Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-89-02152/USCOURTS-ca10-89-02152-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 510
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Vacate Sentence
Cause of Action: 

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FI Lsb 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

United Stl,\tes O.>urt of Appeals 

·rentb Circuit 

UNITED 

v. 

OSCAR 

STATES OF AMERICA, ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellee, ) 

) 

) 

) 

DIAZ-ALBERTINI, ) 

) 

Defendant-Appellant. ) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

.ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

No. 89-2152 

(D.C. No. 89-403HB) 

(D. N.M.) 

Before McKAY, BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and KANE,** District Judge. 

**Honorable John L. Kane, Senior District 

District Court for the District of 

designation. 

Judge, United States 

Colorado, sitting by 

This is an appeal from the denial of appellant's motion to 

vacate sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255 because of alleged 

ineffective assistance of counsel. The United States District 

Court for the District of New Mexico, after de novo review, 

adopted the findings of the United States Magistrate which found 

that appellant's claim was procedurally barred. 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 

36.3. 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 1 
~. 

Appellant was convicted under 21 U.S.C. § 84l(a)(l) of 

possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Before trial, 

appellant's counsel was made aware that a potentially biased juror 

had been selected for appellant's panel. Appellant's counsel did 

not bring this matter to the attention of the trial judge until 

well after trial. After being apprised of the problem, the trial 

c o urt held several post-trial hearings and concluded "that counsel 

made a conscious decision to postpone raising the matter until 

after a conviction resulted." United States v. Diaz-Albertini, 

772 F.2d 654, 656- (10th Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 822 

(1987). On direct appeal, this court held that when the facts 

supporting a claim of juror bias are known prior ·to trial, the 

issue cannot be deferred and raised for the first time after 

trial. Id. at 657. Such conduct constituted a waiver of 

appellant's right to attack the composition of the jury, id., and 

was a procedural default barring this court from considering 

appellant's juror bias claim on direct appeal. 

The district court viewed appellant's section 2255 claim as 

an attempt to relitigate the juror bias issue. In order for this 

court to consider appellant's juror bias claim on collateral 

review, appellant must comply with the requirements set out by the 

Supreme Court in United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 168 (1982): 

"[t]o obtain collateral relief based on trial errors to which no 

contemporaneous objection was made, a convicted defendant must 

show both (1) 'cause' excusing his double procedural default, and 

(2) 'actual prejudice' resulting from the errors of which he 

complains." United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 167-68 (1982). 

2 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 2 
The district court found that, while the section 2255 claim was 

sty led as an independent claim of ineffective assistance of 

counsel, it was more properly an attempt to satisfy the cause 

requirement necessary under Frady to remedy the prior procedural 

default which had barred this court from hearing the claim of 

juro r bias on direct appeal. 1 The district court dismissed 

appellant's section 2255 claim based on his failure to raise the 

ineffective assistance issue on direct appeal, and on his failure 

to demonstrate cause. We affirm. 2 

On direct appeal we found the conduct on the part of 

appellant's trial counsel to be a conscious choice in the nature 

of a tactical decision, Diaz-Albertini, 772 F.2d at 657, and we 

agree with the district court that such strategic trial decisions, 

and even errors due to counsel's inadvertence or ignorance, will 

not serve as causes to excuse procedural default. See Reed v. 

Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1984); Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 

486-87 (1986). This conclusion, however, is qualified by the 

assumption that counsel was competent: "Underlying the concept of 

1 A proper showing of ineffective assistance of counsel will 

satisfy the showing of cause required to excuse a procedural 

default. Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 488 (1986). 

2 While both parties in their briefs identify the proper 

standard of review here as the clearly erroneous standard, we 

think otherwise. The clearly erroneous standard is appropriate 

when we review factual findings of a district court acting 

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. United States v. Owens, 882 F.2d 

1493, 1501 n.16 (10th Cir. 1989). Here, however, the district 

court did not conduct a hearing, holding instead that appellant's 

claim was barred because of appellant's procedural default. A 

finding of procedural default is a conclusion of law. Conclusions 

of law are reviewable de novo. Bill's Coal Co. v. Board of Public 

Utilities, 887 F.2d 24~ 244(10th Cir. 1989). 

3 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 3 
• 

cause, however, is at least the •.. notion that, absent 

exceptional circumstances, a defendant is bound by the tactical 

decisions of competent counsel. . " Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. at 

13, ( emphasis added). "So long as a defendant is represented by 

counsel whose performance is not constitutionally ineffective 

under the standard established in Strickland v. Washington, [466 

U.S. 668, 690 (1984)], we discern no inequity in requiring him to 

bear the risk of attorney error that results in a procedural 

default." Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. at 488. Furthermore, in 

justifying its decision to hold a claimant barred by procedural 

default to a showing of both cause and prejudice before such 

default will be excused, the Supreme Court has cited the right to 

effective assistance of counsel as "an additional safeguard 

against miscarriages of justice in criminal cases." Id. at 496. 

"The ability to raise ineffective assistance claims based in whole 

or in part on counsel's procedural defaults substantially 

undercuts any predictions of unremedied manifest injustices 

[caused by imposing the cause and prejudice requirement]." Id. 

Counsel's tactical choice at trial to forego objecting to the 

allegedly biased juror will fail to serve as cause for the 

procedural default only if appellant's trial counsel was 

competent. 

The government argues that appellant's case is one of double 

procedural default: the first procedural default being 

appellant's failure to raise the juror bias issue at trial, and 

the second procedural default being appellant's failure to raise 

4 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 4 
his ineffectiveness claim on direct appeal. This second failure, 

the government contends, bars appellant from raising his 

ineffectiveness claim in a collateral proceeding absent a showing 

of cause and prejudice. "We agree that the failure to raise a 

constitutional claim at trial or on direct appeal generally will 

prohibit federal collateral review of that claim absent cause and 

prejudice." Osborn v. Shillinger, 861 F.2d 612, 622 (10th Cir. 

1988)(citing Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478 (1986)). 3 However, 

as we have held in Osborn, a claim of ineffective assistance of 

counsel may be brought for the first time collaterally without a 

showing of cause and prejudice. Id. (citing Kimmelman v. 

Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986)). In Osborn, we allowed the 

petitioner to resurrect his ineffectiveness claim, noting that 

"[w]here .. an ineffectiveness claim cannot be made on the 

basis of the record and the allegedly ineffective counsel handled 

both the trial level proceedings and the direct appeal, a 

petitioner may raise an ineffective assistance of counsel claim 

for the first time collaterally." 

(emphasis added). 

Osborn, 861 F.2d at 623 

Applying the factors identified in Osborn, which condition 

the hearing of defaulted ineffective assistance claims, we find 

that appellant's claim cannot meet those conditions. Appellant 

3 We note that appellant was convicted in federal court for 

violation of a federal law. A federal rather than a state 

procedural rule was broken here. Nevertheless, "the federal 

interest in finality is as great as the State's, and the relevant 

federal constitutional strictures apply with equal force to both 

jurisdictions." Frady, 456 U.S. at 169 n.17 (1982). 

5 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 5 
argues that he was unable to bring the ineffectiveness claim until 

after this court ruled on his direct appeal because it was not 

until after that ruling that he knew whether his trial counsel had 

actually been ineffective. We are unpersuaded by this argument. 

The appellant here had all the information available to him 

necessary to frame a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel. 

He had the record from the post-trial hearings on the matter, 

which included testimony both by the public defender who had 

alerted appellant's trial counsel to the problem and by trial 

counsel himself. Given this record, we believe that appellant 

could have brought the ineffective assistance claim on direct 

appeal and should have done so. 

In addition we note that counsel on direct appeal was not the 

same attorney who represented appellant at trial. We are 

therefore not presented with the dilemma identified by the Seventh 

Circuit in Bush v. United States, 765 F.2d 683 (7th Cir.), cert. 

denied, 474 U.S. 1012 (1985), in which the court held that 

representation on direct appeal by the same allegedly 

trial counsel did not provide the petitioner 

ineffective 

with 

opportunity to raise the ineffective assistance claim in a 

manner. Id. at 684. 

a fair 

timely 

Because appellant here does not qualify for the exception 

noted in Osborn which would allow an ineffective assistance claim 

to be raised for the first time collaterally, appellant must show 

cause and prejudice for his failure to argue ineffective 

assistance of counsel on direct appeal. Appellant has pointed to 

no cause and has identified no prejudice flowing from this 

6 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 6 
failure. He is, therefore, barred from raising the claim in this 

collateral proceeding. 

The judgment of the United States District Court for the 

District of New Mexico is hereby AFFIRMED. 

ENTERED FOR THE COURT 

PER CURIAM 

7 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 7 
No. 89-2152, United States v. Diaz-Albertini 

McKAY, Circuit Judge, concurring in the result: 

I concur in the result in this case because I do not believe 

that, as framed, the appellant has stated a claim of ineffective 

assistance of counsel sufficient to meet the standard of 

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). I do not, however, 

believe that the appellant has waived his right to raise the 

ineffective assistance of counsel claim in this 

proceeding. 

8 

collateral 

Appellate Case: 89-2152 Document: 01019967295 Date Filed: 05/02/1990 Page: 8