Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-02-03104/USCOURTS-caDC-02-03104-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Benjamin Gwyn
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 20, 2006 Decided March 30, 2007

No. 02-3104

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

BENJAMIN GWYN,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 01cr00073-01)

Sandra G. Roland, Assistant Federal Public Defender,

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A. J.

Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Neil H. Jaffee, Assistant

Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance.

Suzanne C. Nyland, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Kenneth L.

Wainstein, U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Roy

W. McLeese, III, Thomas J. Tourish, Jr., James Sweeney, and

Sarah T. Chasson, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: SENTELLE and TATEL, Circuit Judges, and

EDWARDS, Senior Circuit Judge.

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TATEL, Circuit Judge: Arguing that his trial lawyer

provided constitutionally ineffective assistance, appellant

appealed his conviction for illegal firearm possession by a

convicted felon. After we remanded the record, the district court

determined that although counsel’s performance was “less than

stellar,” it was not constitutionally deficient. Here, appellant

challenges that conclusion, asserting that trial counsel failed to

(1) make the best available argument at the suppression hearing,

(2) argue that the police planted the firearm or that the gun

introduced at trial was not the gun allegedly seized from him,

and (3) conduct a reasonable investigation. He also argues that

counsel presented a legally untenable defense. Because we

agree with the district court that trial counsel’s performance was

not constitutionally ineffective, we affirm the conviction. 

I.

Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Officers Timothy

Lewis and Leslie Parsons, Jr., observing an inoperable headlight

on appellant Benjamin Gwyn’s vehicle, stopped the car early in

the morning of February 4, 2001. Officer Lewis approached the

car and motioned Gwyn to lower his window. Gwyn instead

opened the door, explaining that the window was broken. Lewis

asked for Gwyn’s driver’s license and, as Gwyn produced it,

noticed he appeared nervous, his hands “constantly reaching up

towards the steering wheel.” Tr. of Nov. 5, 2001 Hr’g at 17.

Officer Lewis asked Gwyn to step out of the car and observed

that Gwyn was tall, well over six feet. The officer also saw a

black leather jacket and black scarf in the vehicle and

remembered that at evening roll call, a detective had instructed

the officers to be on the lookout for an armed robber over six

feet tall with a black leather jacket and a ski mask or black scarf.

Suspicious, Lewis patted Gwyn down, feeling what he thought

was a firearm in his pants pocket. Asked by Lewis what was in

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the pocket, Gwyn said it was a pistol he had taken from his

aunt’s home. The officers then placed Gwyn under arrest.

At Gwyn’s detention hearing, Officer Parsons testified that

the gun they recovered was a “Grendell [sic] P-10, 38 caliber.”

Tr. of Feb. 16, 2001 Hr’g at 8. Parsons also testified that when

MPD firearms specialists tested the gun, they found that it “did

not fire, due to a light strike of the hammer,” meaning, Parsons

explained, that the gun’s firing mechanism was unable to cause

the necessary “chemical reaction to make the projectile go from

the round.” Id.

Because Gwyn had been convicted of a crime punishable by

more than a year’s imprisonment, a grand jury indicted him on

a single count of being a felon in possession of a firearm in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). In particular, the indictment

alleged that Gwyn had possessed a “Grendel .380 caliber semiautomatic pistol”—not a 38 caliber.

Gwyn was initially represented by a federal defender who

moved to suppress the gun on the grounds that the search

violated the Fourth Amendment. Alleging that the police had

failed to Mirandize Gwyn, the defender also asked the court to

suppress the statements he made to the officers. At the hearing,

however, Gwyn was represented by new counsel—the subject

of these proceedings. The new lawyer argued that the officers

had no legitimate reason to order Gwyn from his vehicle or to

frisk him. But believing that Gwyn had not been in custody

when he spoke to the officers, counsel abandoned the Miranda

argument made by the federal defender. Tr. of Nov. 5, 2001

Hr’g at 59 (“I have conceded and will continue to concede that

he was at that moment in time not in custody.”). After prodding

from the court, however, counsel recanted his concession and

sought suppression of Gwyn’s statement that he had taken the

gun from his aunt’s home. Although the district court rejected

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Gwyn’s Fourth Amendment argument, it accepted the Miranda

point and suppressed Gwyn’s second statement.

After the suppression hearing but before trial, bad feelings

between Gwyn and his lawyer bubbled to the surface. Gwyn

asked the court to appoint new counsel, asserting that his lawyer

had failed to investigate the case. In particular, concerned that

the officers were biased against him, Gwyn cited the lawyer’s

failure to investigate whether the police officers had done a

background check on him weeks before the arrest. In response,

the lawyer offered his view that “prior involvement between Mr.

Gwyn and officers . . . is not relevant to the factual issues of this

case.” Tr. of Nov. 5, 2001 Hr’g at 72. Concluding that the

lawyer had acted reasonably, the district court declined to

appoint new counsel. 

At trial, Officer Lewis testified that the weapon seized from

Gwyn was a Grendel .380 semi-automatic and identified the

firearm in the courtroom as Gwyn’s. Officer Parsons testified,

as he had at the suppression hearing, that the gun was inoperable

“due to a light strike of the hammer.” Nov. 6, 2001 Trial Tr. at

174. Defense counsel never asked Parsons about the

discrepancy between his statement at the detention hearing that

the gun was a “38” caliber and Lewis’s trial testimony,

corroborated by the police reports, that it was in fact a “.380”

caliber. The government called a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco

and Firearms special agent, who testified that despite its

inoperability, the weapon qualified as a “firearm” as defined in

the United States Code, a legal conclusion to which trial counsel

objected. The special agent also testified that the gun bore a

serial number, as well as the scratched-in initials of an arresting

officer (Parsons) and a firearms specialist.

After the government rested, defense counsel again

informed the court that he and Gwyn disagreed about how to

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proceed, this time over whether to recall the MPD officers to

inquire further into the circumstances of the initial stop. Gwyn

offered a lengthy and difficult-to-follow theory of how, given

the layout of the streets in the area, the officers must have lied

about the stop. The court rejected Gwyn’s complaints,

explaining that strategic decisions such as whether to call a

witness belong to the attorney. Counsel moved for a judgment

of acquittal, though he made no significant argument for it. He

put on no evidence and, following a perfunctory closing

argument in which he urged acquittal on grounds that the gun

was inoperable, the jury convicted Gwyn.

Gwyn then filed several pro se motions alleging, among

other things, that trial counsel had provided constitutionally

ineffective assistance. Subsequently withdrawing these motions,

Gwyn presented his ineffective assistance argument to this

court. Pursuant to this circuit’s practice, see United States v.

Fennell, 53 F.3d 1296, 1304 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (“When an

appellant has not raised a claim of ineffective assistance of

counsel before the district court, . . . our general practice is to

remand the claim for an evidentiary hearing.”), we remanded the

record to the district court to consider the ineffective assistance

issue in the first instance. United States v. Gwyn, No. 02-3104,

2004 WL 885274 (D.C. Cir. April 26, 2004).

On remand, the district court conducted an evidentiary

hearing, taking testimony from both Gwyn and trial counsel.

Once again represented by a federal defender, Gwyn testified

that, prior to trial, he not only informed trial counsel that he had

no gun when he was arrested, but also asked his lawyer to

investigate whether the police planted the weapon. He further

testified that the gun introduced into evidence was not the gun

allegedly taken from him at the scene, citing the fact that the gun

presented at trial bore a serial number while the one allegedly

seized did not. Relying on his notes, trial counsel testified that

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he was unaware of Gwyn’s claim that he possessed no weapon

at the time of his arrest or of Gwyn’s belief that the police had

planted the gun. Trial counsel also testified—inaccurately—that

he had raised the serial number discrepancy at trial. Following

this testimony, the federal defender argued that trial counsel

should have stressed inconsistencies between Gwyn’s

appearance and the police reports’ descriptions of the robbery

suspects. The federal defender also argued that trial counsel had

presented a legally untenable defense.

The district court declined to credit Gwyn’s testimony,

accepting instead trial counsel’s version of his discussions with

his client. The court gave three reasons for its credibility

determination: Gwyn’s self-interest in the issue, the lack of any

hint in Gwyn’s copious notes to his lawyer that the police had

planted the gun, and the court’s own recollection that none of

Gwyn’s complaints about counsel related to a “plant” theory.

The court also noted that Gwyn had raised several other alleged

lapses in trial counsel’s performance and ruled that none could

have affected the outcome. Gwyn appeals.

II.

Ineffective assistance of counsel claims are governed by the

familiar test set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668

(1984). As we have restated the Strickland test, to succeed, a

defendant “must prove (1) [his attorney] made errors so serious

that counsel was not functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the

defendant by the Sixth Amendment, and (2) there is a reasonable

probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the

result of the proceeding would have been different.” United

States v. Moore, 394 F.3d 925, 931 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (internal

quotation marks omitted). The Strickland test’s first element

requires a defendant to “show that counsel’s performance was

deficient, falling below an objective standard of reasonableness

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defined by prevailing professional norms.” United States v.

Askew, 88 F.3d 1065, 1070 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (internal quotation

marks omitted). As to the second element, “a reasonable

probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence

in the outcome.” Moore, 394 F.3d at 931 (internal quotation

marks omitted).

Although other circuits review ineffectiveness of counsel

rulings de novo, as we explained in United States v. Toms, 396

F.3d 427 (D.C. Cir. 2005), this circuit has yet to decide between

de novo and abuse of discretion review. In Toms, we declined

to fix the standard in part because it was “unnecessary for us to

do so,” given that the defendant’s challenge “fail[ed] even under

the more searching de novo standard.” Id. at 433; see also

Askew, 88 F.3d at 1071. So too here. Because Gwyn’s

ineffective assistance claim fails regardless of the standard of

review, we again leave the unsettled question for another day.

We review the district court’s factual conclusions only for clear

error. Askew, 88 F.3d at 1070.

Gwyn first argues that counsel performed ineffectively

because he failed to challenge the frisk that led Officer Lewis to

find the gun. Lewis testified that at roll call, he heard a

detective describe an armed robbery suspect as a “black male

over six foot [sic] tall with a black leather jacket and either a ski

mask or a black scarf over his face.” Tr. of Nov. 5, 2001 Hr’g

at 15. Yet police reports provided to counsel, though describing

the robbers as black males, said they were 6’, 5’8”, and 5’10”,

and made no mention of a leather jacket. Because “there was no

match except in terms of Gwyn’s race and gender and, perhaps,

his possession of a black knit scarf,” Gwyn argues, there was

“no reasonable suspicion to believe that Gwyn might be one of

the armed-and-dangerous robbers that the police were looking

for.” Appellant’s Br. 28. The government responds that

because the officers relied on the description provided by the

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detective, not the police reports, “appellant cannot show that

[counsel] was deficient in not cross-examining Lewis about the

reports or that he suffered any prejudice for want of such crossexamination.” Appellee’s Br. 30. 

The government’s argument is persuasive. Because no

record evidence indicates that the arresting officers ever saw the

police reports, cross-examination of the officers based on those

reports would have been useless as impeachment and highly

unlikely to bear on the district court’s suppression decision.

Moreover, the officers, relying on the detective’s description,

had reasonable suspicion to frisk Gwyn. While a diligent

defense attorney might nonetheless have pointed out the

discrepancy between the police reports and the detective’s

description, Gwyn has given us no basis for believing that trial

counsel’s performance “[fell] below an objective standard of

reasonableness defined by prevailing professional norms.”

Askew, 88 F.3d at 1070.

Gwyn next argues that trial counsel omitted two meritorious

arguments relating to the gun itself: “[t]hat a gun was planted on

Mr. Gwyn, and that the gun produced at trial was not the gun the

officers alleged they took from Gwyn.” Appellant’s Br. 28-29.

The first argument is a non-starter. As noted above, the district

court, after hearing testimony from both Gwyn and trial counsel,

concluded that Gwyn never informed the lawyer of this theory

either before or during trial. Gwyn offers us no reason to

believe that this finding was erroneous, much less clearly so.

Gwyn’s “different gun” theory—that the gun presented to

the jury was not the gun allegedly seized from him—fares no

better. Seeing “significant and glaring inconsistencies between

the first descriptions of the gun and the gun produced at trial,”

Appellant’s Br. 29, Gwyn argues that had trial counsel brought

these inconsistencies to the jury’s attention, “there is a

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reasonable probability that [the jury] would have had a

reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Gwyn truly had a gun that

night and whether the gun produced in court was the same gun

they claimed to have seized from Mr. Gwyn.” Appellant’s Br.

31. In support of this claim, Gwyn cites two inconsistencies,

neither exploited by his counsel. First, Officer Parsons testified

at the suppression hearing that the gun was a “38” caliber, yet

police reports and other testimony indicated it was a “.380”

caliber. Second, initial police reports recorded no serial number

on the gun, yet later reports did. Because, as we explain below,

Gwyn suffered no prejudice from trial counsel’s failure to

exploit these inconsistencies, we need not decide whether

counsel’s performance in this respect was objectively

unreasonable. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 697 (“[A] court need

not determine whether counsel’s performance was deficient

before examining the prejudice suffered by the defendant as a

result of the alleged deficiencies.”).

As to the first point, Gwyn has introduced no evidence

demonstrating any difference between a “38” caliber gun and

a “.380” caliber gun, and we doubt that one exists. There is thus

no “reasonable probability” that, had trial counsel pointed out

the discrepancy between the two descriptions, “the result of the

proceeding would have been different.” Moore, 394 F.3d at

931.

The serial number discrepancy requires a little more

discussion. As Gwyn correctly points out, initial police

documents recorded no serial number on the gun recovered at

the scene. The Crime Scene Search Unit report noted that the

weapon had “no visible serial #.” The MPD’s “Incident-Based

Event Report” stated affirmatively that “[t]here was no serial

number on the weapon,” and the MPD property record failed to

note a serial number, even though the form had a place for one.

Yet a document prepared by the MPD Firearms Identification

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Section describing the weapon as inoperable noted the gun bore

serial number 16690.

Confronted with this evidence, the district court concluded

that “the fact that there is a lack of a serial number in the

paperwork at one time, that appears another time, [is an]

inconsistenc[y] in the context of this kind of case that I don’t

believe would have made any difference at all.” Tr. of June 9,

2005 Hr’g at 98. We agree, but for a slightly different reason.

Because the gun was admitted into evidence, we examined it

ourselves and observed that the serial number is not only tiny,

but well hidden at the bottom of a narrow, relatively deep slot

near the top of the frame. Given this, we think it unsurprising

that the line officers who prepared the first reports failed to

notice the serial number, while a specialist at the firearms lab,

apparently knowing where to look, discovered the number and

recorded it in his report. Beyond pointing to the paperwork

discrepancy, moreover, Gwyn identifies no evidence suggesting

the gun introduced at trial was not the gun taken from him at the

scene. We thus see no “reasonable probability” of a different

outcome had trial counsel brought the inconsistent paperwork to

the jury’s attention. Moore, 394 F.3d at 931.

Next, Gwyn argues that trial counsel presented a “legally

untenable” argument to the jury. Specifically, in his closing

argument, counsel claimed that because the gun allegedly taken

from Gwyn proved to be inoperable, the weapon was not a

“firearm” for purposes of the felon-in-possession statute. Gwyn

now argues that inoperability has no bearing on whether an item

is a “firearm” within the meaning of the relevant statute, which

defines the term as “(A) any weapon (including a starter gun)

which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel

a projectile by the action of an explosive; [or] (B) the frame or

receiver of any such weapon . . . .” 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3).

According to Gwyn, the gun introduced into evidence

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“obviously met that definition since it was designed to expel a

projectile and was, at the very least, a ‘frame’ of a gun.”

Appellant’s Br. 30. Gwyn cites an Eighth Circuit case holding

that “[s]ection 921(a)(3) does not require a firearm to be

operable,” United States v. York, 830 F.2d 885, 891 (8th Cir.

1987), pointing out that this circuit has cited the Eighth Circuit’s

interpretation approvingly, see United States v. Burke, 888 F.2d

862, 869 (D.C. Cir. 1989). Unsurprisingly, the government

neither contests Gwyn’s interpretation of the statute nor argues

that trial counsel’s defense was consequently untenable. We too

agree that 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3) includes “inoperable weapons”

within the definition of “firearm.” 

Counsel’s flawed legal argument could constitute grounds

for ineffective assistance only if it prejudiced Gwyn. Moore,

394 F.3d at 931. Given the overwhelming evidence against

Gwyn, we perceive no probability—much less a “reasonable

probability”—that “the result of the proceeding would have been

different” if trial counsel had omitted the inoperability defense.

Id.

Finally, Gwyn contends that “[c]ounsel’s lapses started in

the very beginning when he failed to conduct any investigation

at all.” Appellant’s Br. 26. In this circuit, however, a defendant

may not merely allege that counsel failed to undertake an

investigation, but must “show to the extent possible precisely

what information would have been discovered through further

investigation.” Askew, 88 F.3d at 1073. Because Gwyn has

failed to identify any evidence or theory of defense helpful to his

cause (again, aside from the gun-related theories we have

rejected), he has failed to meet this burden.

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III.

In addition to his ineffective assistance of counsel

argument, Gwyn, citing United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220

(2005), argues that the district court erred by treating the

Sentencing Guidelines as mandatory. He seeks remand of the

record pursuant to United States v. Coles, 403 F.3d 764 (D.C.

Cir. 2005), “so that [the district court] may determine whether

it would have imposed a different sentence materially more

favorable to the defendant had it been fully aware of the postBooker sentencing regime.” Id. at 770. The government

concedes that a Coles remand is appropriate. 

Accordingly, we affirm Gwyn’s conviction and remand the

record to the district court pursuant to Coles.

So ordered.

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