Morris v. Bartow, 832 F.3d 705

Background

In October 2000 Kenneth Morris shot and killed Billy Smith; charged initially with second-degree reckless homicide, later pled guilty to first-degree reckless homicide (without weapon enhancement) after a plea deal on Jan 29, 2001.
At the plea hearing Morris said under oath no one forced him to plead guilty and he was satisfied with counsel (Michael Backes); the court found the plea knowing and voluntary.
Immediately after pleading guilty Morris replaced Backes with new counsel (Thomas Awen) but did not move to withdraw the plea prior to sentencing; the court sentenced Morris to 30 years plus 20 years extended supervision.
On direct appeal the public defender filed a no-merit (Anders) brief; the Wisconsin Court of Appeals independently reviewed the record and affirmed, finding no arguable basis to set aside the plea; Morris did not seek review in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Morris later pursued state and federal habeas relief alleging (1) appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise that his plea was coerced and (2) a stand-alone coerced-plea claim; state courts found no prejudice from appellate counsel’s failures and rejected the stand-alone coercion claim as procedurally defaulted.
The district court denied habeas relief; the Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding (a) the state-court denial of the ineffective-assistance claim was not an unreasonable application of Strickland, and (b) on de novo review the record does not show Morris’s plea was involuntary or coerced.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether appellate counsel was ineffective for not raising a coerced-plea claim on direct appeal	Lang should have raised that Morris was coerced into pleading guilty and thus performed deficiently	State: record (plea colloquy, no contemporaneous complaint) gave no basis; Anders review was appropriate; no prejudice shown	Denied — state courts reasonably applied Strickland; no deficient performance that warrants habeas relief
Whether Morris’s guilty plea was coerced (stand-alone)	Morris claims pressure from unprepared trial counsel, denied continuance, and prosecutor’s threat to elevate charge coerced his plea	State: plea colloquy and record show voluntariness; Morris never told appellate counsel or moved to withdraw pleaprior to sentencing	Denied on the merits — de novo review finds no credible evidence the plea was involuntary
Whether stand-alone coercion claim is procedurally defaulted for failure to seek state supreme-court review	Morris: claim not presented to appellate court in direct appeal, so no merits decision to trigger Boerckel exhaustion rule	State: the appellate court’s Anders-based review and record consideration amounted to an implicit merits rejection, so Boerckel default applies	Court rejected State’s procedural-default theory and reviewed the coercion claim de novo (not barred)
Whether state-court factual findings are binding on federal habeas review	Morris argues state findings (e.g., he didn’t tell counsel he felt coerced) are incorrect or insufficient	State courts’ factual findings are presumptively correct under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) absent clear error	Court accepted state trial-court findings as reasonable and binding; they undermine a coercion claim

Key Cases Cited

Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967) (procedural protections when appellate counsel files a no-merit brief)
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) (two-prong test for ineffective assistance: deficient performance and prejudice)
Smith v. Robbins, 528 U.S. 259 (2000) (standard for Anders counsel: reasonably competent attorney would find one nonfrivolous issue)
O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838 (1999) (exhaustion requires presentation to state supreme court for discretionary review)
United States v. Ellison, 835 F.2d 687 (7th Cir. 1987) (presumption of verity for defendant’s sworn plea-colloquy statements)
United States v. Collins, 796 F.3d 829 (7th Cir. 2015) (discussing how post-plea motions can overcome plea-colloquy presumption)
Shaw v. Wilson, 721 F.3d 908 (7th Cir. 2013) (appellate-review standards for Anders-type representation)