Opinion ID: 751622
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Denial of an Evidentiary Hearing

Text: 50 Avellino also contends that the district court should not have denied his motion without conducting an evidentiary hearing. In his brief on appeal, he argues that a hearing was necessary because it is not clear that the government gave him all of the evidence it had received from the State investigation. Given the record in this case, we reject his contention, for it is established that a defendant who seeks to withdraw his plea of guilty is not entitled to an evidentiary hearing on the basis of assertions that are simply conclusory. See, e.g., United States v. Gonzalez, 970 F.2d at 1100. 51 In the present case, any suggestion in the district court that there might be a need for a hearing was conclusory at best. There was no dispute with respect to Avellino's allegations that the government had not disclosed the State evidence to him prior to the entry of his plea, and his initial request for a hearing was entirely unexplained. Nor do we see any significant dispute as to the substance of the undisclosed information. Following the plea withdrawal motion, the government sent Avellino's counsel copies of orders, applications, affidavits and line sheets with respect to the State investigation and invited counsel to review the tape recordings referred to in the line sheets. (Letter from AUSA Stephen D. Kelly to Jay Goldberg dated Nov. 13, 1996.) The government informed the court that it had disclosed all the state materials in the possession of federal authorities to Avellino (United States' Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Defendant Carmine Avellino's Motion to Withdraw his Guilty Plea, dated Nov. 13, 1996, at 15), and the court plainly believed that it had all of the State evidence before it, see Order at 3 n. 1 (the parties have submitted extensive papers, including the undisclosed evidence....). The record does not reveal that defense counsel challenged the completeness of the production made in the wake of the motion, except to rain rhetoric on the court as to the knowledge and lack of diligence of the Eastern District AUSAs, and to ask, what else has been kept from the defense? (Affirmation of Jay Goldberg dated December 5, 1996, at 9.) 52 In the absence of a proffer by Avellino of any nonspeculative basis for inferring that, in response to the plea withdrawal motion, the government had not made available to him all pertinent material in its possession, it was well within the discretion of the court to conclude that no evidentiary hearing was necessary.