United States v. Ciampi

• Decision Date: 17 August 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-2461.,03-2461.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Anthony CIAMPI, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

419 F.3d 20

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Anthony CIAMPI, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 03-2461.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard December 7, 2004.

Decided August 17, 2005.

Thomas J. Butters, for appellant.

Cynthia A. Young, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Michael J. Sullivan, United States Attorney, was on brief for appellee.

Before BOUDIN, Chief Judge, SELYA, Circuit Judge, and CYR, Senior Circuit Judge.

CYR, Senior Circuit Judge.

Anthony Ciampi appeals from the district court order which denied and dismissed his petition for habeas corpus, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, in which he asserts that he never knowingly and voluntarily waived the right to appeal or collaterally challenge his illegal gambling conviction by entering into a written plea agreement with the government. As there was no error, we affirm.

I BACKGROUND

A twenty-three count indictment was returned against Ciampi in April 1997 relating to his involvement in an illegal gambling operation. See 18 U.S.C. § 1955. Subsequently, Ciampi was convicted by the jury on the § 1955 count, acquitted of four other counts, and no verdicts were reached on the remaining eighteen counts. Ciampi's original trial attorney withdrew his appearance, and the district court appointed new counsel pending a retrial on the latter counts. The government ultimately proposed a plea agreement, whereby Ciampi would plead guilty to two counts upon which the jury had reached no verdict (viz., conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering and attempting to commit an assaultive crime with a dangerous weapon, id. §§ 1959(a) & 2).

At the plea hearing conducted on November 1, 1999, Ciampi was provided with a copy of the plea agreement, and the terms of the agreement were recited by government counsel, including the provision waiving any right to appeal or collaterally challenge either the conviction or the sentence. The district court asked whether Ciampi understood the terms of the agreement, and Ciampi replied in the affirmative. Whereupon the district court, on March 1, 2000, imposed a 216-month prison term pursuant to the plea agreement. Judgment was entered on March 8.

On February 20, 2001, Ciampi submitted a pro se habeas corpus petition in the federal district court, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, claiming, inter alia,¹ that the district court had failed to inform him during the November 1999 plea colloquy that he was waiving his right to appeal, as well as any right to assert a collateral challenge.

On October 31, 2002, Ciampi, through counsel, submitted an amended § 2255 petition, which asserted several additional claims, including: (i) counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to appeal his conviction on the § 1955 gambling count; and (ii) the government adduced insufficient evidence that he violated § 1955. The district court granted the amendment.

On September 19, 2003, in an unpublished opinion, the district court denied the amended § 2255 petition, holding that the new claims asserted in the amended petition — filed some 18 months after the final judgment of conviction was entered under § 1955 — were time-barred by operation of the one-year statute of limitations prescribed by section 2255. Further, the court determined that these new claims could not "relate back" to the timely pro se petition filed by Ciampi in February 2001, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(c), in that (i) the ineffective assistance claim concerned counsel's alleged failure to advise Ciampi to appeal following his § 1955 conviction, whereas the pro se petition addressed a totally different time in the litigation, viz., the ineffective assistance of counsel in persuading Ciampi to accept the government's plea agreement offer; and (ii) Ciampi's pro se petition made no mention of the insufficiency of the evidence supporting the § 1955 conviction. Consequently, the district court ruled that the only preserved claim concerned whether Ciampi had knowingly and voluntarily waived his rights to appeal and to assert a collateral challenge by virtue of his acceptance of the plea agreement, viz., whether the district court conducted an adequate inquiry during the plea colloquy as to whether Ciampi understood the waiver provision.

Alternatively, the district court denied the timely claims, as well as the time-barred claims, on the merits. As for the waiver claim, the court ruled that even though the district court had not specifically asked Ciampi during the plea hearing whether he understood the consequences of waiving his rights to appeal and to assert collateral challenges, the attendant circumstances nonetheless demonstrated that Ciampi had fully understood the waiver. Finally, after obtaining a certificate of appealability, Ciampi challenges the dismissal of his petition.

II DISCUSSION

A. The Limitations Period and the "Relation Back" Argument

First, Ciampi contends that the district court erred in dismissing, as time-barred, the claims asserted in his amended petition that counsel rendered ineffective assistance during the plea process by failing to discuss with him (i) that acceptance of the plea agreement would constitute a waiver of his appeal and habeas corpus rights, and (ii) whether or not he had a viable appeal from his gambling conviction. Ciampi contends that since the pro se petition stated that "the waiver in the plea agreement was not fully explained to him," and inasmuch as pro se petitions are to be liberally construed, this court should supply the omitted phrase "by the court or his attorney" at the end of that sentence. Ciampi maintains that once we import, from his pro se petition, this ineffective assistance claim into his amended petition, it follows that his related argument that he had a meritorious and potentially successful appeal from his gambling conviction — including subordinate issues such as (i) whether the government established all elements of a section 1955 offense, and (ii) whether his counsel properly preserved or waived the insufficiency challenge for appeal — must necessarily be addressed as part of his amended petition. We disagree.

The district court ruling that the pertinent new claims in Ciampi's amended October 2002 petition do not relate back to the timely pro se petition filed in February 2001 is reviewed only for abuse of discretion. See Young v. Lepone, 305 F.3d 1, 14 (1st Cir.2002).²

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 governs amendments to habeas petitions in a § 2255 proceeding. See, e.g., United States v. Duffus, 174 F.3d 333, 336 (3d Cir.1999); see also United States v. Hicks, 283 F.3d 380, 386 (D.C.Cir.2002), thereby permitting otherwise untimely pleading amendments to "relate back" to the date of the timely-filed original pleading provided the claim asserted in the amended plea "arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set forth or attempted to be set forth in the original pleading." Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(c)(2)(emphasis added). However, in the habeas corpus context, the Rule 15 "relation back" provision is to be strictly construed, in light of "`Congress' decision to expedite collateral attacks by placing stringent time restrictions on [them].'" Mayle v. Felix, ___ U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 2562, 2570, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2005) (citation omitted); see United States v. Espinoza-Saenz, 235 F.3d 501, 505 (10th Cir.2000) (noting that an overly broad interpretation of the Rule 15 term "occurrence" in the context of habeas proceedings "would be tantamount to judicial rescission of AEDPA's statute of limitations period"). Accordingly, amended habeas corpus claims generally must arise from the "same core facts," and not depend upon events which are separate both in time and type from the events upon which the original claims depended. Mayle, 125 S.Ct. at 2570 (disallowing relation back, and holding that claimed violations in admission of out-of-court statements were distinct under Rule 15, inasmuch as one involved a Fifth Amendment challenge to the defendant's own pretrial statements, and the other involved a Confrontation Clause challenge to videotaped witness testimony).

Under this stringent standard, therefore, the district court did not remotely abuse its discretion in determining that the amended Ciampi claims did not relate back to the pro se petition. Ciampi erroneously posits that it is sufficient under Rule 15 that both sets of claims generally related to his "understanding" of his appellate waiver. Instead, however, Ciampi's pro se petition restricts its focus to whether the district court failed to make an adequate inquiry at the plea hearing — pursuant to its responsibility under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(6) — as to whether Ciampi understood that he was waiving his rights to appeal or to collaterally challenge his gambling conviction. In pertinent part, the Addendum to the Ciampi pro se petition states:

Can the court accept such a waiver without informing the defendant in detail that such waiver would prevent the defendant from arguing any constitutional or jurisdictional defect found within the indictment? To compound [petitioner's] dilemma, he assumed the right to appeal was standard for all defendant(s), and that (sic) the waiver in the plea agreement was not fully explained to him.

(Emphasis added.) Even if it were to be liberally construed, see, e.g., Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976) (noting that pro se habeas petitions normally should be construed liberally in petitioner's favor); Voravongsa v. A.T. Wall, 349 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir.2003), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 963, 124 S.Ct. 1724, 158 L.Ed.2d 407 (2004), this quoted language speaks only of the court, and makes no mention of Ciampi's attorney. Moreover, Ciampi asserted another ineffective assistance claim against his attorney in his pro se petition, alleging that his counsel failed to investigate the misrepresentations allegedly made by the government in the indictment, which...