Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01636/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01636-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Daniel L. Masarik
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted December 16, 2015*

Decided January 21, 2016

Before

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

No. 15-1636

DANIEL L. MASARIK,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United 

States District Court for 

the Eastern District of 

Wisconsin.

No. 11-C-0048

C.N. Clevert, Jr., Judge.

Order

After we affirmed his conviction on direct appeal, see United States v. Bartlett, 

567 F.3d 901 (7th Cir. 2009), Daniel Masarik filed a motion for collateral relief 

under 28 U.S.C. §2255. The district court rejected all of Masarik’s arguments. 2015 

U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34350 (E.D. Wis. Mar. 19, 2015). Masarik’s appeal presents only 

two of the contentions raised in the district court.

 *

 This successive appeal has been submitted to the original panel under Operating Procedure 6(b). 

After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. 

See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a); Cir. R. 34(f).

Case: 15-1636 Document: 21 Filed: 01/21/2016 Pages: 2
No. 15-1636 Page 2

He first maintains that newly discovered evidence, in the form of statements 

that his co-defendants made in civil suits after the criminal proceedings ended, 

entitle him to a new trial. To the extent this argument takes the form of a request 

for a new trial under Fed. R. Crim. P. 33, it fails because of the three-year time 

limit in Rule 33(b)(1). To the extent this argument depends on §2255, it fails 

because relief under that statute is limited to violations of the Constitution or 

laws. See 28 U.S.C. §2255(a). Evidence given in other proceedings long after a 

criminal trial is completed does not show that the conduct of the trial 

transgressed any statute or constitutional rule. See Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 

(1993). Newly discovered evidence may relieve a prisoner from a procedural 

default, and thus permit litigation on genuine constitutional or statutory claims, 

but new evidence is not itself a basis for collateral relief. (Masarik does not 

contend, and could not plausibly contend, that his co-defendants’ civil testimony 

establishes actual innocence in the sense that no reasonable factfinder could have 

convicted him. See 28 U.S.C. §2255(h)(1). As our original opinion recounts, the 

evidence against Masarik is quite strong.)

Masarik’s second argument is that the prosecutor failed to reveal Brady

information—and he seeks to excuse a procedural default on that score by 

contending that his appellate lawyer was ineffective for failing to raise the 

argument. The district court’s opinion concludes that this argument fails for 

several reasons, only one of which we need mention: the information in question 

was known to the defense. Co-defendant Bartlett made a statement to the FBI, 

and the prosecutor did not give Masarik’s lawyer a copy. Yet Bartlett testified to 

the same effect in the state trial that preceded the federal prosecution. Masarik 

and his lawyers knew what position Bartlett had staked out in that trial, at which 

Bartlett testified that officers Packard and Schabel, but no one else, had attacked 

Jude, the victim. The statement to the FBI repeated Bartlett’s position that 

Masarik was not among Jude’s assailants. Brady does not require a prosecutor to 

reveal information already possessed or readily accessible by the defense. 

See United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 103 (1976); United States v. Morris, 80 F.3d 

1151, 1170 (7th Cir. 1996). That Bartlett made similar statements to an FBI agent 

and a state jury does not change the nature of the information. Masarik contends 

that the information in the statement to the FBI, though inadmissible (it would 

have been hearsay if offered in the federal trial), could have led to the discovery 

of admissible information. That is equally true about Bartlett’s testimony, so 

there was no constitutional problem under the Brady doctrine.

AFFIRMED

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