Miller v. United States
| Decision Date | 03 October 2016 |
| Docket Number | NO. 3:10CR163-SA,3:10CR163-SA |
| Parties | ANGELA BRYSON MILLER MOVANT v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA RESPONDENT |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Mississippi |
Angela Bryson Miller comes before the Court on a successive motion to vacate, set aside, or correct sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which has been amended to include a claim that her crimes of conviction no longer qualify as violent felonies. The Government has responded to Miller's arguments, and the Court has held an evidentiary hearing. Having considered the pleadings and the record, including the evidence adduced at the evidentiary hearing, along with the relevant law, the Court finds that the motion should be denied, for the reasons that follow.
Following a jury trial, Angela Miller was convicted of two counts of aiding and abetting the use of firearms in furtherance of armed bank robberies in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2 and 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). She was sentenced by judgment entered on July 18, 2012, to serve 384 months in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons ("BOP"). Miller appealed with the assistance of appellate counsel Christi R. McCoy, and the judgment was affirmed in February 2014. See doc. #191; see also United States v. Miller, 554 F. App'x 311 (5th Cir. Feb. 12, 2014). Thereafter, in November 2014, Miller filed a motion with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit seeking to have the mandate recalled, arguing that her appellate counsel failed to follow Miller's request that a petition for certiorari be filed. See doc. #214, pp. 2, 14-15. The Fifth Circuit noted that Miller failed to present evidence demonstrating that she timely made a written request for McCoy to file a certiorari petition in the United States Supreme Court, despite the fact that McCoy offered to produce copies of her correspondence with Miller if Miller would file a release. Id. Noting that Miller filed no such release and did not produce evidence supporting her claim, her motion to recall the mandate was denied without prejudice to her ability to pursue an ineffective assistance of counsel claim in a § 2255 motion. Id.
On or about August 17, 2015, Miller filed the instant motion raising an ineffective assistance of counsel claim against McCoy for her alleged failure to follow Miller's instructions to file a certiorari petition. After receiving the Government's response, the Court scheduled an evidentiary hearing on Miller's ineffective assistance of counsel claim and ordered that counsel be appointed to her. On June 24, 2016, Miller, through counsel, moved to amend her motion to include a claim that her crimes of conviction no longer qualify as violent felonies pursuant to the Supreme Court's decision in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2251 (2015), arguing that the underlying offenses of armed bank robbery are only "crimes of violence" under the statute's now unconstitutional residual clause. The Court granted the motion to amend, and the parties briefed the issue of Johnson's application to the instant case. On August 31, 2016, the Court heard the parties' evidence as to Miller's ineffective assistance of counsel claim, and it granted Miller's current attorney additional time to file a reply brief as to the Johnson-based challenge. Miller's counsel submitted a reply brief on September 16, 2016.
After a defendant has been convicted and exhausted his appeal rights, a court may presume that "he stands fairly and finally convicted." United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 164 (1982). A motion brought pursuant to § 2255 is a "means of collateral attack on a federal sentence." Cox v.Warden, Federal Detention Ctr., 911 F.2d 1111, 1113 (5th Cir. 1990) (citation omitted). There are four separate grounds upon which a federal prisoner may move to vacate, set aside, or correct a sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255: (1) the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States; (2) the court was without jurisdiction to impose the sentence; (3) the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum sentence; or (4) the sentence is otherwise subject to collateral attack. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a). Collateral attack limits a movant's allegations to those of "constitutional or jurisdictional magnitude." United States v. Samuels, 59 F.3d 526, 528 (5th Cir. 1995) (citation omitted). Relief under § 2255 is reserved, therefore, for violations of "constitutional rights and for that narrow compass of other injury that could not have been raised on direct appeal and, would, if condoned, result in a complete miscarriage of justice." United States v. Capua, 656 F.2d 1033, 1037 (5th Cir. 1981).
To make a substantial showing of the denial of her Sixth Amendment right to the reasonably effective assistance of counsel, a movant must satisfy the standard set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), which requires her to demonstrate "that counsel's performance was deficient," and that "the deficient performance prejudiced [her] defense." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. To establish deficient performance, the movant "must show that counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness." Id. at 687-88. The court's scrutiny of counsel's performance must be "highly deferential." Id. at 689. To prove prejudice, the movant must demonstrate that the result of the proceedings would have been different if counsel had performed effectively. Id. at 694. The prejudice inquiry does not merely require that the movant raise the "possibility of a different outcome," but rather, it requires the movant to "demonstrate that the prejudice rendered sentencing 'fundamentally unfair orunreliable.'" Crane v. Johnson, 178 F.3d 309, 312-13 (5th Cir. 1999) (quoting Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 369 (1993)).
Following her sentencing hearing, Miller filed a pro se notice of appeal. See doc. # 153. Thereafter, attorney Christi McCoy was appointed as appellate counsel for Miller, and the two began communicating through letters. Once Miller was transferred to BOP custody, the two began communicating through the BOP's official email system, CorrLinks. Miller testified that she was housed at a Federal Correctional Institution in Aliceville ("FCI Aliceville"), Alabama, on February 14, 2014, when, through a telephone conversation with her daughter, she learned that her appeal had been denied by the Fifth Circuit. Miller testified that she immediately emailed McCoy about the decision and received a response from McCoy stating that Miller would receive paperwork shortly.
The parties agree that following the rejection of Miller's appeal on February 12, 2014, McCoy sent Miller a letter in which McCoy instructed Miller: 1 See Def't Ex. 3; Gov't Ex. 1; and doc. #215 at 6. Miller stated that she subsequently received paperwork from both McCoy and the Fifth Circuit, and that she sent McCoy an email asking her to continue the appeals process. Miller testified that she was unfamiliar with the legal term "certiorari" at that time but asked McCoy in the email to proceed to "the next step" of the appeal. McCoy denies that Miller ever made such a request. A certiorari petition was not filed.
According to Miller, she filed a motion in the Fifth Circuit to recall the mandate in her criminal case in November 2014. See doc. #214 at 2. As part of that process, she maintains, the appellate court sent both her and the warden paperwork compelling FCI Aliceville to assist Miller in obtaining her email communications with McCoy for February 2014, which were presumably stored on the CorrLinks system. Miller testified that she talked to the associate warden, Sekou Ma at, about the paperwork, though Ma at, submitted a declaration in this case maintaining that he could not recall having a conversation with Miller about her emails to McCoy. Gov't Ex. 4, § 2. According to Miller, the warden at FCI Aliceville, Arcola Washington-Adduci, denied receipt of any paperwork from the Fifth Circuit concerning this case. Ms. Washington-Adduci submitted a declaration in this cause stating she did not recall any discussion of emails between Miller and McCoy. Gov't Ex. 6, § 2. Miller contends that despite these declarations, she did in fact have conversations with both the warden and associate warden about her emails with McCoy and was unable to obtain any assistance in retrieving the emails stored on the system. In fact, she maintains, she also asked McCoy for a copy of all correspondence, including emails between the two, and while McCoy promised she would forward all of the correspondence to Miller, she did not.
Two letters from McCoy to Miller dated January 20, 2015, and August 26, 2015, respectively, were produced at the evidentiary hearing. Def't. Exs. 1 & 2. In each letter, McCoy denies the allegation that she failed to file a certiorari petition after Miller requested she do so. Id. In her August 26, 2015, letter, McCoy states that her computer has been damaged, and that she will attempt to have the hard drive restored and the emails presented to the Fifth Circuit. Def't Ex. 2. McCoy testified that she was later able to have her emails retrieved, but that there were no emails between Miller and McCoy concerning a certiorari petition.
In connection with the instant motion, Miller's current attorney executed a subpoena forany emails sent by Miller to McCoy between October 2013 through August 2016. Jarred Booth, a special investigative services technician at FCI Aliceville, submitted a declaration in this cause stating that he searched the inmate database and the inmate email system and was not able to locate any relevant emails, as under BOP's email retention protocol, all...
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