Ineffective Assistance of Counsel.

• Date: 07 September 2020

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Raymond Marling v. Frank Littlejohn, et al., Wabash Valley Correctional Facility

Case No.: 19-3077

Officials: EASTERBROOK, RIPPLE, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

After Raymond Marling was arrested, on a warrant, while driving his car, police in Indiana took an inventory of its contents.The trunk held a locked box. An officer opened the box with a screwdriver and found illegal drugs. Together with other evidence (including the fact that Marling was armed, despite felony convictions that made this unlawful), these drugs played a role in his convictions and 38-year sentence, which includes a 20- year enhancement for being a habitual criminal.

Marling's lawyer asked the trial court to suppress the contents of the box, arguing that opening it was improper. That argument lost in the trial court and lost again on appeal. Marling v. State, 2014 Ind. App. Unpub. LEXIS 1305 (Sept. 30, 2014). He filed a collateral attack, this time arguing that his trial and appellate lawyers had furnished ineffective assistance by not presenting the best reasons for objecting to the box's opening. He contended that counsel should have argued that opening his box damaged it...