Mertz v. Williams, No. 13-3268 (7th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseIn 2001, Shannon McNamara was killed in her college apartment. McNamara’s window screen was cut. A box cutter handle and a credit card bearing the name “Anthony Mertz” were found in the apartment. Mertz claimed that he was drinking with friends the night of the murder and could not remember anything after a certain time. In an initial interview, investigators noticed Mertz’s scratches, bruises, and red knuckles. Tests on DNA scrapings from under McNamara’s fingernails were inconclusive, but did not exclude Mertz. Latex gloves were found in Mertz’s apartment, and a box cutter went missing from his work place the day that McNamara was killed. Convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault, home invasion, and first-degree murder, Mertz was sentenced to death. The governor commuted his sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. At sentencing, the government presented evidence that Mertz committed assaults on several other women and men and that Mertz committed an unsolved 1999 murder. The Seventh Circuit affirmed denial of Mertz’s habeas petition alleging ineffective assistance of counsel for failing to rebut evidence that Mertz committed an uncharged murder and arson, finding that Mertz could not show prejudice.
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