Ron Neal, Superintendent, Indiana State Prison v. Frederick Michael Baer

During the closing arguments of Fredrick Michael Baer’s double-murder trial, the prosecutor argued that Baer’s rough upbringing did not diminish the enormity of his crime: the brutal murder of a young mother and her four-year-old daughter. The prosecutor made the point by informing the jury of his own tough childhood and observing that, although his mother was a prostitute who succumbed to a drug overdose, he still became a county prosecutor. The Seventh Circuit seized on this remark and granted Baer habeas relief, concluding that Baer received constitutionally inadequate assistance under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), because his counsel did not allege prosecutorial misconduct or challenge certain jury instructions. It held that the Indiana Supreme Court, which had specifically rejected both of these claims, unreasonably applied Strickland. The question presented is: Did the Seventh Circuit violate the deferential review requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act by disregarding the reasoned decision of the Indiana Supreme Court denying Baer’s Strickland claims?