Coffey v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 24 February 2023
• Docket Number: 2021-CA-0774-MR
• Parties: BENJAMIN DELBERT COFFEY APPELLANT v. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY APPELLEE
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

BENJAMIN DELBERT COFFEY APPELLANT v. COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY APPELLEE

No. 2021-CA-0774-MR

Court of Appeals of Kentucky

February 24, 2023

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED

APPEAL FROM MCCREARY CIRCUIT COURT HONORABLE DANIEL BALLOU, JUDGE ACTION NO. 04-CR-00010

BRIEF FOR APPELLANT: Benjamin D. Coffey, pro se La Grange, Kentucky

BRIEF FOR APPELLEE: Daniel Cameron Attorney General of Kentucky Joseph A. Beckett Assistant Attorney General Frankfort Kentucky

BEFORE: DIXON, LAMBERT, AND McNEILL, JUDGES.

OPINION

McNEILL, JUDGE:

Benjamin Coffey appeals from the denial of his CR^[1] 60.02 post-conviction motion. We affirm.

In 2004, Coffey was indicted for rape in the first degree sodomy in the first degree, and kidnapping. Soon thereafter, the McCreary Circuit Court ordered Coffey to undergo a competency evaluation. According to a competency report submitted to the trial court in June 2004, Coffey had intellectual disabilities but was competent. That same month, Coffey reached a plea agreement with the Commonwealth which called for him to plead guilty to all three charges in the indictment and to receive thirty years' imprisonment (ten years on each charge, to be served consecutively).^[2] The trial court sentenced Coffey in accordance with the plea agreement in August 2004.

Nearly three years later, Coffey submitted a post-conviction motion pursuant to RCr^[3] 11.42. The motion tersely asserted without explanation that Coffey's counsel had been ineffective. Coffey filed a motion to supplement which asserted his counsel had coerced him into pleading guilty and his guilty plea was improper because he was incompetent. Finally, the motion to supplement asserted that the victim had been "a willing participant to the early morning rendezvous." Record (R.) at 96. The trial court denied both the RCr 11.42 and the motion to supplement without the Commonwealth even having filed a response. Coffey's appeal was eventually dismissed.

The record contains no subsequent activity until November 2016, when Coffey filed his first CR 60.02 motion. That motion lacks clarity, but it generally alleges Coffey was coerced by counsel into pleading guilty. The Commonwealth filed a response asserting, among other things, that the motion was untimely.^[4] In December 2019, the trial court granted Coffey's motion to withdraw that CR 60.02 motion.

That same month, Coffey filed the CR 60.02 motion at hand. Coffey raises various arguments, including sundry allegations his counsel was ineffective and that there was insufficient evidence to support the rape and sodomy convictions. The trial court eventually denied Coffey's CR 60.02 motion in February 2021. Coffey then filed this appeal.

"It is within the sound discretion of the trial court whether to grant or deny relief pursuant to CR 60.02[,]" so our review is pursuant to the abuse of discretion standard. Priddy v. Commonwealth, 629 S.W.3d 14, 17 (Ky. App. 2021). "The test for abuse of discretion is whether the trial judge's decision was arbitrary, unreasonable, unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles. Therefore, we will affirm the lower court's decision unless there is a showing of some flagrant miscarriage of justice." Foley v. Commonwealth, 425 S.W.3d 880, 886 (Ky. 2014) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

Coffey is not entitled to an examination of his arguments on the merits, much less relief, for three main reasons. First, the entry of a valid guilty plea waives nearly all issues. See, e.g., Jackson v. Commonwealth, 363 S.W.3d 11, 16 (Ky. 2012). Thus, for example, Coffey has waived his sufficiency of the evidence arguments. As we have held, "[p]ost-judgment challenges to sufficiency of the evidence are precluded by unconditional guilty pleas." Applegate v. Commonwealth, 577 S.W.3d 83, 89 (Ky. App. 2018). See also Taylor v. Commonwealth, 724 S.W.2d 223, 225 (Ky. App. 1986) (explaining that "[t]he reasoning behind such a conclusion is obvious. A defendant who elects to unconditionally plead guilty admits the factual accuracy of the various elements of the offenses with which he is charged. By such an admission, a convicted appellant forfeits the right to protest at some later date that the state could not have proven that he committed the crimes to which he pled guilty. To permit a convicted defendant to do so would result in a double benefit in that defendants who elect to plead guilty would receive the benefit of the plea bargain which ordinarily precedes such a plea along with the advantage of later challenging the sentence resulting from the plea on grounds normally arising in the very trial which defendant elected to forego.").

Second, Coffey did not submit his motion within a reasonable time, as required by CR 60.02(f).^[5] Of course, "there is no specific prescribed time within which claims made pursuant to CR 60.02(e) or (f) must be filed." Priddy, 629 S.W.3d at 18. But, without adequate explanation, Coffey waited roughly fifteen years after his sentencing to submit this second CR 60.02 motion. We have repeatedly held that CR 60.02 motions submitted sooner were untimely. See, e.g., Reyna, 217 S.W.3d at 276 (four-year delay unreasonable); Djoric v. Commonwealth, 487 S.W.3d 908, 910 (Ky. App. 2016) (nearly thirteen-year delay unreasonable); Graves v. Commonwealth, 283 S.W.3d 252, 257 (Ky. App. 2009) (seven-year delay unreasonable).

Third, Coffey's motion is procedurally improper because it contains allegations which could, and should, have been raised sooner. It is also successive. As our Supreme Court explained, "[a]t each stage . . . the defendant is required to raise all issues then amenable to review, and generally issues that either were or could have been raised at one stage will not be entertained at any later stage." Hollon v. Commonwealth, 334 S.W.3d 431, 437 (Ky. 2010). Thus, "CR 60.02 is not a separate avenue of appeal to be pursued in addition to other remedies, but is available only to raise issues which cannot be raised in other proceedings." McQueen v. Commonwealth, 948 S.W.2d 415, 416 (Ky. 1997). Coffey's claims are procedurally barred because he has not shown that he was unable to raise them sooner, such as in his RCr 11.42 motion. See, e.g., Sanders v. Commonwealth, 339 S.W.3d 427, 437 (Ky. 2011) ("A review of the grounds for relief listed above demonstrates that each of the claims, with the exercise of reasonable diligence, could have been brought either in Appellant's direct appeal or in his RCr 11.42 proceeding. As such, they do not qualify to be brought in a CR 60.02 proceeding. Moreover, the claims are of the usual procedural, evidentiary, and ineffective assistance of counsel variety, and do not implicate the extraordinary sort of claim contemplated under CR 60.02(f).").

For example, our Supreme Court has expressed a strong preference for ineffective assistance of counsel claims to be raised via RCr 11.42. Furnish v. Commonwealth, 95 S.W.3d 34, 52 (Ky. 2002) (holding that ineffective assistance of counsel claims "are not properly raised on direct appeal, but rather must proceed by way of a post-trial motion under RCr 11.42"). Because Coffey should have raised his ineffective assistance of counsel claims in...