Opinion ID: 811797
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Appellate Procedural History

Text: Turner appealed his conviction and sentence, arguing that: (1) the district court should have treated the Sentencing Guidelines as advisory; (2) the district court erred in sentencing Turner under the ACCA because the ACCA predicate offenses must be alleged in the indictment and found by a jury or admitted; and (3) he was denied effective assistance of counsel. On March 1, 2006, the panel allowed Turner to preserve the ACCA claim but noted that Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224 (1998), remained binding precedent and foreclosed his claim, affirmed the conviction, did not address the ineffective assistance of counsel claim, vacated the sentence in light of Booker v. United States, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), and remanded for resentencing. United States v. Turner, No. 04-2565 (1st Cir. Mar. 1, 2006). At resentencing on remand, on July 17, 2006, the district court resentenced Turner to 211 months' imprisonment. Petitioner -5- was sentenced under the ACCA based on four predicate state convictions: (1) a 1990 assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (ABDW) conviction in Salem District Court; (2) a 1994 ABDW conviction1 in Middlesex Superior Court; (3) a 1999 simple assault and battery conviction2 in Malden District Court; and (4) a 2001 conviction in Malden District Court for possession of a class B substance with intent to distribute. That day, Turner filed another appeal reasserting his argument that ACCA predicate offenses must be alleged in the indictment and found by a jury, and arguing that the sentence was unreasonable. He did not argue that United States v. Mangos, 134 F.3d 460 (1st Cir. 1998), was in error. We allowed the government's motion for summary disposition. United States v. Turner, No. 06-2207 (1st Cir. Apr. 18, 2007). The Supreme Court denied Turner's petition for a writ of certiorari on October 1, 2007. Turner v. United States, 128 S. Ct. 322 (2007). 1 Turner was originally convicted in 1992, but that verdict was set aside and he was convicted again in 1994. 2 Because Massachusetts assault and battery offenses are charged with did assault and beat language, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 277, § 79, and at the time of Turner's sentencing, such language was deemed to indicate a harmful battery, which qualifies as a violent felony, United States v. Mangos, 134 F.3d 460, 464 (1st Cir. 1998), the district court at resentencing apparently adhered to Mangos. -6- C. Turner's 28 U.S.C. § 2255 Motion and Two Later Motions to Amend Petitioner timely filed a Motion to Vacate, Set Aside, or Correct a Sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, on September 29, 2008, presenting primarily ineffective assistance of counsel claims, and also a claim that his sentence under the ACCA was improper because certain of the prior underlying state convictions used as predicate offenses were procured in violation of the Constitution. Post-conviction petitions are subject to statutes of limitations. The particular limitation for the initial § 2255 petition is 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(1), which requires that such a petition be filed within one year of the conviction becoming final. See In re Smith, 436 F.3d 9, 10 (1st Cir. 2006) (decision final when petition for certiorari is denied). Petitioner asserted that his conviction was obtained as a result of the violation of his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of trial counsel, in that defense counsel: (1) elicited highly prejudicial evidence that petitioner sold cocaine; (2) failed to introduce tape recorded conversations inconsistent with the government's theory; (3) failed to seek discovery of records of a key FBI cooperating witness's prior work for the FBI and failed to adequately investigate government witnesses; (4) failed to investigate and call certain witnesses; and (5) failed to follow up on threats to and -7- intimidation of a defense witness by the FBI. See generally Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Fifteen months later, on January 13, 2010, petitioner filed a memorandum in support of the motion. Turner expanded upon the assertions made in his original motion and also attempted to add new theories, that his trial counsel's cross-examinations of Smith and Trimarchi were ineffective. The same day, petitioner filed a motion to amend his original § 2255 motion to add a claim that trial counsel was also ineffective by failing to object to certain jury instructions.3 That is not the subject of this appeal. On May 13, 2010, approximately nineteen months after the one-year period had elapsed under § 2255(f)(1), petitioner filed a second motion to amend his § 2255 motion. Turner sought to add another variant on his ineffective assistance claim based on resentencing counsel's failure to object to the use of the assault and battery and ABDW convictions as violent felonies under the ACCA. The motion also asserted, without elaboration, that his ACCA sentence violated due process. The government filed an objection in the district court to the second motion to amend. Turner did not file a response to the government's objection. The district 3 The district court allowed the motion to amend on March 2, 2010. It decided the claim was untimely in its June 28, 2011 opinion. Petitioner is not pursuing the jury instruction claim on appeal. -8- court denied the second motion to amend, in an electronic order on June 28, 2010, as untimely. On appeal, Turner argues this second motion to amend also added a different claim that the use of those convictions violated the ACCA and Turner's due process rights in light of the Supreme Court's March 2, 2010 decision in Johnson because Johnson retroactively applied and dictated a different outcome. The government contests this characterization of the second motion to amend and says no such claim was presented to the district court. In a memorandum and opinion dated June 28, 2011, the district court denied petitioner's original § 2255 motion. Bypassing the question of the level of counsel's performance, the district court, in a detailed analysis, concluded that [b]ecause the evidentiary impact of trial counsel's errors did not affect the outcome of the petitioner's case, he cannot meet the high [prejudice] bar for proving ineffective assistance of counsel. In other words, the petitioner cannot demonstrate a reasonable probability that even if he had had the benefit of an able defense, the outcome in his case would have been any different. As to the claim in his original petition that his sentencing under the ACCA was invalid due to deficiencies in one of the state predicate offenses, the court agreed that one vacated state sentence could no longer be counted, but concluded there were three other qualifying predicates. The court rejected the attack -9- on the ABDW conviction obtained in Salem District Court,4 and so concluded there was no error in the ACCA sentence.5