By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//May 7, 2014//
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
Criminal
Habeas Corpus — waiver
Where the state court held that a prisoner’s guilty plea waived any claim of ineffective assistance, the denial of his federal habeas corpus claim must be reversed.
“The state suggests that we overlook the state court’s erroneous statement that Avila’s claims ‘were waived by his guilty pleas,’ characterizing it as a superfluous statement of a general principle, a ‘fugitive sentence’ in an otherwise unobjectionable opinion that should be read to have implicitly applied the correct rule of Strickland. A peculiarity of habeas corpus jurisprudence is that if the state court had simply denied Avila’s claim without explanation, we would be required to assume that the court had applied Strickland, and we could grant relief only if the petitioner proved the negative by showing there was no reasonable basis for the result reached by the state court. See Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. —, —, 131 S. Ct. 770, 784 (2011); cf. Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002) (state court need not cite or even know Supreme Court cases so long as ‘neither the reasoning nor the result’ of its decision contradicts them). But here the state appellate court did explain its reasoning. Because that reasoning contradicted clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court, § 2254(d) is not a barrier to relief.”
Reversed and Remanded.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Callahan, Mag. J., Hamilton, J.