Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-03-02239/USCOURTS-ca10-03-02239-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Emmanuel N. Ohiri
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

June 7, 2005 

PATRICK FISHER 

Clerk 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plainti ff-Appellee, 

V. 

EMMANUEL N. OHIRI, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

No. 03-2239 

(D.C. No. CV-03-172-MV/ACT) 

(D. N.M.) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before BRISCOE, ANDERSON, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined 

unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of 

this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.l(G). The case is 

therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. 

*This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of 

law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court generally 

disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order and 

judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3. 

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Emmanuel N. Ohiri, appearing pro se, appeals from the district court's 

denial of his motion to amend his original motion to vacate, set aside, or correct 

his sentence filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. 1 He also seeks a certificate 

appealability so he can appeal the court's dismissal of his original motion. 

Claiming actual innocence, Ohiri seeks collateral relief from his sentence and 

convictions, which were based on a guilty plea. In his amended motion, he 

contends the government committed Brady violations2 by failing to disclose 

exculpatory evidence material to his decision whether to plead guilty. He also 

contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the 

Sixth Amendment. 

We reverse the denial of the motion to amend the § 2255 motion and 

remand for further proceedings. 3 

I. Background 

On October 4, 2000, a federal grand jury returned a twenty-five count 

indictment charging General Waste Corporation ("GWC''), Ohiri, and John 

Thomas Morris with conspiracy to transport, store, and dispose of hazardous 

'This court granted Ohiri a certificate of appealability on the issue whether the 

district court abused its discretion when it denied his request to file a pro se 

amended § 2255 motion. 

2

Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). 

3

Respondent' s Motion to Supplement the Record on Appeal is granted. 

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waste in violation of the Resources and Conservation Recovery Act. See United 

States v. Morris, 85 Fed. App. 117, 119 (10th Cir. 2003). OWC was "a New 

Mexico solid waste management business licensed to remove hazardous waste 

from generating facilities and transport it to final disposal facilities." Id. at 118. 

Ohiri was OWC's chief executive officer; Morris served as OWC's hazardous 

waste and construction debris operations manager from July 1997 to July 1998. 

Id. at 119 & n.2. 

Morris pleaded guilty to three counts of knowingly making false statements 

and representations on manifests. Id. at 119. In a written statement made by 

Morris to the Environmental Protection Agency in 1999 and included in his 

presentence report, Morris stated: 

The first two weeks that I joined OWC, Manny Ohiri instructed me to 

identify, segregate, and label miscellaneous hazardous waste 

containers. Those containers had been accumulated by OWC waste 

management activities, and stored in OWC warehouse prior to my 

arrival. ... I do not know how long the regulated material OWC 

accumulated had been in storage prior to my employment. My 

participation included recreating false waste manifests for proper offsite disposal of the waste OWC had accumulated prior to my 

employment. Manny Ohiri was aware of this activity. 

United States v. Dhiri, 242 F. Supp.2d 1038, 1041 (D.N.M. 2003). Pursuant to 

the terms of a plea agreement dated March 4, 2002, Ohiri also pleaded guilty to 

three counts. Count 21 provided that from February 13, 1998 until May 18, 1999, 

Ohiri knowingly stored 11,000 pounds of hazardous waste from the Four Corners 

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Drilling Company without a permit. Count 23 provided that from July 17, 1998 

until October 15, 1998, Ohiri knowingly stored 225 pounds of hazardous waste 

from Giant Refining Company without a permit. Count 25 provided that from 

May 28, 1999 until July 27, 2001, Ohiri knowingly stored 183 pounds of 

hazardous waste obtained from iina ba, a New Mexico company, and 122 pounds 

of hazardous waste from TPL, Inc. without a permit. At sentencing, Ohiri argued 

that an enhancement for his role as an organizer, leader, manager, or supervisor 

should not be applied because the government had failed to show that Morris 

"was involved criminally in the particular conduct that is the basis of [Ohiri's] 

guilty pleas.'' Id. at 1040. In addressing this argument, the district court 

reviewed and read aloud Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement. This 

statement was provided to the probation officer for inclusion in Morris' 

presentence report. Id. at 1041. The government concedes that it had never 

provided this statement to Ohiri or his attorney, John Cline. In the Acceptance of 

Responsibility Statement, Morris first repeated the statement he made to the EPA 

in 1999, asserting that Ohiri instructed him to dispose of hazardous waste that had 

been accumulated and unlawfully stored by GWC prior to his employment. 

Morris then addressed Ohiri's knowledge of Morris' other illegal activities: 

Once the waste in the warehouse was organized, I started to make 

sales contacts with hazardous waste accounts I had managed prior to 

my employment with GWC. My previous employer ... had an 

authorization granted by the State of New Mexico to store hazardous 

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waste, up to 180 days, received from a conditionally-exempt smallquantity waste generator [CESQG]. Without this type of 

authorization, a waste management transporter could only store the 

waste for no more than ten days. I personally made the decision, of 

my own accord, to operate GWC as if we were authorized as a 180-

day storage and accumulation facility. I created uniform hazardous 

waste shipping manifests for GWC as the receiving facility. I then 

remanifested the waste containers, and had GWC designated as a 

generator for out-bound waste disposal. I intentionally did this for 

building or aggregating larger outbound shipments [for] economical 

reasons. Manny Ohiri was not informed of my waste management 

strategy and techniques in this particular case. For economical 

benefits and to increase profit margins related to the account, I would 

consolidate partial waste containers, mixing waste from multiple 

CESQGs, reducing outbound disposal container volume. I did this 

on my own accord, and Manny Ohiri was not informed of this 

strategy. In order to maintain my waste management accounts and 

integrity, I would change dates on various small quantity generator 

manifests, due to the waste facility non-approval status. I would pick 

up waste without obtaining disposal facility prior approval, and 

would hold the waste over an extended amount of time, until the 

approval was in place. I had recreated waste manifests and forged 

signatures to be in compliance, and to elude the waste generator and 

disposal facility. Manny Ohiri was not informed of this activity. 

Although it considered Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement, the 

district court concluded that Ohiri had a supervisory role over Morris in other 

relevant crimes and imposed a two-level enhancement pursuant to § 3B 1.1 ( c) of 

the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Dhiri, 242 F. Supp.2d at 1041. Ohiri 

was sentenced to a fifteen-month term of imprisonment, three years of supervised 

release and, ordered to pay nearly $42,000 in fines and restitution. See id. at 

1042. 

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After Ohiri was sentenced, Cline moved to withdraw and Ohiri obtained 

representation from new counsel, Ray Twohig. Twohig filed a Motion for a New 

Trial, a New Sentencing, or a Correction of Sentence. The motion was denied. 

Twohig then filed a perfunctory § 2255 motion alleging only that: (1) Ohiri's 

guilty plea was involuntary, (2) Ohiri was opposed to proceeding with sentencing, 

and that (3) Ohiri was not aware of Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility 

Statement and thus his "involuntary guilty plea remained involuntary." The § 

2255 motion was not supported by affidavits, record evidence, or a brief. The 

magistrate judge did not hold an evidentiary hearing but prepared a Report and 

Recommendation recommending that the motion be dismissed. The magistrate's 

recommendation was based, in part, on his conclusion that there was "simply 

nothing in the record to support Ohiri' s conclusory assertions that he did not want 

to plead guilty." 

Twohig moved to withdraw and the district court granted the motion. Ohiri 

filed pro se objections to the Report and Recommendation and moved to amend 

his § 2255 motion. In support of his Motion to Amend, Ohiri asserted that the 

Report and Recommendation was '·based on a deficient, inappropriate, incomplete 

and curtailed petition filed by the attorney of record Mr. Twohig ... [who] 

refused to prosecute the petitioner's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, 

and failed to support the petition with memorandum of law, [and] points and 

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authorities .... " Ohiri further asserted that he had filed with the court an 

amended § 2255 motion and referred the court to the arguments set out in that 

motion. 

In the amended § 2255 motion and accompanying memorandum, Ohiri 

again asserted that his plea was not made knowingly and voluntarily. He also 

specifically alleged Brady violations for the first time. He argued that the 

government's failure to provide him with Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility 

Statement constituted a Brady violation and further argued that he would not have 

pleaded guilty if Morris' "exculpatory statements been disclosed to [him] prior to 

entry of the pleas.'' Ohiri also argued in the amended motion that Cline was 

ineffective by failing to ( 1) properly investigate the case; (2) obtain material 

information, including Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement; (3) 

interview or cross-examine witnesses; and ( 4) offer any evidence at his sentencing 

hearing. He contends that part of Cline's ineffectiveness was due to the fact that 

Ohiri was unable to pay him and Cline's partners were pressuring him not to 

spend any more time on the case. 

The court denied Ohiri' s motion to amend, concluding that the ineffective 

assistance of counsel claim had been raised in the original motion and "addressed 

on the merits in the Magistrate Judge's Proposed Findings and Recommended 

Disposition," and that Ohiri had "no valid claim for ineffective assistance of 

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counsel." The district court did not address Ohiri 's allegations of Brady 

violations. In a separate order, the court adopted the Report and Recommendation 

and dismissed Ohiri' s § 225 5 motion. Ohiri has served his sentence and is no 

longer incarcerated, but he is still subject to supervised release, the ramifications 

of his felony convictions, and significant fines. Thus, his § 225 5 motion is not 

moot. See Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 242-43 (1963); Oyler v. 

Allenbrand, 23 F.3d 292, 293-94 (10th Cir. 1994). 

II. Discussion 

A. Standard of Review 

"We review a trial court's decision on whether to allow amendment of 

pleadings for abuse of discretion. A court should freely grant leave to amend 

when justice so requires." Gillette v. Tansy, 17 F.3d 308,312 (10th Cir. 1994) 

( citations omitted) (reversing district court's denial of motion to amend § 2254 

habeas application to add claim as an abuse of discretion). Rule 15 of the Federal 

Rules of Civil Procedure governs a motion to amend a § 2255 motion if it is made 

before the one-year limitation period for filing a § 2255 motion has expired. See 

United States v. Espinoza-Saenz, 235 F.3d 501, 505 (10th Cir. 2000) (holding 

that "an untimely amendment to a § 2255 motion which, by way of additional 

facts, clarifies or amplifies a claim or theory in the original motion may, in the 

District Court's discretion, relate back to the date of the original motion if and 

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only if the original motion was timely filed and the proposed amendment does not 

seek to add a new claim or to insert a new theory into the case" ( emphasis 

added)). The judgment of conviction was entered on December 23, 2002, so 

Ohiri 's motion to amend his § 2255 motion, filed on August 18, 2003, was made 

within the one-year limitation period. 

Rule l 5(a) declares that leave to amend "shall be freely given 

when justice so requires"; this mandate is to be heeded. See 

generally, 3 Moore, Federal Practice (2d ed. 1948), ,15.08, ,15.10. 

If the underlying facts or circumstances relied upon by a plaintiff 

may be a proper subject of relief, he ought to be afforded an 

opportunity to test his claim on the merits. In the absence of any 

apparent or declared reason-such as undue delay, bad faith or 

dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure 

deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to 

the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility 

of amendment, etc.-the leave sought should, as the rules require, be 

"freely given." 

Fomanv.Davis,371 U.S.178, 182(1962). 

B. The Amended Motion 

Respondent, while conceding that it received a copy of Ohiri 's proposed 

amended § 2255 motion, first suggests that Ohiri may have failed to submit the 

amended motion to the district court, noting that a copy of the amended motion 

and accompanying affidavits and attachments is not in the district-court record. 4 

4

Ohiri asserts that he mailed the amended motion and supporting documents to the 

district court on August 15. He has attached a copy of a certified mail receipt 

dated August 15, 2003 to his reply brief. 

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Without seeing the amended motion, Respondent argues, the district court would 

have known that Ohiri raised general allegations of ineffective assistance of 

counsel, but would have had no knowledge of Ohiri 's specific claims. Thus, it 

could not have abused its discretion in refusing to grant the motion to amend. 

Respondent is correct that copies of the amended motion and the supporting 

documents are not in the district-court record. When the district court denied the 

motion to amend, it wholly failed to discuss Ohiri' s Brady claims and failed to 

specifically address the expanded ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims 

asserted in the amended motion. In Ohiri's motion, however, he explicitly directs 

the court to the arguments set forth in the amended motion and "supporting" 

documents. Accordingly, even assuming that Ohiri failed to properly file the 

amended motion and accompanying documents, the district court should have 

been aware that the documents were not in the record and that they were essential 

to its review of Ohiri' s motion. If the district court denied the motion without 

reviewing the amended motion, it would not have exercised its duty to examine 

the underlying facts and circumstances alleged by Ohiri before determining 

whether the motion to amend should be granted and thus would not have 

exercised its discretion at all, which is reversible error. See Foman. 371 U.S. at 

182. If the district court had not received a copy of the amended motion, it 

should have notified Ohiri so that it could conduct a proper review of his request. 

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C. Brady Claims 

Respondent further argues, however, that the district court did not abuse its 

discretion in refusing to allow Ohiri to amend his Brady claims because 

amendment would have been futile. Respondent asserts that Ohiri's Brady claims 

were properly rejected by the district court5 and amendment to amplify and 

support the claims would be futile because Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility 

Statement was not exculpatory and because the government had no obligation to 

give Morris' statement to Ohiri before he pleaded guilty. 

To establish a Brady violation, a defendant must show: "l) that the 

prosecution suppressed evidence; 2) that the evidence was favorable to the 

accused; and 3) that the evidence was material." United States v. McElhiney, 

275 F.3d 928, 932 (10th Cir. 2001) (quotation omitted). Evidence is "material" if 

there is a "reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to [the 

defendant], the result of the proceeding would have been different. A 'reasonable 

probability' is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." 

United States v. Bagley, 4 73 U.S. 667, 682 (1985). "[A] showing of materiality 

does not require demonstration by a preponderance that disclosure of the 

suppressed evidence would have resulted ultimately in the defendant's acquittal .. 

5

The magistrate judge determined that Brady claims were implicit in the original § 

2255 motion even though counsel Twohig did not expressly make a Brady 

argument. 

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.. '' Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419,434 (1995). The Report and Recommendation 

concluded that Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement was not 

exculpatory because Ohiri' s convictions involved the storage of materials after 

Morris left GWC. 

Attached to Ohiri' s proposed amended motion is a letter Ohiri alleges he 

prepared on December 15, asking for the court's mercy and clemency at 

sentencing. As to Count 21, Ohiri claimed that Morris handled the drillingcompany transaction alone, undercharged for the disposal and hid the waste 

because Morris knew it would cost GWC more than what Morris had charged to 

dispose of it, and that, when Ohiri discovered it, Ohiri properly disposed of it 

immediately, at a loss to GWC. Additionally, the district court concluded that the 

waste Morris picked up from Four Corners Drilling was "precisely [the] waste 

that the Environmental Protection Agency found to be stored illegally at GWC 

when it executed a federal search warrant on November 13, 1998, and that is the 

subject matter of Count 21." Dhiri, 242 F. Supp.2d at 1042. As to Count 25, 

Ohiri maintained that Morris initiated and completed the transactions from iina ba 

and TPL and hid the waste, and that this waste had been mistakenly stored offsite 

during warehouse reconstruction. According to Ohiri, Cline modified the letter to 

delete all of his statements indicating his actual innocence. 

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Ohiri agreed to plead guilty to "caus[ing] the storage'' of hazardous waste 

and he pleaded guilty to counts alleging that he "knowingly stored" hazardous 

waste without authority to do so. We emphasize that Ohiri asserts his innocence 

on all charges to which he pleaded guilty and argues that he pleaded guilty only 

because Morris' 1999 statements to the Environmental Protection Agency and the 

New Mexico Environment Department accused him of involvement in illegal 

conduct. Ohiri further asserts that he believed Morris would testify against him 

and that he was warned by Cline that he could likely be convicted based on 

Morris' testimony. In his Acceptance of Responsibility Statement, however, 

Morris asserted that Ohiri was not aware of some of the illegal activities he 

engaged in while employed by GWC. Even though the illegal conduct to which 

Ohiri pleaded guilty includes conduct that occurred after Morris left GWC, Ohiri 

asserts that if he had been aware of Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility 

Statement, he would not have pleaded guilty to "knowingly" storing waste he 

alleges was obtained by Morris and which remained hidden on GWC's property 

after Morris left the company. 

We conclude that the arguments and documents supporting Ohiri' s Motion 

to Amend not considered by the district court call into question the conclusion 

reached by the district court that Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement 

was not exculpatory. 

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The district court, however, also concluded that Ohiri could not establish a 

Brady violation because "the government is not required to produce all Brady 

material when a defendant pleads guilty." As support for this conclusion, the 

district court relied on United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622 (2002). The issue 

before the Supreme Court in Ruiz was whether the Constitution requires federal 

prosecutors, before entering into a binding, "fast track" plea agreement with a 

criminal defendant prior to indictment, to disclose "impeachment information 

relating to any informants or other witnesses." Ruiz, 536 U.S. at 625 (emphasis 

added). The fast-track plea agreement at issue in Ruiz required the defendant to 

expressly waive the right to receive impeachment information, but the government 

agreed to disclose "any [known] information establishing the factual innocence of 

the defendant" and acknowledged its "continuing duty to provide such 

information." Id. (quotation omitted). 

The Supreme Court noted that ''impeachment evidence is special in relation 

to the fairness of a trial," not in respect to whether a plea is voluntary, and that 

the ·'Constitution does not require the prosecutor to share all useful information 

with the defendant." Id. at 629. It explained that impeachment evidence differs 

from exculpatory evidence in that it is not "critical information of which the 

defendant must always be aware prior to pleading guilty given the random way in 

which such information may, or may not, help a particular defendant." Id. at 630. 

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The Ruiz Court further noted how the defendant's constitutional rights to receive 

Brady materials had been protected: "the proposed plea agreement at issue here 

specifies, the Government will provide 'any information establishing the factual 

innocence of the defendant."' Id. at 631. 

Ruiz is distinguishable in at least two significant respects. First, the 

evidence withheld by the prosecution in this case is alleged to be exculpatory, and 

not just impeachment, evidence. Second, Ohiri 's plea agreement was executed 

the day jury selection was to begin, and not before indictment in conjunction with 

a "fast-track" plea. Thus, the government should have disclosed all known 

exculpatory information at least by that point in the proceedings. By holding in 

Ruiz that the government committed no due process violation by requiring a 

defendant to waive her right to impeachment evidence before indictment in order 

to accept a fast-track plea, the Supreme Court did not imply that the government 

may avoid the consequence of a Brady violation if the defendant accepts an 

eleventh-hour plea agreement while ignorant of withheld exculpatory evidence in 

the government's possession. See McCann v. Mangialardi, 33 7 F .3d 782, 787 

(7th Cir. 2003) (stating that, given Ruiz's distinction between exculpatory and 

impeachment evidence, "it is highly likely that the Supreme Court would find a 

violation of the Due Process Clause if prosecutors ... have knowledge of a 

criminal defendant's factual innocence but fail to disclose such information to a 

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defendant before he enters into a guilty plea"); United States v. Persico, 164 F .3d 

796, 804-05 (2d Cir. 1999) ("The Government's obligation to disclose Brady 

materials is pertinent to the accused's decision to plead guilty; the defendant is 

entitled to make that decision with full awareness of favorable [ exculpatory and 

impeachment] evidence known to the Government."). 

Under the unusual circumstances presented in this case, we conclude that 

the district court abused its discretion when it refused to allow amendment of 

Ohiri 's § 2255 motion to allege a Brady or due process violation. 

D. Ineffective Assistance Claim 

Although an ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not independently 

raised in the original § 225 5 motion, the magistrate judge read Ohiri' s original § 

2255 motion to include a claim that Cline provided ineffective assistance by not 

obtaining Morris' agreement with the government, by not obtaining a copy of 

Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement, and by coercing him into 

pleading guilty. The Report and Recommendation concluded that Ohiri could not 

establish constitutionally ineffective performance because he could not show that 

Cline's performance caused him to plead guilty and that "nothing in the record[] 

support[ s] Ohiri' s conclusory assertions that he did not want to plead guilty." See 

Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 56-57, 59 (1985). As support for the conclusion 

that Ohiri wanted to plead guilty, the Report and Recommendation noted that 

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Ohiri was informed about Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement at 

sentencing and, yet, "did not ask [the] Court to allow him to withdraw his plea." 

Ohiri objected to, and sought to address, these findings and conclusions by 

submitting his amended motion (which alleged additional claims of pre-trial 

ineffective assistance including failures to interview any witnesses, to obtain 

expert testimony, and to test the government's physical evidence, and claims of 

pre-sentencing ineffective assistance by failure to offer any mitigating evidence 

and refusing to use available evidence or Ohiri' s testimony to contradict the 

government's witnesses) together with his and Cline's affidavits. The district 

court did not specifically comment about the evidentiary submissions or the 

additional claims; the court simply concluded that Ohiri "has no valid claim for 

ineffective assistance of counsel." 

On appeal, Respondent again argues that Ohiri' s proposed amendment to 

his § 2255 motion to add or amplify ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims is 

futile, and that the district court therefore did not abuse its discretion when it 

denied his motion to amend. Respondent's futility argument relies, in part, on the 

district court's determination that Morris' Acceptance of Responsibility Statement 

was not exculpatory: we have already concluded that this determination is 

questionable and must be re-examined based on arguments Ohiri makes in his 

amended motion. Further, although the district court concluded that Ohiri's plea 

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was made knowingly and voluntarily, that conclusion was reached without a 

review of the arguments and supporting documents contained in Ohiri' s amended 

§ 2255 motion. 6 Because the district court did not consider those arguments, we 

do not have confidence in its conclusion that Ohiri's plea was made voluntarily. 

Respondent's other arguments on futility go to the merits of Ohiri' s amended 

claims and are best resolved by the district court in the first instance; particularly 

in this case, where no evidentiary hearing was held. Based on the allegations and 

arguments set forth in Ohiri' s amended motion, we cannot accept Respondent's 

argument that amendment would be futile. Accordingly, we see no reason not to 

apply the general rule set forth in Gillette and Espinoza-Saenz that one seeking 

post-conviction relief should be allowed to timely amend his pleadings to add new 

claims and supporting facts if "there is no evidence of bad faith by petitioner or 

of prejudice to respondents," Gillette, 17 F .3d at 313, and the motion to amend is 

timely filed, see Espinoza-Saenz, 235 F .3d at 505. We conclude that the district 

court abused its discretion when it refused to allow Ohiri to file an amended § 

2255 motion raising specific ineffective assistance of counsel claims. 

6

These documents include an affidavit from Cline. 

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III. Conclusion 

We reverse the district court's order denying Ohiri's motion to amend his 

§ 2255 motion. 7 The matter is remanded to the district court for further 

proceedings consistent with this order and judgment. 

Entered for the Court 

Michael R. Murphy 

Circuit Judge 

7

In light of our conclusion that the district court abused its discretion when it 

refused Ohiri's request to amend his § 2255 motion, it is unnecessary for us to 

address the bases on which Ohiri seeks a COA. 

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