Overwhelming Evidence Defeats Strickland Prejudice in Postconviction Claims Attacking Self-Defense Instructions

Precedents Cited

• State v. Clark, 2011 UT 23, ¶ 13, 251 P.3d 829: Cited for the baseline temporal rule that courts apply “the law as it exists at the time of the event regulated.” This framed the dispute as one governed by the 2015 version of § 76-2-402(2)(a)(ii), notwithstanding later legislative amendment.
• Newton v. State, 2025 UT 50, ¶¶ 30–31, 585 P.3d 1159: Supplied the summary-judgment standard and the appellate lens for reviewing postconviction summary judgment “for correctness.”
• McCloud v. State, 2021 UT 51, ¶ 6 n.2, 496 P.3d 179: Used to justify reciting trial evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict when evaluating prejudice.
• State v. Ray, 2020 UT 12, ¶ 23, 469 P.3d 871: Clarified the mixed standard of review for IAC claims (fact findings for clear error; application of law for correctness).
• Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984): The controlling constitutional IAC framework; the court leaned on Strickland’s instruction that courts may dispose of IAC claims on prejudice alone and should do so when easier. This was the decision’s methodological core.
• Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 112 (2011): Reinforced that prejudice must be “substantial, not just conceivable,” sharpening the quantum of proof Fenstermaker needed. The court also used Richter to address Fenstermaker’s reliance on older Utah phrasing about probability thresholds.
• State v. Knight, 734 P.2d 913, 920 (Utah 1987), and State v. Fontana, 680 P.2d 1042, 1048 (Utah 1984): Raised by Fenstermaker to suggest a more defendant-friendly prejudice standard in Utah practice; the court rejected any attempt to dilute the Sixth Amendment prejudice showing, emphasizing that the U.S. Supreme Court governs federal constitutional meaning.
• State v. Garcia, 2017 UT 53, ¶ 42, 424 P.3d 171: Provided a tailored prejudice framework for self-defense instruction error: focus on the evidence before the jury and whether the jury could reasonably have found perfect or imperfect self-defense. This case supplied the specific lens the court used to assess the instruction-related IAC prejudice claim.
• State v. Hogue, 2025 UT App 88, ¶ 22, 572 P.3d 1147; State v. Low, 2008 UT 58, ¶ 32, 192 P.3d 867; State v. Silva, 2019 UT 36, ¶ 33, 456 P.3d 718: These cases were cited to distinguish perfect from imperfect self-defense and to clarify that both require evidence of a reasonable belief in the necessity of force, but differ in whether the conduct is legally justified. They anchored the court’s view that the jury’s willingness to credit Fenstermaker’s perception of necessity was decisive.
• State v. Sorbonne, 2022 UT 5, ¶¶ 24, 28–29, 42, 506 P.3d 545: Supported the proposition that self-defense contains both subjective and objective components—what the defendant believed and what was reasonable. This underwrote the court’s emphasis on Fenstermaker’s credibility and objective contradictions in the physical evidence.
• State v. Bonds, 2023 UT 1, ¶¶ 38–40, 524 P.3d 581: Confirmed that once a defendant produces some evidence of self-defense, the State bears the burden to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The court nevertheless held that the record made it overwhelmingly likely the State met that burden.

Legal Reasoning

1. Decision to resolve on prejudice alone. The court invoked Strickland’s sequencing discretion: because prejudice was the clearer ground, the court assumed (without deciding) that counsel’s performance was deficient and proceeded directly to whether any error mattered.
2. Proper prejudice lens for self-defense instruction claims. Relying on State v. Garcia, the court asked whether, on the actual evidence presented, a properly instructed jury could reasonably have found perfect or imperfect self-defense such that confidence in the verdict was undermined.
3. Self-defense required the jury to credit Fenstermaker. Although Fenstermaker introduced some evidence to raise self-defense (triggering the State’s burden per State v. Bonds), the court reasoned that a defense verdict depended on jurors believing Fenstermaker’s account of imminent deadly threat (knife/reach), not merely believing Lewis made heated statements.
4. Overwhelming impeachment and objective contradictions defeated “reasonable probability.” The court treated the record as crushingly adverse to Fenstermaker on the core self-defense narrative:
   • Lewis was unarmed; no knife was found near the body despite extensive photos/bodycam.
   • The gunshot entered Lewis’s side, consistent with Lewis being sideways/turned away.
   • Fenstermaker fled and remained away for fourteen hours.
   • His immediate message to Andrea contained an obvious lie, casting doubt on the adjacent knife claim.
   • His prior conviction for lying to police and his shifting story diminished credibility further.
   Under Harrington v. Richter, this meant the prospect of a different outcome was not “substantial.”
5. No need to resolve the underlying instruction theories. Because prejudice failed, the court did not need to decide whether the felony bar should have been limited to “forcible felony,” whether a “nexus” was required between the felony and the use of force, or whether constitutional arguments should have changed the instruction. The dispositive holding is practical: even if Fenstermaker’s preferred instruction had been given, the evidentiary record made a self-defense-based acquittal or reduction to manslaughter not reasonably likely.

Impact

• Postconviction IAC litigation will increasingly turn on record-based plausibility of self-defense. Fenstermaker reinforces that courts may bypass complex statutory/constitutional questions about self-defense instructions if the trial evidence makes self-defense implausible under Strickland prejudice.
• Appellate counsel must argue prejudice when challenging instructions. While the court did not formally “discipline” the structural-error framing, the outcome underscores that failing to develop prejudice can be fatal. The opinion implicitly signals that mislabeling an instructional error as “structural” will not excuse the prejudice showing in IAC/postconviction posture.
• Physical evidence and post-event conduct are central to prejudice analysis. The court’s emphasis on wound trajectory, absence of corroborating weapons evidence, flight, and inconsistent accounts provides a roadmap for how Utah courts may evaluate whether an instructional change would have mattered.
• Statutory evolution remains separate from constitutional prejudice. Even though the legislature later amended § 76-2-402, the court’s reliance on State v. Clark and its prejudice holding suggests that statutory change will not retroactively transform outcomes absent a demonstrated, trial-record-based probability of a different verdict.