Myers v. Neal
| Decision Date | 04 August 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-3158,19-3158 |
| Citation | 975 F.3d 611 |
| Parties | John MYERS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Ron NEAL, Respondent-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Clifford Berlow, Attorney, Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago, IL, Marie F. Donnelly, Attorney, Tampa, FL, for Petitioner-Appellee.
Jesse Drum, Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, for Respondent-Appellant.
Before Flaum, Scudder, and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.
Indiana University student Jill Behrman went for a bike ride one morning but never returned. The police later found her bicycle less than a mile from the home of John Myers II, on the north side of Bloomington. Two years later a woman named Wendy Owings came forward confessing to the murder, but the case was reopened when a hunter came upon Behrman's remains far from the location Owings described. A renewed investigation led the authorities to Myers, who was eventually charged with the murder. Six years after Behrman's disappearance, a jury convicted him. Multiple Indiana courts affirmed. Myers then sought relief in federal court, and the district court granted his application for a writ of habeas corpus, concluding that Myers's counsel performed so deficiently at trial as to undermine confidence in the jury's guilty verdict. We reverse.
The district court was right about the performance of Myers's trial counsel. It was deficient and plainly so in at least two ways. What leads us to reinstate Myers's conviction, though, is the strength of the state's case against him separate and apart from those errors. Among the most convincing evidence were the many self-incriminating statements that Myers made to many different people, like telling his grandmother that, if the police ever learned what he did, he would spend the rest of his life in jail. The weight of these statements, when combined with other evidence, leads us to conclude that his counsel's deficient performance did not prejudice him. The proper outcome is to respect the finality of Myers's conviction in the Indiana courts.
Jill Behrman disappeared during a morning bicycle ride on May 31, 2000. Local authorities and the Bloomington community sprung to action with assistance from volunteer search groups, neighboring police forces, state authorities, and eventually the FBI. The police established the timeline of that morning: Behrman, a skilled cyclist, planned to go for a ride before starting work at noon at the University's Student Recreational Sports Center. She logged off her computer at 9:32 a.m. at her parents’ house, which was close to the center of town. Two people reported seeing Behrman's bike lying by the road near farmland northwest of Bloomington at some point around noon that day. Nobody could locate her, though.
Initial leads pointed quite literally in different directions. Which way Behrman rode her bike that morning was one of the unsolved questions in the investigation and became a focus of the eventual trial. Everyone agreed that she started her ride from her parents’ house in Bloomington. Whether she rode north or south was what mattered. Behrman's riding north was important to the theory the state would present at trial because it placed her near the home of John Myers. But some early leads suggested that Behrman rode south that morning. The Appendix contains a map with markings of the locations pertinent to the case.
Myers lived about a mile from where Behrman's bike was found on North Maple Grove. Given this proximity, Bloomington Detective Rick Crussen interviewed him on June 28, 2000. Myers stated that he had been on vacation the week of Behrman's disappearance. He added that he had been "here and there" but mainly at home because his plans to take a trip with his girlfriend Carly Goodman had fallen through. While checking Myers's explanations, the authorities learned that his relationship with Goodman, a high school senior at the time, ended a few weeks earlier than he had described. Goodman also told the police that she had no plans to go anywhere with Myers.
In 2002, a woman named Wendy Owings came forward and confessed to Behrman's murder. Owings, a Bloomington resident, was facing unrelated felony charges when authorities interviewed her and asked her whether she knew about the Behrman disappearance—which by then was widely known around town. Owings faced up to 86 years’ imprisonment and believed she could benefit by cooperating and confessing to the murder. Owings then decided to lie to the police, thinking that falsely admitting to the murder would mean less jail time. She did so by concocting the story that she and two friends were driving and using drugs when they accidentally hit Behrman on her bicycle. Owings said that the collision took place on Harrell Road on Bloomington's south side, roughly 20 miles from where Behrman's bike was found. To cover up the accident, Owings explained, they loaded Behrman's body into their car, wrapped her in a plastic sheet secured with bungee cords, stabbed her, and dumped her body in Salt Creek. Investigators were able to corroborate some of Owings's information: they drained the creek and found a knife, plastic tarp, and bungee cords. Although Behrman's body was not recovered, the police closed the investigation into her disappearance.
Nearly three years after Behrman's disappearance, in March 2003, a father and son hunting in the woods north of Bloomington came across a human jawbone. The woods were about 20 miles north of where Behrman's bike was found. The authorities and a forensic expert surveyed the scene and collected other skeletal remains. They determined based on dental records that the remains belonged to Jill Behrman. Recognizing her story no longer added up, Owings recanted her confession and admitted to lying about the murder in hopes for leniency on other charges.
The authorities reopened the investigation after Owings's recantation, but no meaningful breakthrough occurred until 2004. It was then that Detective Rick Lang turned his focus to Myers based on unexpected information provided by Myers's own family. His grandmother Betty Swaffard came forward and told the authorities that Myers had made a series of suspicious and incriminating comments about Behrman's disappearance. Others also reported incriminating statements Myers made to them about the case. His former girlfriend, Carly Goodman, likewise informed the police about a time Myers took her to the approximate location in the woods where Behrman's remains were later found. These developments led the state to conclude it had enough evidence to bring charges. In April 2006 a grand jury indicted Myers for the murder of Jill Behrman.
1. Opening Statements
Trial began on October 16, 2006. In its opening statements, the prosecution highlighted Myers's many incriminating statements, focusing especially on his grandmother who felt compelled to alert the authorities despite strong feelings of family loyalty. The state's theory hinged on Behrman riding her bike along a northern route on North Maple Grove near Myers's home, which the state said they would prove by presenting bloodhound scent evidence.
Defense counsel opened by suggesting Myers had an alibi: the morning that Behrman disappeared, Myers made phone calls from the landline in his northside home at 9:15, 9:17, 9:18, 10:35, and 10:47 a.m. That timing, defense counsel suggested, rendered Myers's involvement impossible if Behrman rode her bike not north (in the direction of Myers's home) but instead to the south along Harrell Road. The officers involved in the first investigation considered that route possible after speaking to one of Behrman's classmates and to Wendy Owings, both of whom said they saw Behrman on that road on the day she disappeared.
Myers's counsel also used his opening statement to offer the jury two alternative suspects for the murder. The first was Wendy Owings, the person who confessed to the murder but later recanted her story after the police recovered Behrman's remains in a different place than she had identified. Defense counsel alternatively sought to place blame on Brian Hollars, a Bloomington resident who worked with Behrman at the Student Recreational Sports Center. But in contending that Hollars was responsible for Behrman's murder, defense counsel made certain misrepresentations. He promised the jury evidence that Hollars and Behrman were romantically involved and were seen fighting the day before she disappeared. Counsel also represented that a bloodhound followed Behrman's scent in the direction of Hollars's house but that an officer stopped the dog before it could reach the front door. All of those promises rang hollow, as defense counsel never presented any such evidence.
2. The State's Case Against Myers
The evidence presented during the first few days of trial focused on how Behrman's remains were uncovered, identified, and analyzed. Then the state presented evidence about her cycling habits and movements the day she disappeared. Brian Hollars testified for the prosecution, described Behrman's work at the recreational center, and offered an alibi by informing the jury that he was at work the day of the disappearance. His testimony was not meaningfully challenged.
As the state promised, it presented evidence supporting its theory that Behrman rode north on North Maple Grove, near Myers's home. Foremost, the state presented evidence showing the location at which Behrman's bike was found. Deputy Charles Douthett, who conducted a search with his bloodhound several days after the disappearance, likewise testified that the dog tracked Behrman's scent along parts of the northern route. The dog alerted to Behrman's scent not only in the general direction of Brian Hollars's home but also near the location of her bike and indeed even a touch north in the direction of Myers's home. The jury heard no evidence that...
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