" A873. Then, according to Wilson, Meyers, Kevin Young, and Carter stepped out of the breezeway, took guns from their coats, and aimed them at Williams; simultaneously, Smith and Bannister stepped forward from the janitor's closet with guns in their hands, also aimed at Williams. Johnson and James Young, who were standing on the first-floor porch, likewise aimed firearms at Williams. All seven men began firing at Williams. Williams ran toward the IIT building across the street and collapsed in between the revolving doors of that building. Kaufman, a guard on duty inside of the IIT building, was also struck and killed by the gunfire. The shooting lasted, by Wilson's estimate, for about 15 seconds. After the gunfire stopped, Wilson saw the defendants jog over to the 3547 building with their guns still in their hands.
On cross-examination, Wilson admitted having told the police that the gunmen, with the exception of Kevin Young, had their caps pulled down over their faces when he saw them. He also admitted telling the grand jury that when he ran up to the second-floor porch, he was unable to see the two men standing on the first-floor porch of the 3517 side of the building.
Denise Brady testified that around 10 p.m. on the night of the shooting, she noticed two men in dark clothing and ski masks standing near an elevator on the first floor of the building at 3517-19 South Federal. She descended to the ground floor, where she heard someone say, "Come here." A502. She turned toward the voice and saw Kevin Young dressed in dark clothing and a baseball cap, but no mask. She also observed Dan Williams, whom she knew, walking by the 351719 building. She exchanged greetings with Williams. Then she heard someone say, "Come here, come here, motherfucker." A504. When she turned toward that voice, she again saw Kevin Young, who "came up out of his coat" and began shooting a gun at Williams. A505. She urged Williams to "[r]un." A506. She went on to describe the shooting in terms roughly akin to Wilson's. She saw four other shooters but she could not identify them, in part because some of them had their faces masked.
Wilson's mother Ruth testified that she heard the shooting from the bedroom of her apartment at 3547 South Federal and when she looked out her window, which faced the 3517-19 building, she saw at least five men in dark clothing and hats or hoods walking toward her building. Although she could not see any of their faces, she nonetheless recognized Kevin Young and Carter as two of the men, and she saw Young put a gun under his coat.
Finally, Detective Edward Winstead testified that he had inspected the second-floor porch from which Wilson testified that he had witnessed the shooting. Winstead said that from that vantage point, one could not see the first-floor porch on the 3519 side nor into the ground-floor breezeway where Wilson had testified that Meyers, Kevin Young, and Carter were standing. Similarly, the janitor's closet directly below the porch was not visible, although according to Winstead, if the doors to the closet were open, they were visible. Finally, one could see a limited part of the first-floor porch on the 3517 side of the building.[3] This testimony, as counsel for the defendants were at pains to emphasize, cast doubt on Wilson's testimony that he could see where each of the defendants was standing immediately prior to the shooting. But of course, Wilson had also testified that he saw the defendants as they approached the 3517-19 building and again (as to those defendants who then took up stations at ground level) when they stepped forward away from the building and opened fire on Williams.
Sherri Parker, a neighbor and longtime acquaintance of Meyers, was subpoenaed by Meyers' trial counsel, George Nichols, to appear at the trial but ultimately was not called to the witness stand. Meyers had given Parker's name to Nichols. At the time of the shooting, Parker lived in the Stateway Gardens complex at 3549 South Federal, about 300 feet away from the scene of the murders. She would later submit an affidavit in support of Meyers' post-conviction petition alleging that on the night of the shooting, Meyers came to her apartment at about 9:30 p.m. and left around 10 p.m. Almost immediately after he left her apartment, she heard gunshots. She said that in the short time following his departure, Meyers would not have been able to make it outside of her building and over to the 3517-19 building by the time the shots rang out. According to Parker, neither Nichols nor anyone else from the Public Defender's office had ever interviewed her prior to trial. She responded to the subpoena and showed up at the courthouse, but she was not asked to testify.
All seven defendants,...
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