Source: http://openjurist.org/367/f3d/74/harris-v-united-states
Timestamp: 2015-04-01 09:57:23
Document Index: 67884667

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2244', '§ 2253', '§ 371', '§ 1343', '§ 1344', '§ 1956', '§ 225', '§ 1014', '§ 3', '§ 2']

367 F3d 74 Harris v. United States | OpenJurist
367 F. 3d 74 - Harris v. United States	Home367 f3d 74 harris v. united states
367 F3d 74 Harris v. United States 367 F.3d 74
Roy William HARRIS, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.UNITED STATES of America, Defendant-Appellee.
No. 03-2373.
Argued: February 13, 2004.
Terence J. Lynam, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellant Roy William Harris.
Katherine Polk Failla, Assistant United States Attorney, New York, N.Y. (James B. Comey, United States Attorney, on the brief, and Laura Grossfield Birger, Assistant United States Attorney, of counsel), for Defendant-Appellee United States of America.
In April 2001, appellant Roy William Harris filed a second petition for habeas corpus relief, alleging for the first time that counsel in his direct appeal had been constitutionally ineffective in failing to appeal two alleged sentencing errors. Pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244(b)(3), 2255, this Court declined to authorize consideration of that successive petition, and it was dismissed.1 In July 2002, Harris asserted the ineffectiveness claim again, this time in a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(6) to reopen his first habeas proceeding, on the (more attenuated) theory that his counsel in the first habeas proceeding had been ineffective because he failed to argue that counsel in his direct appeal had been constitutionally ineffective in failing to appeal the two alleged sentencing errors. Rule 60(b) affords relief from a prior judgment for a variety of narrow reasons such as mistake or fraud, or — under subsection (6) — for "any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment." To justify this extraordinary relief, Harris cited a declaration in which his former lawyer swore that his representation in the first habeas proceeding had been ineffective.
We ruled in Rodriguez v. Mitchell, 252 F.3d 191 (2d Cir.2001), that relief under Rule 60(b) is available with respect to a previous habeas proceeding only when the Rule 60(b) motion attacks the integrity of the habeas proceeding and not the underlying criminal conviction. Harris has cast his Rule 60(b)(6) motion as such an attack on the integrity of his initial habeas proceeding, although the ground cited by Harris for reopening the first habeas proceeding would (if valid) require the habeas court to consider whether the sentencing judge committed reversible error. See Mayo v. Henderson, 13 F.3d 528, 534 (2d Cir.1994) (holding that an ineffectiveness-of-appellate-counsel claim is only valid if the appellate error prejudiced the defendant). Harris's attack on the integrity of the habeas proceeding is thus "a step on the road to the ultimate objective of invalidating the judgment of conviction." Rodriguez, 252 F.3d at 198.
In an exhaustive opinion that recognized the procedural intricacies of the case, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Haight, J.) ruled, on a variety of grounds, that Harris's attack on the integrity of his previous habeas proceeding lacked merit and therefore was "procedurally barred" as "a second or successive" habeas petition. Harris v. United States, 293 F.Supp.2d 259, 269 (S.D.N.Y.2003). Harris now appeals from this Order pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c).
On this appeal, we consider again how district courts should give effect to the protections of Rule 60(b) with respect to previous habeas proceedings without allowing unsuccessful habeas petitioners to bypass the procedures of AEDPA. In light of our holding in Rodriguez, we reiterate that relief under Rule 60(b) is available for a previous habeas proceeding only when the Rule 60(b) motion attacks the integrity of the previous habeas proceeding rather than the underlying criminal conviction. Guided by Rodriguez, our Rule 60(b)(6) case law, and the congressional intent of AEDPA, we hold that: an attack on the integrity of a previous habeas proceeding using subsection (6) of Rule 60(b) is viable only in "extraordinary circumstances," and that such circumstances will be particularly rare where the relief sought is predicated on the alleged failures of counsel in a prior habeas petition. That is because a habeas petitioner has no constitutional right to counsel in his habeas proceeding, see Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 752-53, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991), and therefore, to be successful under Rule 60(b)(6), must show more than ineffectiveness under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). To obtain relief under Rule 60(b)(6), a habeas petitioner must show that his lawyer abandoned the case and prevented the client from being heard, either through counsel or pro se. We conclude that the failures of habeas counsel alleged in Harris's motion do not survive review under this standard; and the motion therefore should have been denied with prejudice by the district court in accordance with our holdings in Rodriguez, 252 F.3d at 200, and Gitten v. United States, 311 F.3d 529, 534 (2d Cir.2002). We reach no other issue.2
Roy Harris was chief executive officer and majority shareholder of the petroleum company known as the Arochem Corporation. Represented at trial by an experienced member of New York's white-collar criminal defense bar, Harris was convicted in the Southern District of New York in December 1992 on 21 counts, including conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343, bank fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344, money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2), conducting a continuing financial crimes enterprise in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 225, and making a false statement on a loan application in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1014.
In 1993, represented by another experienced criminal defense lawyer, Harris moved for a new trial on grounds of constitutionally ineffective trial counsel and newly discovered evidence. After this motion was denied, counsel filed a 57-page letter memorandum raising a host of issues relating to sentencing, prompting, inter alia, the two rulings that are relevant to the current appeal. First, the court declined to group the money laundering and wire fraud counts of Harris's indictment under § 3D1.2 of the Sentencing Guidelines. Second, the district court rejected the argument of Harris's counsel that imposing both (i) a two-level severity increase under § 2F1.1(b)(2)(A) of the Sentencing Guidelines for "more than minimal planning" and (ii) a four-level severit