Source: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/290/437/474482/
Timestamp: 2017-09-20 13:03:37
Document Index: 149622596

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2255', '§ 922', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2253', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 2', '§ 1', '§ 9', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 4', '§ 3', '§ 2']

Randall J. Cofske, Petitioner, Appellant, v. United States of America, Respondent, Appellee, 290 F.3d 437 (1st Cir. 2002) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › First Circuit › 2002 › Randall J. Cofske, Petitioner, Appellant, v. United States of America, Respondent, Appellee
Randall J. Cofske, Petitioner, Appellant, v. United States of America, Respondent, Appellee, 290 F.3d 437 (1st Cir. 2002)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit - 290 F.3d 437 (1st Cir. 2002)
Heard April 2, 2002
Randall Cofske appeals from the district court's denial of his motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence. In substance, Cofske claims that his trial counsel and appellate counsel were ineffective in failing to object to the calculation of his sentence under the Sentencing Guidelines. Specifically, he argues that when he committed the federal offense for which he was being sentenced — possession of stolen firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(j) (1994) — he did not have the "prior conviction" that was used to increase his base offense level ("BOL") under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1 (a) (4) (1995).
On March 3, 1997, pursuant to a written plea agreement, Cofske pleaded guilty to the charge of possession of stolen firearms. As part of that agreement the prosecution dismissed the transportation-of-stolen-weapons charge and agreed to recommend a single three-level specific offense adjustment (based on the number of firearms involved) offset by a three-level reduction for acceptance of responsibility; Cofske in turn agreed (among other things) to take the position at sentencing that his base offense level should be set at 20 pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a) (4) (a), which mandated a BOL of 20 for firearms possession if "the defendant had one prior felony conviction of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense."2
Cofske was sentenced on July 15, 1997. At sentencing, Cofske's attorney abandoned the argument that Cofske did not have a prior conviction and stated that the revised PSR "took up acknowledgment of the government's objection which was quite correct and part of my error at the time. It starts out with a base level of 20 pursuant to 2K2.1(a) (4)." The district court then adopted the calculations of the revised PSR, which included the breaking and entering conviction in both Cofske's criminal history category ("CHC") calculation under section 4A1.1, and his BOL under section 2K2.1.
The court determined that Cofske's BOL was 20, his adjusted offense level was 24,3 and his CHC was V; the applicable guideline sentence range was 92 to 115 months. After denying Cofske's motion for a downward departure, the district court sentenced Cofske to 92 months in prison. Cofske appealed — not raising the issue he raises here — and this court affirmed both his conviction and sentence. United States v. Cofske, 157 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1059, 119 S. Ct. 1374, 143 L. Ed. 2d 533 (1999).
On May 18, 2000, the district court denied Cofske's motion. The court found that the 1990 first-tier conviction was the relevant conviction for purposes of section 2K2.1(a) (4) (A) and that there was no error in the calculation of Cofske's sentence; it determined that Cofske was therefore not prejudiced by his counsel's actions, as required by Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), and found it unnecessary to evaluate the reasonableness of Cofske's attorney's decision not to object to the BOL calculation. The district court later denied Cofske's requests for reconsideration of the decision.
On February 8, 2001, Cofske applied for a certificate of appealability, 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) (1), solely to urge that his trial and appellate counsel were ineffective in allowing his first-tier conviction to increase his BOL. On April 20, 2001, the district court denied his application, reaffirming its May 18, 2000, finding and also holding (in the alternative) that the breaking and entering conviction counted as a "prior conviction" even if the correct date of conviction were deemed January 1993. Cofske v. United States, 143 F. Supp. 2d 85 (D. Mass. 2001).
2. Does the reference to a "prior felony conviction" in section 2K2.1(a) (4) (A) include post-offense convictions?
Although the language of 28 U.S.C. § 2255 is quite general, the Supreme Court has restricted collateral attack for claims that do not allege constitutional or jurisdictional errors; such claims are said to be cognizable only where the alleged error presents "a fundamental defect which inherently results in a complete miscarriage of justice" or "an omission inconsistent with the rudimentary demands of fair procedure." Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 428, 82 S. Ct. 468, 7 L. Ed. 2d 417 (1962). Thus, a guideline violation alone is not automatically a basis for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Knight v. United States, 37 F.3d 769, 772-73 (1st Cir. 1994).
However, if the claim is repackaged as one of ineffective assistance of counsel, as Cofske's is here, it becomes a constitutional claim. Not every error amounts to ineffectiveness. See Lema v. United States, 987 F.2d 48, 51 (1st Cir. 1993). An ineffective assistance of counsel claim will succeed only if the defendant — who bears the burden on both points, Scarpa v. DuBois, 38 F.3d 1, 8-9 (1st Cir. 1994) — shows (1) that counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness, and (2) that but for the error or errors, the outcome would likely have been different, Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 104 S. Ct. 2052.
Since the absence of any error in sentencing would eliminate any prejudice, and therefore Cofske's ineffectiveness claim, it is useful to begin by considering the correctness of the BOL calculation. At the time of Cofske's sentencing in July 1997, U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a) (4) (A) stated that a defendant's BOL for the firearms conviction should be set at 20 if the defendant "had one prior felony conviction of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense[.]" However, neither the guideline language nor the commentary answered the question, "prior to what?"
Whether such a vacated conviction still "counts" for guideline purposes is a matter of federal rather than state law. See United States v. Mateo, 271 F.3d 11, 15 (1st Cir. 2001). Looking only at guideline language, one could argue the matter both ways. Before he committed the federal crime, Cofske "had one prior felony conviction" of the required class; but before he committed the federal crime, that conviction had been nullified under state law by his appeal from the first tier to the second. The commentary was understandably silent on how to treat this oddity of Massachusetts procedure.
There are policy arguments both ways. If the issue were pursued in depth, we might want to know more about the reasons for the two-tier regime and, equally important, whether it led lawyers to use the first tier merely as a discovery device or an effort to secure probation or a light sentence. Cf. United States v. Roberts, 39 F.3d 10, 12-13 (1st Cir. 1994). And, of course, whether the first tier conviction followed a full defense might vary from case to case. If in general a full defense were offered, federal law might well disregard the state's penchant to offer the defendant a second bite at the apple.
Part of the problem is that the guidelines elsewhere contain two different approaches to "prior"-ness. One, used in determining prior criminal history under chapter 4A, looks to whether a prior "sentence" occurred before the federal sentence. U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2, application note 1. The other, used to establish whether the defendant is a career offender under chapter 4B, counts prior "convictions" only if they occurred before commission of the federal crime itself. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(3). In its own context, each approach makes some sense. United States v. Leviner, 31 F. Supp. 2d 23, 28-30 (D. Mass. 1998).
The issue has now been resolved for the future in Cofske's favor by a 2001 amendment to section 2K2.1 (reprinted in the addendum) providing that a defendant's BOL should be increased to 20 where "the defendant committed any part of instant offense subsequent to sustaining one felony conviction of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense." U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(a) (4) (A) (2001) (emphasis added). The amendment's "reason for adoption" adopts "the minority view" and the chapter 4B analogy, Amendment 630, Nov. 1, 2001, but it was not made retroactive to Cofske's case. U.S.S.G § 1B1.10 (2001). One could as easily call it a revision as a clarification.
Without regard to the amendment, we think that prior convictions should count, for purposes of section 2K2.1 as it stood when Cofske was sentenced, only if they occurred before the federal crime. This was the "minority" view in the circuits prior to the recent guideline amendment, but it has in its favor a modest piece of linguistic evidence, Pedragh, 225 F.3d at 245, a decent analogy to the prior-felon "status" approach used in section 4B, Leviner, 31 F. Supp. 2d at 28-30, and a better claim to adoption by cross-reference in a tangled set of cross references in 2K2.1's then-existing commentary.6 Both sides of the dispute can be traced through the cited cases, see notes 4-5, above.
Thus, the decision to stick with the BOL of 20 was almost certainly a judgment call to retain the advantages of a plea and to forgo an argument for a lower BOL already rejected by two out of three circuits. It is impossible to describe such a choice as incompetent representation. Nagi v. United States, 90 F.3d 130, 134-35 (6th Cir. 1996). Indeed, given the threatened consequences to Cofske of backing out of the plea agreement, it is impossible to see how Cofske could now satisfy the prejudice prong of Strickland by showing that he would have been better off if his counsel had challenged the use of the state conviction.
Of course, Cofske's concession in the district court that a BOL of 20 was correct might have been taken as a conclusive waiver, not just a forfeiture subject to relief for plain error, but then again it might not be treated as a waiver; the law in this area is far from uniform, compare United States v. Smith, 918 F.2d 664, 668-69 & n. 1 (6th Cir. 1990) (per curiam), with United States v. Nguyen, 46 F.3d 781, 783 (8th Cir. 1995), and various interpretations of the plea agreement are possible. Thus, it may technically have been open to appellate counsel to challenge the adverse BOL finding on direct appeal.
It might be enough to say that, viewed as of the time of appeal (which is what matters in judging competence of appellate counsel), the claim for a lower BOL was not especially promising: the case law was divided, the guideline and commentary were both obscure, and the 2001 amendment did not then exist. Other claims were available for an appeal, which was in fact taken, and courts have regularly said that appellate counsel is often well advised to choose the most promising arguments and is not obliged to crowd a brief with less promising ones which may detract. Jones v. Barnes, 463 U.S. 745, 751-54, 103 S. Ct. 3308, 77 L. Ed. 2d 987 (1983); see also Burkoff & Hudson, Ineffective Assistance of Counsel § 9.04[2][b] (Supp.2001) (collecting cases).
As explained in United States v. Morillo, 178 F.3d 18, 21-22 n. 5 (1st Cir. 1999):
The court imposed a three-level upward adjustment under § 2K2.1(b) (1) (C) because the offense involved between 8 and 12 firearms, and a four-level upward adjustment under § 2K2.1(b) (5) because Cofske possessed the firearms in connection with a felony offense or transferred them with reason to believe they would be used in another felony offense. The district court then applied a three-level reduction for acceptance of responsibility, thereby setting Cofske's adjusted offense level at 24. None of these adjustments is now challenged
Compare United States v. Gooden, 116 F.3d 721, 724-25 (5th Cir. 1997) and United States v. McCary, 14 F.3d 1502, 1506 (10th Cir. 1994) (convictions occurring anytime before sentencing count as prior felony convictions) with United States v. Barton, 100 F.3d 43, 45-46 (6th Cir. 1996) (post-offense convictions do not count as prior felony convictions).
United States v. Laihben, 167 F.3d 1364, 1366 (11th Cir. 1999), and United States v. Pugh, 158 F.3d 1308, 1311 (D.C. Cir. 1998) followed the approach of the Fifth and Tenth Circuits, while United States v. Oetken, 241 F.3d 1057, 1059 (8th Cir. 2001) and United States v. Pedragh, 225 F.3d 240, 245 (2d Cir. 2000), followed the approach of the Sixth Circuit.
At oral argument, the government summarized the potential changes that it could have sought: an upward departure on the ground that past criminal history was underrepresented, U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3; a two-level obstruction of justice adjustment for false statements to the court, U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1; and a four-level adjustment under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b) (5) for possessing or transferring firearms in connection with another felony offense. Although the court on its own imposed the section 2K2.1(b) (5) adjustment, the government did not seek it
On any of several theories, the government could have sought to be relieved of its obligations under the plea agreement,see United States v. Bunner, 134 F.3d 1000, 1004-5 (10 Cir. 1998); United States v. Barron, 127 F.3d 890, 895-96 (9th Cir. 1997); United States v. Sandoval-Lopez, 122 F.3d 797, 800 (9th Cir. 1997). Further, the district court would not automatically be limited on remand by what the government chose to urge. United States v. Rodriguez, 112 F.3d 26, 29-30 (1st Cir. 1997).