Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-96-03044/USCOURTS-caDC-96-03044-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Angel Torres
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 5, 1997 Decided June 20, 1997 

No. 96-3044

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

ANGEL TORRES, A/K/A VICTOR SANCHEZ,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 90cr00512-01)

Santha Sonenberg, Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A.J. 

Kramer, Federal Public Defender.

Mary-Patrice Brown, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With her on the briefs were Eric H. 

Holder, Jr., U.S. Attorney, John R. Fisher, Robert A. Spelke,

and Nancy R. Page, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

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Before: WALD, HENDERSON and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: A jury convicted appellant of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base. 

Claiming ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the 

Sixth Amendment, appellant filed a Rule 33 motion for new 

trial that the district court dismissed as untimely. Because 

we conclude that the facts alleged in support of appellant's 

Sixth Amendment claim were not "newly discovered" within 

the meaning of Rule 33, we affirm the district court's dismissal of the new trial motion. Although appellant raises a 

colorable ineffective assistance claim on direct appeal that we 

cannot resolve on the existing record, we need not remand to 

the district court because appellant has renewed the same 

claim in a pending section 2255 proceeding where the Government admits the need for a fact-finding hearing. Finally, we 

find no plain error in the district court's failure to instruct the 

jury on the credibility of a drug addict's testimony.

I

Police arrested appellant Angel Torres and a co-defendant, 

Jannette Nunez, at a Washington, D.C. bus station after a 

search of Nunez's luggage uncovered approximately 250 

grams of cocaine base and six grams of cocaine hydrochloride 

that Nunez claimed belonged to Torres. Pursuant to a plea 

agreement, Nunez testified against Torres at his trial on 

charges of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and 

cocaine base in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841. On the second 

day of trial, Torres failed to appear in court. After the 

district judge issued a bench warrant, the jury convicted 

Torres in absentia on the drug charges.

Arrested on the bench warrant more than three years 

later, Torres returned to court in July 1994. Through newlyappointed counsel, Torres moved for a new trial in July 1995, 

claiming that because he spoke little English, he had been 

unable to communicate with the lawyer who had represented 

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him at trial. Although a Spanish-language interpreter had 

participated in all court proceedings, Torres argued that his 

trial lawyer's failure to use an interpreter in their out-of-court 

meetings denied him the Sixth Amendment right to effective 

assistance of counsel. The district court dismissed Torres's 

motion for lack of jurisdiction because it had not been made 

within seven days of the verdict as generally required by 

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33. United States v. 

Sanchez, 917 F. Supp. 29 (D.D.C. 1996). Although Rule 33 

provides that motions for a new trial based on "newly discovered evidence" may be brought any time within two years of 

final judgment, the district court held that "evidence of 

ineffective assistance of trial counsel known to but unappreciated by the defendant at the time of trial does not constitute 

newly discovered evidence" within the meaning of the Rule. 

Id. at 33. The district court sentenced Torres to 235 months 

in prison.

After filing this appeal, Torres renewed his Sixth Amendment claim in a collateral attack on his sentence. See 28 

U.S.C. § 2255 (1994). In that proceeding, still pending in the 

district court, the Government has conceded the need for a 

hearing.

II

Torres claims that the district court erred in dismissing his 

new trial motion as time-barred, arguing that his trial counsel's alleged ineffective assistance amounted to "newly discovered evidence" under Rule 33. Although we typically review 

denials of new trial motions for abuse of discretion, see 

United States v. Lafayette, 983 F.2d 1102, 1105 (D.C. Cir. 

1993), because the district court dismissed Torres's motion on 

jurisdictional grounds, our review is de novo. See United 

States v. Haddock, 956 F.2d 1534, 1544 (10th Cir. 1992).

Rule 33 provides in relevant part:

The court on motion of a defendant may grant a new trial 

to that defendant if required in the interest of justice.... A motion for a new trial based on the ground of 

newly discovered evidence may be made only before or 

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within two years after final judgment.... A motion for 

a new trial based on any other grounds shall be made 

within 7 days after verdict or finding of guilty or within 

such further time as the court may fix during the 7-day 

period.

Nine of our sister circuits have considered the issue before us 

today, and all nine have held that an ineffective assistance of 

counsel claim may not serve as the basis for a new trial 

motion under the "newly discovered evidence" prong of Rule 

33 where the facts alleged in support of the motion were 

known to the defendant at the time of trial. United States v. 

Lema, 909 F.2d 561, 566 (1st Cir. 1990); United States v. 

Dukes, 727 F.2d 34, 39 (2d Cir. 1984); United States v. Smith,

62 F.3d 641, 648 (4th Cir. 1995); United States v. Ugalde, 861 

F.2d 802, 806 (5th Cir. 1988); United States v. Seago, 930 

F.2d 482, 489 (6th Cir. 1991); United States v. Ellison, 557 

F.2d 128, 133 (7th Cir. 1977); United States v. Laird, 948 

F.2d 444, 446 (8th Cir. 1991); United States v. LaraHernandez, 588 F.2d 272, 275 (9th Cir. 1978); United States 

v. Miller, 869 F.2d 1418, 1421 (10th Cir. 1989); see also 

United States v. DeRewal, 10 F.3d 100, 104 (3d Cir. 1993) 

(suggesting same result in dictum). Instead, an ineffective 

assistance claim, time-barred for the purposes of a new trial 

motion, may be brought after sentencing in a collateral attack 

under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. See, e.g., Ellison, 557 F.2d at 134.

Following the reasoning of these cases, the district court 

dismissed as untimely Torres's new trial motion, brought 

some four and a half years after the verdict, because Torres 

admitted knowing at the time of trial of his lawyer's purported communication problem. In reaching this result, the 

district judge rejected as "debilitative jurisprudence" this 

court's decision in United States v. Brown, 476 F.2d 933 (D.C. 

Cir. 1973), which he read to establish a contrary rule. Sanchez, 917 F. Supp. at 32-33. According to the district judge:

The fact that District of Columbia law is exceptional in 

this area is not a concern of this court. Circuit splits and 

related issues of uniformity in the law are the grist of 

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federal appellate courts' dockets. Federal district 

courts, in contrast, focus their attention on the logical 

and deliberate application of existing law. Thus, the 

District of Columbia's stand-alone status in its Rule 33 

jurisprudence does not prompt this court to reject the 

approach established by this line of cases. Rather, it is 

because this approach upsets the balance of competing 

interests struck by the existing structure of post conviction relief and contradicts the plain meaning of Rule 33 

that this court is compelled to disavow District of Columbia precedent and embrace the approach taken by all 

other federal courts in this country.

Id. at 32.

We welcome and consider carefully the candid views of our 

colleagues on the district court, including their criticism of 

circuit law. But just as we "leave to [the Supreme Court] the 

prerogative of overruling its ... decisions," Rodriguez de 

Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 

(1989), district judges, like panels of this court, are obligated 

to follow controlling circuit precedent until either we, sitting 

en banc, or the Supreme Court, overrule it. See, e.g., LaShawn A. v. Barry, 87 F.3d 1389, 1395 (D.C. Cir. 1996) 

(noting circuit precedent may be overruled only by the full 

circuit court). That a district judge disagrees with circuit 

precedent does not relieve him of this obligation whether or 

not the precedent has been embraced by our sister circuits.

In this case, however, the district judge's "disavow[al]" of 

circuit precedent, though unauthorized, was entirely unnecessary, for Brown's discussion of Rule 33 is dictum. See 

Gersman v. Group Health Assoc., Inc., 975 F.2d 886, 897 

(D.C. Cir. 1992) ("Binding circuit law comes only from the 

holdings of [the court], not from its dicta."). The defendant 

in Brown had neither moved for a new trial in the district 

court nor raised ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal. 

Finding an ineffectiveness claim "lurk[ing]" in the defendant's 

argument that he should not be bound by his trial lawyer's 

failure to preserve an evidentiary issue for appeal, the court 

suggested that the defendant "may seek to raise the issue of 

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ineffectiveness and support his claim with evidence [outside] 

the record either on a timely motion for a new trial or on 

collateral attack." Brown, 476 F.2d at 935. In a footnote 

that the district judge in this case interpreted as a holding, 

the court stated that "[w]here evidence of the ineffectiveness 

of trial counsel is brought to the attention of the court for the 

first time in support of the motion, that evidence is 'newly 

discovered' for the purposes of Rule 33." Id. at 395 n.11. 

Unnecessary to the court's disposition of the case, the Brown

footnote, admittedly lending itself to varying interpretations, 

binds neither us nor the district judge. Although we cited 

Brown in United States v. DeCoster, 487 F.2d 1197, 1205 n.38 

(D.C. Cir. 1973), for the proposition that claims of ineffective 

assistance of counsel should "first be presented to the district 

court in a motion for a new trial," id. at 1204-05, neither 

DeCoster nor any subsequent decision transformed Brown's

footnote about the scope of Rule 33's newly discovered evidence provision into a circuit holding. Indeed, to the extent 

Brown's dictum suggests that every ineffective assistance 

claim constitutes "newly discovered evidence," we have implicitly questioned it. As we observed just two years after 

Brown, "most new trial motions in reliance on [ineffective 

assistance of counsel] are not classifiable as motions based on 

newly discovered evidence," United States v. Tindle, 522 F.2d 

689, 692 n.8 (D.C. Cir. 1975), and thus the "ineffective assistance argument can ... be placed before the District Court 

only through a § 2255 motion." Id. at 692.

As authority for its reading of the Rule, the Brown court 

cited United States v. Thompson, 475 F.2d 931 (D.C. Cir. 

1973). Like Brown, however, Thompson did not involve a 

motion for new trial. Although indicating that the defendant 

could pursue a new trial motion " 'without excusing that 

action by a showing of earlier due diligence,' " Thompson, 475 

F.2d at 932 (quoting United States v. Smallwood, 473 F.2d 98, 

104 (D.C. Cir. 1972) (Bazelon, C.J., concurring)), Thompson

held only that the defendant's ineffective assistance claim, 

based on trial counsel's failure to call certain witnesses, could 

not be resolved on direct appeal because it relied on affidavits 

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outside the record. As other courts have observed, see, e.g., 

Ellison, 557 F.2d at 133, the Brown and Thompson courts' 

broad reading of Rule 33 may have been intended to dampen 

the effect of earlier circuit precedent requiring a "more 

powerful showing of [counsel's] inadequacy" to sustain a 

collateral attack than to warrant a new trial on direct review. 

Bruce v. United States, 379 F.2d 113, 117 (D.C. Cir. 1967). 

Because the Supreme Court has now made clear that "no 

special standards ought to apply to ineffectiveness claims 

made in [collateral] proceedings," Strickland v. Washington,

466 U.S. 668, 698 (1984), that rationale for interpreting the 

Rule no longer has force.

The dictum in Brown and Thompson finds its roots in

Marshall v. United States, 436 F.2d 155 (D.C. Cir. 1970), a 

case that actually involved review of a motion for new trial 

denied by the district court. Marshall held that a defendant 

raising a constitutional claim in a new trial motion based on 

new evidence need not excuse his lawyer's failure to discover 

the evidence at the time of trial with a showing of "due 

diligence." Marshall, 436 F.2d at 158-59 & n.11. Without 

questioning that holding, we decline today to extend it as 

suggested by Brown and Thompson but squarely rejected by 

virtually all of our sister circuits. Agreeing with the district 

judge in this case, we hold that where a defendant knows the 

facts supporting his ineffective assistance of counsel claim at 

the time of trial, those facts are not "newly discovered" for 

the purposes of Rule 33. A contrary interpretation would not 

only defy the Rule's plain language, but, as the district judge 

found, would also undermine the time limits Congress has 

recently placed on collateral attacks grounded in facts known 

at the time of trial, see 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255(1), (4) (West Supp. 

1997) (one-year limitation on claims running from date of final 

judgment or date evidence could have been discovered 

through due diligence). Because Torres concedes that he 

knew the factual basis of his ineffective assistance claimthe 

alleged language barrier between him and his lawyerat the 

time of his 1991 trial, the district court correctly dismissed his 

new trial motion for lack of jurisdiction.

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We recognize that the Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits 

have gone further, holding that even "newly discovered" facts 

supporting an ineffective assistance claim do not remove a 

new trial motion from Rule 33's seven-day time-limit because 

such facts do not constitute "evidence" within the meaning of 

the Rule. See Smith, 62 F.3d at 648; Ugalde, 861 F.2d at 

807-09; United States v. Hanoum, 33 F.3d 1128, 1130-31 (9th 

Cir. 1994). But see United States v. Johnson, 12 F.3d 1540, 

1547 (10th Cir. 1993) ("[W]here the facts relevant to ineffective assistance are not known to the defendant until after 

trial, they may be raised on a 'newly discovered evidence' 

motion under Rule 33."). Not presented with newly discovered facts here, we have no need to endorse this view, and in 

any event, doubt that it could be reconciled with our precedents. See United States v. Kelly, 790 F.2d 130 (D.C. Cir. 

1986) (district court abused its discretion by failing to hold a 

hearing or otherwise resolve factual disputes in new trial 

motion alleging newly discovered evidence of Sixth Amendment violation); Marshall, 436 F.2d at 159 & n.11.

III

Torres argues that even if his Rule 33 motion was untimely, 

he may raise his Sixth Amendment claim on direct appeal and 

that we must remand the claim for an evidentiary hearing. 

We agree that the untimeliness of his Rule 33 motion does 

not bar him from raising the Sixth Amendment issue here. 

We also agree that he raises a colorable claim of ineffective 

assistance of counsel. If Torres was unable to communicate 

effectively with his attorney, he may have been unable to 

make informed choices about whether to plead guilty, whether to cooperate with the Government, or whether to testify. 

Unable to resolve these fact-intensive issues on the record 

before us, we normally would remand Torres's ineffective 

assistance claim to the district court for a supplemental 

hearing. United States v. Cyrus, 890 F.2d 1245, 1247 (D.C. 

Cir. 1989). But because Torres has renewed the identical 

claim in a collateral attack now pending before the district 

court in which the Government has conceded the need for a 

hearing, remand is unnecessary. See United States v. Fen

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nell, 53 F.3d 1296, 1304 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (court's general 

practice is to remand claim for an evidentiary hearing unless 

already raised before district court in motion for new trial or 

collateral attack).

IV

For his only other argument on appeal, Torres claims that 

because co-defendant Nunez, called as a Government witness, 

admitted using heroin at the time of her arrest, the district 

court should have given a cautionary instruction to the jury 

on the credibility of a drug addict's testimony. Having failed 

to request such an instruction from the district court, Torres 

concedes that we review only for plain error. FED. R. CRIM. P. 

30, 52(b); United States v. Gatling, 96 F.3d 1511, 1524-25 

(D.C. Cir. 1996). We find none.

Even assuming Nunez was addicted to drugs when she 

testified, a fact not established at trial, "this court has never 

adopted a rule requiring a trial court sua sponte to give a 

special charge regarding the credibility of ... a drug addict." 

United States v. Spriggs, 996 F.2d 320, 325 (D.C. Cir. 1993); 

cf. United States v. Kinnard, 465 F.2d 566, 572-73 (D.C. Cir. 

1972) (Bazelon, C.J., concurring) (urging adoption of mandatory instruction where witness is both an addict and a paid 

government informant). Furthermore, because the district 

court instructed the jury that the testimony of an accomplice 

"should be received with caution and scrutinized with care," 

and because defense counsel cross-examined Nunez regarding 

her drug use, Torres has failed to demonstrate prejudice from 

the absence of the unrequested instruction. Cf. United States 

v. Burrows, 36 F.3d 875, 878 (9th Cir. 1994) (observing that 

addict instruction unnecessary where witness's addiction disputed, defendant has adequate opportunity for crossexamination, or court reads other cautionary instructions).

We affirm.

So ordered.

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