Boria v. Keane

• Decision Date: 03 May 1996
• Docket Number: No. 1332,D,1332
• Parties: Oscar BORIA, Petitioner-Appellant, v. John KEANE, Superintendent, Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee. ocket 95-2688.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 492

99 F.3d 492

Oscar BORIA, Petitioner-Appellant, v. John KEANE, Superintendent, Sing Sing Correctional Facility,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 1332, Docket 95-2688.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued March 29, 1996.

Decided May 3, 1996.

As Corrected May 21 and July 11, 1996.

Refiled and Reissued Oct. 25, 1996. ^d

Robert N. Isseks, Middletown, NY, for petitioner-appellant.

Francis D. Phillips, II, Goshen, NY, for respondent-appellee.

Before: OAKES and PARKER, Circuit Judges, and KNAPP, Senior District Judge. ^*

CORRECTED OPINION

WHITMAN KNAPP, Senior District Judge.

The petitioner is now--and for about six years has been--serving a twenty year to life sentence resulting from a "buy and bust" arrest for having sold four plastic bags of cocaine to an informer. This was petitioner's first contact with the criminal law. Upon this appeal, he does not challenge the propriety of the trial leading to his conviction. Rather, he asserts that he was deprived of constitutionally adequate representation by counsel when the People offered him a plea bargain which would have resulted in a one to three year sentence, and his attorney allowed him to reject such offer without giving him any advice as to the wisdom of so doing.

This argument was first presented to and rejected by the judge who had presided over the trial. The trial judge's rejection was affirmed by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, and leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals was denied. Petitioner renewed the claim in the instant Habeas Corpus proceeding, where it was rejected by the District Court in a carefully considered opinion. This appeal followed.

BACKGROUND ¹

Petitioner was arrested on May 13, 1988, and eleven days later was indicted for a Class A-II felony. Upon arraignment, being represented by one Thomas Murphy, Esq., he pleaded not guilty. On June 10, petitioner's father retained Gary Greenwald, Esq. to represent his son, making an "up front" payment of $8,000. ² Some time between July 25 and August 10, the District Attorney advised Greenwald that the People were willing to accept a plea of guilty under circumstances which would result in a sentence of 1 to 3 On August 10, Greenwald advised the court that the petitioner rejected the offer. The District Attorney then put on the record the warning he had previously given Greenwald about the consequences of rejection; and on the following day sent Greenwald a formal notice that the matter was to be presented to a Grand Jury. The threatened indictment was not returned until September 20, 1988. Petitioner was ultimately convicted, and on January 4, 1990, began to serve his sentence.

years; but warned that should such offer be rejected, there would be filed a superseding indictment for a Class A-I felony which, pursuant to the "Rockefeller Laws," would make that or any similar plea impossible.

In 1992, petitioner, represented by a different attorney, moved the trial judge for an order vacating the judgment of conviction on the ground, among others, of constitutionally inadequate representation by counsel. A hearing on such motion, among others, began on February 26 and concluded on March 6.

Greenwald testified at great length at the hearing. He testified that he did not recall any conversation with the District Attorney or anyone in the District Attorney's office regarding the case before August 10. Nothing in his testimony suggests that he had any contact with the District Attorney's office between August 10 and September 20. Indeed, he testified that he could not recall with certainty the name of any assistant district attorney with whom he might at any time have spoken regarding this case. He had at all times exclusively relied on the petitioner for any and all information about the case.

Just before the trial began, Greenwald sought a ruling suppressing two ruinous statements petitioner had made after his arrest. He told the trial judge:

had the attorney for the Defendant been aware of the existence of and the prosecutor's intent to use those statements for any purpose whatsoever, during the course of trial then his advise to the Defendant, relative to accepting or to rejecting the proffered offer of a plea to a B felony, may well have been different.

Greenwald Affirmation, 9/25/89. ³

However, time and again, and in many forms, Greenwald made clear that he had not in any way or at any time discussed with the petitioner the advisability of accepting or rejecting the offered plea. He testified that, after advising petitioner that a rejection of the plea would be final in the sense that the expected superseding indictment would eliminate all possibility of a minimal sentence, he kept discussing with petitioner strategies he planned to follow in defending against the new indictment.

His testimony made clear that, although he never even suggested such a thought to petitioner, it was his own view that his client's decision to reject the plea bargain was suicidal. ⁴ He sought to justify his conduct by asserting that he was certain that the petitioner would never admit his guilt or accept a plea. He said he had been confirmed in this certainty by the petitioner's repeated assertion that accepting a plea would embarrass Greenwald admitted that he had been aware that his client--like any other person--was capable of changing his mind. ⁵ Yet he did nothing to persuade either his client or the father by whom he had been retained of the absurdity of a decision to risk years of prison separation from his family to avoid a few hours of embarrassment "in front of his children."

him in front of his children. For example, Greenwald testified: "He would be very upset about the plea. He was upset about how he was embarrassed in front of his children. And he would bring up the subject in a context often about his upset about his children." (H. at 18).

DISCUSSION

Several questions are presented by the foregoing facts:

1. Under Strickland v. Washington 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984)(hereinafter "Strickland "), do the facts establish that Greenwald's conduct did indeed fall short of constitutionally required assistance?

2. Also under Strickland, can it be said that there was a "reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different"?

3. What is the impact upon this case of Strickland's "strong presumption that counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance?"

4. Are we precluded from considering these questions by any factual finding that may have been made by a New York State court?

We shall consider each of these questions in turn.

First, to show Strickland ineffectiveness it must appear that, under the totality of circumstances, Greenwald failed to exercise the skills and diligence that a reasonably competent attorney would provide under similar circumstances. 466 U.S. at 688, 104 S.Ct. at 2064-65. There seems to be no Second Circuit decision dealing with the precise question of a criminal defense lawyer's duty when a defendant's best interests clearly require that a proffered plea bargain be accepted, but the defendant, professing innocence, refuses to consider the matter. This lack of specific decision undoubtedly arises from the circumstance that such duty is so well understood by lawyers practicing in this Circuit that the question has never been litigated.

While the Second Circuit may not have spoken, the Strickland Court has indicated how the question should be resolved. Just before starting its discussion of the merits, it observed that it had "granted certiorari to consider the standards by which to judge a contention that the Constitution requires that a criminal judgment be overturned because of the actual ineffective assistance of counsel." 466 U.S. at 684, 104 S.Ct. at 2063. Later it pointed to "[p]revailing norms of practice as reflected in American Bar Association standards" as guides "to determining what is reasonable." Id. at 688, 104 S.Ct. at 2065.

The American Bar Association's standard on the precise question before us is simply stated in its Model Code of Professional Responsibility, Ethical Consideration 7-7 (1992):

A defense lawyer in a criminal case has the duty to advise his client fully on whether a particular plea to a charge appears to be desirable. (emphasis added)

Anthony G. Amsterdam, in Trial Manual 5 for the Defense of Criminal Cases (1988), observed:

The decision whether to plead guilty or contest a criminal charge is ordinarily the This manual is a joint project of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the National Defender Project of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, and the ALI-ABA Committee on Continuing Professional Education. The Reporter, Anthony G. Amsterdam, is a distinguished Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Programs and Trial Advocacy at New York University School of Law.

most important single decision in any criminal case. This decision must ultimately be left to the client's wishes. Counsel cannot plead a client guilty, or not guilty, against the client's will. [citation omitted] But counsel may and must give the client the benefit of counsel's professional advice on this crucial decision. § 201 at 339 (the word "must" was emphasized by the author; otherwise, the emphasis is ours)

And finally, in United States v. Villar 416 F.Supp. 887, 889 (S.D.N.Y.1976), Judge Motley--in circumstances quite different from those at bar--made the following observation about effective assistance of counsel:

Effective assistance of counsel includes counsel's informed opinion as to what pleas should be entered. Walker v. Caldwell, 476 F.2d 213, 224 (5th Cir.1973); Jones v. Cunningham, 313 F.2d 347 (4th Cir.1963), cert denied 375 U.S. 832, 84 S.Ct. 42, 11 L.Ed.2d 63 (1965). As Chief Judge Sobeloff stated in the latter case (at 353):

Of course, it is not for a lawyer to...