Hawkins v. United States

Background

Davon Hawkins was charged in federal court with firearm and drug offenses arising from cocaine trafficking. The charges included possessing a firearm after a felony conviction, possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, and possessing or carrying a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking. A later indictment charged a cocaine-and-fentanyl conspiracy and added other defendants.

Hawkins entered a written plea agreement. He agreed to plead guilty to a lesser offense involving a conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute detectable amounts of cocaine and fentanyl, and to a firearm offense carrying a mandatory consecutive 60-month sentence. The parties agreed to a Guidelines sentencing range of 97 to 106 months, and Hawkins agreed not to appeal or challenge a prison term within or below that range.

A first plea hearing was stopped after Hawkins disclosed that he had used marijuana about two hours earlier. The court replaced his attorney, Calvin Scholar, with Anthony Cecutti. At a second plea hearing on June 7, 2023, Hawkins confirmed under oath that he understood the charges, the plea agreement, and the rights he was giving up. He also said that he was pleading guilty voluntarily and had not been threatened or forced. The court accepted his plea.

At sentencing, the court recognized that Hawkins had directly sold cocaine but had not knowingly sold fentanyl. The court modified the presentence report to avoid stating that Hawkins personally conspired to distribute an unspecified quantity of fentanyl, while retaining that fentanyl distribution was an object of the broader conspiracy. The court imposed eight months on the drug-conspiracy count and a consecutive 60 months on the firearm count, for an aggregate sentence of 68 months.

Section 2255 Motion

Hawkins later moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate his convictions based on ineffective assistance of counsel. He claimed that his lawyer threatened and manipulated him into signing the plea agreement by saying that the prosecutor had dropped the fentanyl and firearm charges. He also claimed that his lawyer warned that he would receive 25 years in prison if he did not accept the plea.

Because Hawkins did not identify which attorney allegedly made the statements, the court obtained affidavits from Scholar, Cecutti, and Kestine Thiele. Thiele stated that she was not involved in plea discussions. Scholar and Cecutti both denied threatening, manipulating, coercing, or misleading Hawkins, and both denied telling him that the firearm charge had been dropped or that he would receive a 25-year sentence.

Court’s Analysis

The court chose not to enforce Hawkins’s appellate waiver or apply a procedural bar. Instead, it considered the merits of his ineffective-assistance claim. To establish ineffective assistance, Hawkins had to show both that his lawyers’ performance fell below a reasonable professional standard and that the alleged errors caused actual prejudice. In the guilty-plea context, prejudice required evidence that, without the alleged errors, he would have rejected the plea and gone to trial, and that doing so would have been a rational choice under the circumstances.

The court found no evidence that Hawkins was threatened, manipulated, or frightened into pleading guilty. It relied on the affidavits from Scholar and Cecutti, the court’s observations during the plea proceedings, and the strong presumption that Hawkins’s sworn statements during the plea hearing were truthful. The court also found that the written plea agreement and the plea hearing made clear that the firearm charge remained part of the agreement and that fentanyl was included as part of the broader conspiracy. Hawkins’s reference to the firearm being inoperable did not alter the court’s analysis because the firearm statute did not require the gun to be operable.

The court concluded that the record was sufficient to determine that Hawkins pleaded guilty knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily, and that he received effective assistance of counsel. Because Hawkins failed to show ineffective assistance, the court denied his Section 2255 motion.

Disposition

The court DENIES Hawkins’s motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. It also declines to issue a certificate of appealability because Hawkins did not make the required substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied. The court certifies that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denies fee-free status for an appeal. The clerk was directed to terminate the motion and close the related civil case.