Court Opinion

ID: 9477911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:34:40.137439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:07.421043
License: Public Domain

FLOYD R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur with the majority that an injustice may result if Jones is foreclosed from raising his due process and ineffective assistance of counsel arguments, but write separately to express my dissatisfaction with appellate counsel’s treatment of the latter issue. Counsel argued that “[t]he failure of the defense attorney to investigate Appellant’s prior felony convictions and to determine their validity for purposes of sentence enhancement constituted ineffective assistance.” Yet, counsel has not so much as alleged that any of Jones’s prior convictions are invalid. Before raising this issue appellate counsel should have investigated whether his argument was supported by the facts. To be sure, if one or more of the prior convictions are found to be invalid it would be fundamentally unfair to deny relief unless the remaining valid convictions are sufficient in number to trigger the enhancement statute; but on the other hand, if Jones’s next petition is denied because the prior convictions are valid, there will have been a monumental waste of judicial resources. In Jones’s next petition counsel should state with particularity the reasons why one or more of the prior convictions are invalid.