Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-09-03337/USCOURTS-ca7-09-03337-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Alonzo Perkins
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted March 24, 2010∗

 Decided April 1, 2010

Before

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge

JOHN L. COFFEY, Circuit Judge

DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge

No. 09-3337

ALONZO PERKINS,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United 

States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division.

No. 06 C 6642

Joan B. Gottschall, Judge.

Order

After we affirmed Alonzo Perkins’s conviction and sentence, see 449 F.3d 794 (7th 

Cir. 2006), he filed a petition for relief under 28 U.S.C. §2255. The district court denied 

this petition, and Perkins appeals.

His principal appellate argument is that he is entitled to raise an ineffectiveassistance-of-counsel claim on collateral attack even though he did not do so on direct 

appeal. This is a puzzling argument, because the district judge well understood that the 

 

∗ 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).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with 

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

Case: 09-3337 Document: 15 Filed: 04/01/2010 Pages: 2
No. 09-3337 Page 2

claim was proper, see Massaro v. United States, 538 U.S. 500 (2003), and resolved on the 

merits.

Perkins submits that counsel was ineffective for failure to file a motion to suppress 

evidence. The district court concluded that, even if such a motion had been filed and 

granted, Perkins was certain to be convicted, because the prosecution’s other evidence 

against him was strong. As a result, he could not have suffered prejudice from counsel’s 

omission (and it was correspondingly unnecessary to determine whether counsel’s 

performance was substandard). We agree with this analysis, which need not be 

repeated here.

Petitioner’s only other argument is that he should not have been sentenced under 

the Armed Career Criminal Act. That contention was fully considered, and rejected, on 

direct appeal. We do not see any reason to resolve it differently today.

AFFIRMED

Case: 09-3337 Document: 15 Filed: 04/01/2010 Pages: 2