Court Opinion

ID: 9473668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:36:12.98926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:40.200717
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join in the scholarly opinion of Judge Henderson and agree Downs-Morgan should have an evidentiary hearing to determine whether his guilty plea resulted from ineffective assistance of former counsel. I think a few added comments are appropriate.
According to the statements of Downs-Morgan’s present counsel, to some extent supported by the record, he was a resident of Corn Island, Nicaragua, until, in March 1980, he fled that country on account of a falling out with the Sandinista government which he feared would have consequences detrimental to his health. Thereafter, he worked on off-shore fishing vessels, mostly off the Cayman Islands. At some time he was recruited at the Cayman Islands to serve as crewman on a vessel he supposed to be bound for Mexico. Only when at sea did he learn the cargo was marijuana. The vessel was boarded by the United States Coast Guard somewhere off Sarasota, Florida, and taken by them into Key West. He was held at Miami, and indicted for conspiracy on two counts. He at first pled not guilty to both, but changed his plea to guilty on one of them pursuant to a plea bargain. He says his then counsel, Mr. Rosen, told him, respecting possible immigration consequences of his plea, that “they would not send him back to Nicaragua.”
Mr. Rosen has not as yet corroborated or denied this statement imputed to him, or if he said it, whether he meant to be understood as saying Downs-Morgan could remain in the United States, or something different. Nor, so far as I know, has the Immigration and Naturalization Service confirmed that they would or would not send Downs-Morgan to Nicaragua despite the alleged danger to his life there, his having voluntarily exiled himself from that country long before his criminal involvement, or whether, in view of the peculiar circumstance of his first arrival at Key West, erasure of the conviction would make him an acceptable guest. It seems to me we also need to know what reception Downs-Morgan would have in other foreign countries than Nicaragua, for example, the Cayman Islands whence immediately he came. It appears an immigration judge has ruled that the conviction makes Downs-Morgan automatically excludable and I suppose his present counsel agrees that no further exhaustion of administrative remedies there is required, but we are not instructed whether his being excludable means he must go to Nicaragua, not somewhere else.
In the circumstances a hearing on the facts is unavoidable. Even if counsel actually said what Downs-Morgan states he said, he may well have supposed the matter was academic because Downs-Morgan had no chance of remaining here anyway. The hope of remaining here appears to be one Downs-Morgan formed at a later date and the facts given us do not reflect he ever expressed such a hope before his conviction. Whether the legal advice was so bad as to apply a constitutional taint to the ensuing plea and conviction appears to me something that can be assessed only in light of full and clear information as to all these other matters.
Should I for one learn that Downs-Morgan could return to the Cayman Islands despite his conviction, my desire to impeach former counsel for giving constitutionally inadequate advice would be much abated. Downs-Morgan having served his sentence, the prosecution and the courts should not and could not be required to retry him unless it is really, as alleged, a matter of life or death, and if it really is, the retrial seems an inappropriate remedy, as constitutional remedies sometimes are.
I join in the opinion in the expectation that in making any further decision, the court will be able to act on findings as to all the relevant facts.