Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-09-03012/USCOURTS-caDC-09-03012-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Roger S. Lathern
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 19, 2011 Decided January 17, 2011

No. 09-3012

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

ROGER S. LATHERN,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:05-cr-00031-1)

Gary M. Sidell, appointed by the court, argued the cause 

and filed the briefs for appellant.

John L. Hill, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause 

pro hac vice for appellee. On the brief were Ronald C. 

Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III, John P. 

Mannarino, T. Anthony Quinn, and Ann K.H. Simon, Assistant 

U.S. Attorneys.

Before: HENDERSON, TATEL, and GRIFFITH, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Roger Lathern appeals the 

district court’s dismissal of his habeas petition seeking relief 

for ineffective assistance of counsel. For the reasons set forth 

below, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I

On the night of December 29, 2004, in Washington, D.C., 

police responded to a call from two women who had seen two 

men carrying firearms exit a car together and walk into a 

nearby alley. While questioning the women at the scene, a 

gunshot was heard. The police cordoned off the alley and 

apprehended Roger Lathern and Rahmaan Ward. A search of 

the alley discovered a 9-millimeter pistol, a shotgun, and a 

single spent shell. United States v. Lathern, 488 F.3d 1043, 

1044-45 (D.C. Cir. 2007). 

Lathern and Ward were each charged with illegally 

possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Lathern hired an 

attorney, Gene Johnson, and Ward was assigned a public 

defender, Anthony Axam. Before trial, the prosecutor verbally 

offered a seventy-month plea deal to both defendants through

their attorneys. Both attorneys told the prosecutor their clients 

were not interested. On August 24, 2005, a jury convicted 

Lathern and hung on the charges against Ward, who later pled 

guilty.

During sentencing, Lathern protested that his attorney

had never told him of the offer, and that he “might have” pled 

guilty had he known of it. Johnson countered that he had told

Lathern of the offer, but that Lathern had instructed him to 

turn it down. The district court opined that there was nothing

that could be done about the matter at that point, and that 

Lathern could tell his new attorney to raise this issue on 

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appeal. The district court then sentenced Lathern to ninetyseven months in prison, the maximum under the applicable 

U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. Lathern appealed his sentence 

but failed to include among his arguments any reference to the 

plea. We affirmed his conviction in 2007. Lathern, 488 F.3d 

at 1044. 

Lathern first claimed that Johnson’s alleged failure to tell 

him of the proffered plea amounted to ineffective assistance

of counsel in a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed 

with the district court in January 2008. At his habeas hearing

in January 2009, Lathern put on three witnesses: himself; his 

co-defendant, Ward; and Ward’s lawyer, Axam. Lathern 

testified that he first heard of the plea offer after his 

conviction, when he asked Johnson why the prosecutor had 

not made an offer. According to Lathern, Johnson told him, 

“They did offer you a plea, but whatever it was, we wasn’t 

taking it.” Tr. at 49, Jan. 7, 2009. Ward testified that he met 

with Lathern and Johnson to discuss his own plea deal, but 

that Johnson told him not to take it because “[Johnson] was 

this, quote/unquote, superlawyer who didn’t take cops” and 

would get them both off. Id. at 32. Axam testified that he 

never discussed any plea deal with Johnson. In response, the 

government called only Johnson, who testified that he and 

Lathern engaged in “constant banter” about whether to plead 

guilty, but that Lathern directed him to turn down the offer, 

stating, “If I had wanted to plead guilty, I would not have 

retained you. I could have done that with my public 

defender.” Id. at 94-96; Tr. at 20, Jan. 27, 2009. Johnson also 

testified that he had handled about 3,500 criminal cases in his 

career and that only about 225 (6%) of them had gone to trial.

Tr. at 91, Jan. 7, 2009.

The district court judge asked Lathern’s habeas counsel, 

“[H]ow do I, if to any degree, consider my historical 

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experience with Mr. Johnson? Because what is being said [by 

Lathern] is totally inconsistent with my long-term 

professional association with [Johnson] both on [the] Superior 

Court and this court.” Tr. at 48, Jan. 27, 2009. The judge 

stated that in his twenty-five years of experience with 

Johnson, he could recall only one other case in which Johnson

went to trial. According to the judge, Lathern’s argument that 

Johnson avoided an offered plea was, “totally inconsistent 

with my historical experience with [Johnson] in regards to 

how he seeks to resolve cases on behalf of his 

clients . . . [because] the overwhelming number of cases that 

he’s had with me, they have resolved themselves by a plea.”

Id. at 48-50. The court also noted that while attorneys Axam 

and Johnson differed on what they said to each other before 

trial, Axam never testified that Johnson did not tell Lathern of 

the plea proposal. Id. at 67. Finding Johnson more credible 

than Lathern, the district court dismissed the petition.

With no automatic right of appeal, 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), 

Lathern sought a certificate of appealability which the district 

court denied. We reversed the district court and take 

jurisdiction to hear his appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II

Our analysis of Lathern’s claim of ineffective assistance 

of counsel is controlled by Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 

668 (1984). To succeed, a petitioner must show both that his 

counsel’s performance “fell below an objective standard of 

reasonableness” and that “counsel’s errors were so serious as 

to deprive the defendant of a fair trial.” Id. at 687-88. 

Crediting Johnson’s testimony that he told Lathern of the plea 

offer over Lathern’s claim that he did not, the district court 

concluded that Lathern had failed to show any error by 

Johnson.

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Lathern argues that conclusion was unlawfully based on 

extra-record information: the district court’s stated experience 

with Johnson’s decided preference for pleas over trials. We 

review this argument for plain error because Lathern said 

nothing about it to the district court. See United States v. 

Keleta, 552 F.3d 861, 867 (D.C. Cir. 2009). Lathern cannot 

show plain error without establishing that he was prejudiced 

by any mistake. See United States v. Merlos, 8 F.3d 48, 50 

(D.C. Cir. 1993). Quite apart from whether the district court’s 

statement was in error, it certainly caused Lathern no harm. It 

is clear from the record that the district court would have 

believed Johnson over Lathern anyway. The district court

identified ample reasons beyond its experience with Johnson 

to find him more credible than Lathern, including the length 

of Johnson’s time practicing law, Johnson’s ethical and legal 

obligations to convey a plea deal to his client, his 

forthrightness in admitting a plea offer had been made, the 

specificity with which he recounted the details of his 

communications about the plea deal, the unlikelihood of an 

attorney committing perjury, and Lathern’s three prior felony 

convictions. Tr. at 62-66, Jan. 27, 2009. In any event, 

Johnson’s preference for pleas over trials was part of the 

hearing record, Johnson having testified that he resolved 

almost all of his cases throughout his thirty years in private 

practice by guilty pleas. Tr. at 91, Jan. 7, 2009. 

Lathern next argues that no reasonable fact-finder could 

have credited Johnson’s testimony. We have long held that,

[unless] [d]ocuments or objective evidence . . . contradict 

the witness’ story; or the story itself [is] so internally 

inconsistent or implausible on its face that a reasonable 

factfinder would not credit it . . . [the] decision to credit 

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the testimony of one of two or more witnesses . . . can 

virtually never be clear error.

Bishopp v. District of Columbia, 788 F.2d 781, 785 (D.C. Cir. 

1986) (quoting Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 

564, 575 (1985)) (internal quotation marks omitted). This 

approach reflects the deference due to trial court judges who 

can observe firsthand the “variations in demeanor and tone of 

voice that bear so heavily on the listener’s understanding of 

and belief in what is said.” Id. (quoting Bessemer City, 470 

U.S. at 575) (emphasis omitted). Here, Johnson’s testimony 

was coherent and plausible, and there is nothing indicating 

that it was “internally inconsistent.” There were no 

“documents or objective evidence” to contradict his story. If 

anything, the plausibility of Lathern’s testimony was called 

into question by his own witness, Ward, who claimed that 

Johnson and Lathern discussed the plea deal the prosecutor

had offered Ward. Lathern asks us to believe that when he 

discussed his co-defendant’s plea agreement with Johnson, he

never asked Johnson whether he had received such a deal as 

well. That seems an unlikely inference to draw.

Lathern also argues that there is an “inherent 

inconsistency” in Johnson’s statement that he believed that 

Lathern had a good chance of winning at trial but that he also 

repeatedly discussed the possibility of a plea deal with the 

prosecution. We disagree. It is entirely plausible to us that an 

attorney would pursue every available option for his client, 

including a possible plea deal, even if he believed there was a 

strong chance of winning at trial. Given that this Court has 

held that such credibility determinations “can virtually never 

be clear error,” this is not a close call. Id. The district court 

had ample reasons for finding Johnson more credible than 

Lathern. 

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III

We conclude that the district court did not err in finding

that Johnson told Lathern of the plea offer, and therefore that 

Johnson made no error on which to base a Strickland claim. 

The judgment of the district court is 

Affirmed.

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