Moses v. Collado
- Laura Swain
- 1:19-cv-01770
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Moses v. Collado, Judge Swain denied Moses’s petition, finding one claim unexhausted and no error in the remaining claims.
Sharife Moses was affected by the denial of his federal petition. His claim concerning counsel’s failure to object to the prosecutor’s summation was found unexhausted and procedurally barred, while his remaining objections were rejected on review. Jaifa Collado prevailed as the respondent, and the court declined to issue a certificate of appealability.
What happened
In Moses v. Collado, Sharife Moses asked the federal court to review his state criminal case. A magistrate judge recommended denying the petition, and Moses objected to that recommendation.
The court agreed that Moses had not completed state-court review for his claim that his trial lawyer should have objected to the prosecutor’s closing argument. The court said that claim could not be reviewed in the federal petition. It found that Moses’s other objections merely repeated earlier arguments and found no clear error in the magistrate judge’s conclusions about the lineup, jury instructions, and the lawyer’s decision not to present a felony-murder defense.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain overruled Moses’s objections, adopted the recommendation, and denied the petition in its entirety. The court directed entry of judgment and declined to issue a certificate required for an appeal of a federal habeas decision.
The detailed version
- Moses v. Collado · No. 1:19-cv-01770
- Laura Swain
- Aug. 15, 2024
Background
Sharife Moses filed a pro se petition asking the federal court for habeas relief from his state criminal case. Magistrate Judge Gorenstein recommended denying the petition. Moses objected, and Jaifa Collado filed a response.
The Unexhausted Claim
Moses argued that the magistrate judge wrongly found that he had not exhausted state-court remedies for his claim that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the prosecutor’s summation. “Exhaustion” generally requires a person seeking federal habeas relief to first give the state courts an opportunity to address the claim.
The district court rejected Moses’s argument. It explained that Collado’s filing stated that Moses’s state post-conviction motion did not raise this claim and that no other state post-conviction motion appeared to raise it. The court also explained that Moses’s reliance on People v. Maxwell was misplaced because that decision concerned a state post-conviction motion, not the meaning of a “mixed petition” in federal habeas proceedings. The court therefore agreed that the claim remained unexhausted and that federal review of it was procedurally barred.
The court clarified that the claim concerning counsel’s failure to request a felony-murder affirmative-defense jury instruction was treated differently. The magistrate judge had found that claim fully exhausted and had considered it on the merits.
The Remaining Objections
Moses also objected to the magistrate judge’s conclusions concerning the state court’s affirmance of the lineup, the jury charge, and trial counsel’s decision not to present the felony-murder affirmative defense. The district court said these objections repeated Moses’s earlier arguments without identifying specific errors in the magistrate judge’s factual findings or legal analysis. It therefore reviewed them for clear error and found none.
Ruling
Judge Laura Taylor Swain overruled Moses’s objections, adopted Magistrate Judge Gorenstein’s report and recommendation, and denied Moses’s petition in its entirety. The clerk was directed to enter judgment and mail the order to Moses. The court also declined to issue a certificate of appealability, which is required before Moses could appeal the order, because it found that he could not meet the required showing of a constitutional-right violation.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.