holding that defense counsel’s failure to investigate constituted ineffective assistance of counsel where there was conflicting evidence at trial about the cause of one of the victim’s injuries, counsel only interviewed two or three of the people on a list of 12 or more people that was provided by the defendant to counsel before trial, and counsel failed to locate the eyewitnesses that would have substantiated the defendant’s primary defense that the victim’s injury was caused by a bicycle accident rather than by the defendant
How later courts described this case
- holding that defense counsel’s failure to investigate constituted ineffective assistance of counsel where there was conflicting evidence at trial about the cause of one of the victim’s injuries, counsel only interviewed two or three of the people on a list of 12 or more people that was provided by the defendant to counsel before trial, and counsel failed to locate the eyewitnesses that would have substantiated the defendant’s primary defense that the victim’s injury was caused by a bicycle accident rather than by the defendant
- holding under the Strickland analysis that counsel’s failure to investigate was unreasonable and prejudiced the defendant
- equating the “preponderance of the evidence” standard with “more likely than not”
- applying Strickland, 466 U.S. 688
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
TAYLOR, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result of Justice KELLY’s opinion. I reach this conclusion not, as the dissents suggest, on the basis of hindsight, but on the fact that defense counsel was faced with a first-degree criminal sexual conduct (CSC I) charge in which it was not simply a “who do you believe” contest between an injured girl and the defendant where she says it happened and he says it did not. Rather, it was a “who do you believe” contest plus the prosecution had the additional evidence of a savage vaginal injury that surely would make a lot of people think that criminal sexual conduct happened unless there was another explanation for the injury.
While it is not ineffective to say the injured girl is a liar and always had been (especially given the other two charges), that defense will only cover the usual case that turns on credibility and for which there is no physical evidence. Where there is such incriminating evidence and the injured girl is now asserting that *499 defendant, and not a bicycle accident, caused her injury, an investigation to find witnesses to the bicycle accident is required. To fail to do so is not a reasonable, professional judgment. Strickland v Washington, 466 US 668, 690-691 ; 104 S Ct 2052 ; 80 L Ed 2d 674 (1984).
MARKMAN, J., concurred with TAYLOR, J.