Davis v. United States

Background

Matthew Davis, proceeding without a lawyer, asked the court under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, correct, or set aside the sentence imposed after his conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine and cocaine base. A jury found him guilty on the drug-conspiracy count, and Judge Katherine B. Forrest imposed a 240-month sentence. Judge Forrest had earlier entered a judgment of acquittal on several murder-for-hire and firearm counts, while the jury did not reach a unanimous verdict on another count.

The Government had filed a prior felony information under 21 U.S.C. § 851 based on Davis’s 2002 New York drug convictions. That filing subjected Davis to a then-current 20-year mandatory minimum sentence. Davis’s direct appeal and appeal from the denial of a new-trial motion were unsuccessful.

Claims and analysis

Davis raised nine claims. He argued that the sentencing court did not follow the procedures required before applying the § 851 enhancement; that the Supreme Court’s decision in Mathis v. United States invalidated the prior conviction as an enhancement predicate; that he was actually innocent of the enhancement and a career-offender designation; that he should receive the reduced mandatory minimum under the First Step Act of 2018; that the Government committed prosecutorial misconduct; that trial counsel was ineffective; that the career-offender designation was erroneous; that the court failed to determine the extent of his agreement to participate in the conspiracy; and that the court improperly used “acquitted conduct” in calculating the sentencing-guidelines range.

The court held that Davis had procedurally defaulted, meaning he failed to raise on direct review, his challenge to the § 851 procedures. The court also found no prejudice because the five-year limit in § 851(e) would have barred a challenge to the 2002 conviction even if the required procedures had been followed. For similar reasons, the court rejected Davis’s related ineffective-assistance argument concerning the prior conviction.

The court rejected Davis’s Mathis-based claims because the Second Circuit had held that Mathis did not announce a new constitutional right that applied retroactively on collateral review. The court also found those claims procedurally defaulted and stated that Davis had offered no evidence of factual innocence of the 2002 offenses.

The court denied the First Step Act claim. Section 401(c) of that Act made the reduced mandatory minimum applicable to offenses committed before enactment only when a sentence had not yet been imposed. Because Davis was sentenced before the Act’s December 21, 2018 enactment, the court held that he was not entitled to resentencing or a reduction under the amended mandatory minimum.

The prosecutorial-misconduct claim concerning a superseding indictment had already been rejected or forfeited on direct appeal, and the court would not reconsider it. The court treated Davis’s separate, generalized assertion that the prosecution left him defenseless before trial as procedurally defaulted because he did not show cause or prejudice.

The court considered Davis’s ineffective-assistance claims on the merits. Davis argued that counsel failed to tell him the Government would not call Robert Parris, failed to investigate redacted portions of Karriem Thomas’s testimony concerning Parris, and failed to request an adjournment when a paralegal became ill. Applying the two-part test from Strickland v. Washington—deficient performance and a reasonable probability that the result would have been different—the court held that Davis could not show prejudice from the first two alleged failures because Parris’s testimony would not have helped him. The court also rejected the adjournment argument under both parts of the test.

Finally, the court found Davis’s challenges to the career-offender designation, the lack of a finding about the extent of his conspiracy agreement, and the use of acquitted conduct procedurally defaulted because he showed neither cause nor prejudice. The court stated that, even without the career-offender designation, Davis’s criminal-history category would have remained the same and the sentencing guidelines would still have exceeded the sentence imposed.

Disposition

The court held that all of Davis’s claims were either procedurally defaulted or without merit and denied the petition in full. It did not issue a certificate of appealability because Davis had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right had been denied. It also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free appeal status. The matter was closed.