Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-14-03697/USCOURTS-ca3-14-03697-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Patrice Ebai Talbot
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 14-3697

_____________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

PATRICE EBAI TALBOT,

Appellant

______________

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

(1-13-cr-00215-001)

District Judge: Hon. Yvette Kane

_____________

Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)

March 24, 2015

______________

Before: HARDIMAN, GREENAWAY, JR., and KRAUSE, Circuit Judges.

(Opinion Filed: May 7, 2015)

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OPINION*

______________

 

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GREENAWAY, JR., Circuit Judge.

Patrice Ebai Talbot (“Appellant” or “Talbot”) is a native and citizen of Cameroon,

who unlawfully entered the United States in June 2002. A few months after his arrival, 

Appellant filed an application for asylum, withholding of removal, and withholding of 

removal under the Convention Against Torture. His application was denied and he was 

served with a Notice to Appear. Throughout his immigration proceedings, Talbot was 

represented by attorney Patrick Tzeuton.1 Appellant testified and presented evidence

including the testimony of two witnesses. The Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denied 

Appellant’s request for asylum, finding that his testimony was not credible and that the 

evidence he presented was uncorroborated. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) 

dismissed Talbot’s appeal and affirmed the IJ’s decision without opinion.

On three separate occasions in 2013, Immigration and Customs Enforcement 

officers attempted to remove Talbot. Each time, Appellant prevented his removal.

Appellant was charged with hindering removal from the United States and filed an 

unsuccessful pretrial motion collaterally challenging the validity of the removal order.

After a bench trial, the District Court found Appellant guilty and sentenced him to time 

served. Appellant timely appealed.

 

1 Four years after the conclusion of Talbot’s immigration proceedings, 

Tzeuton was convicted of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, seven counts of 

immigration fraud, and one count of obstruction of an official proceeding. In light of 

this, the BIA banned Tzeuton from practicing in immigration proceedings. These facts 

form the basis of Talbot’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim, discussed below.

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Talbot argues that the District Court erred in denying his pretrial motion, which 

alleged that his final order of removal was invalid due to ineffective assistance of 

counsel.2 For his motion to succeed, Talbot had to establish that his counsel’s

ineffectiveness undermined the fundamental fairness of his removal proceeding.

Contreras v. Att’y Gen., 665 F.3d 578, 584 (3d Cir. 2012). “To evaluate the merits of an 

ineffectiveness claim, we apply the familiar two-part error-and-prejudice test . . . ask[ing] 

whether competent counsel would have acted otherwise [and] [i]f so, . . . whether 

counsel’s poor performance prejudiced the alien.” Id. (internal quotation marks and 

citations omitted). Talbot failed to establish any nexus between the conduct underlying 

Tzeuton’s criminal convictions and the legal representation he received. Furthermore, 

Talbot did not establish that competent counsel would have handled his case differently. 

As such, the District Court correctly concluded that his due process rights were not 

violated.

Talbot also argues that he is not a “deportable alien” under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a). 

Specifically, he asserts that given the plain language of § 1227(a), in order “for an alien 

to be ‘deportable,’ the Attorney General must issue, by delegation or otherwise, a proper 

travel document” and no such travel document was issued here. Appellant’s Br. at 24. 

This argument is not borne out by the statute. Rather, § 1227(a)(1)(B) states: “Any alien 

 

2 Our review of a district court’s denial of a pretrial motion collaterally 

attacking the validity of a removal order is for clear error as to factual findings and 

plenary as to conclusions of law. United States v. Charleswell, 456 F.3d 347, 351 (3d 

Cir. 2006).

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. . . in and admitted to the United States shall, upon the order of the Attorney General, be 

removed if the alien is . . . present in the United States in violation of this Act or any 

other law of the United States . . . .” Contrary to Talbot’s argument, an alien is 

“deportable” when a removal order is issued. It is this order that must originate from the 

Attorney General, not a “proper travel document.” Talbot concedes that he is a native 

and citizen of Cameroon who entered the United States unlawfully in June 2002 and that 

he never received any type of immigration status in the United States. As such, he is a 

deportable alien under § 1227.

Talbot’s final argument is that the District Court erred in concluding that he was 

not justified in hindering his removal.

3

 To establish the affirmative defense of 

justification, Talbot first had to show by a preponderance of the evidence “that [he] or 

someone else was under unlawful and present threat of death or serious bodily injury.” 

United States v. Dodd, 225 F.3d 340, 342 (3d Cir. 2000) (reciting the requirements of a 

justification defense for a defendant charged as a felon in possession).

4

 He failed to make 

 

3 We exercise plenary review over a district court’s determination as to the 

sufficiency of evidence supporting the affirmative defense of justification. United States 

v. Paolello, 951 F.2d 537, 539 (3d Cir. 1991).

4 The justification defense, as articulated in Dodd, requires a defendant to 

show: “(1) that the defendant or someone else was under unlawful and present threat of 

death or serious bodily injury; (2) that the defendant did not recklessly place himself in a 

situation where he would be forced to engage in criminal conduct; (3) that the defendant 

had no reasonable legal alternative that would avoid both the criminal conduct and the 

threatened death or injury; and (4) that there was a direct causal relationship between the 

criminal act and the avoidance of the threatened harm.” Id. Because we agree that 

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this showing. As the District Court noted, Talbot “testified that after his release from 

prison [in Cameroon] for the 2001 arrest, he remained in Cameroon for an additional 

eleven months without incident before fleeing to Canada.” United States v. Talbot, 22 

F. Supp. 3d 419, 425 (M.D. Pa. 2014). Even if we accept that Talbot was a member of 

organizations at odds with the government of Cameroon, he did not present any evidence 

establishing a specific, imminent threat upon his return to Cameroon. Therefore, he 

failed to satisfy the first prong of his justification defense.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm.

 

Talbot did not establish the first of these conjunctive prongs, we need not analyze the 

remaining requirements.

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