Williams v. United States

Background

Jomo Williams, also identified in the caption as “Ojo,” filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 seeking to vacate his federal conviction based on alleged ineffective assistance of his trial lawyer, Fredrick Cohn. Williams was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment after a jury found him guilty of charges arising from a 2006 robbery and murder. He later filed an initial application while proceeding without a lawyer, and the court appointed John C. Meringolo, who filed a counseled motion.

Williams’s principal claims concerned three events at trial. First, he argued that Cohn improperly allowed the lawyers to make peremptory jury challenges in a robing room outside Williams’s presence. Second, he argued that Cohn should have objected to the court’s handling of a jury note about being overheard during deliberations, investigated possible jury intimidation, or sought a mistrial. Third, he argued that Cohn should have recalled government witness Joseph Rosario so Rosario could be confronted with video excerpts containing prior inconsistent statements.

Williams also raised additional claims in his initial filing. He alleged that Cohn made a statement about forging a signature, disrespected Williams’s mother during a phone call, and slept during trial.

Legal standard and evidentiary hearing

The court applied the two-part test for ineffective assistance of counsel established in Strickland v. Washington. Williams had to show both that Cohn’s performance fell below professionally reasonable standards and that the alleged errors probably affected the result. Failure to prove either part defeats the claim.

The court decided that no evidentiary hearing was necessary. It found no material factual dispute and relied on the case record, the parties’ written submissions, Cohn’s detailed affidavit, and the court’s familiarity with the trial proceedings.

Jury selection and peremptory challenges

The court rejected Williams’s claim that his absence from the robing-room peremptory challenges violated his right to be present. The court found that Williams was present during questioning of the jurors, had an opportunity to confer with Cohn before the challenges, and was present when the final jury was formally announced and sworn.

The court also found that Cohn’s recommendation that Williams not attend the robing-room conference was reasonable. Cohn explained that he advised clients not to attend such conferences to avoid having the jury see the security surrounding a defendant and view the defendant as dangerous. The court concluded that Williams failed to show deficient performance or prejudice. It likewise rejected his concerns about his absence from voir dire sidebars, noting that the Constitution generally does not require a defendant’s presence at sidebar conferences and that Cohn said he summarized the discussions afterward.

Jury note and alleged intimidation

The court rejected Williams’s argument that Cohn mishandled the jury’s note asking to deliberate in a room where jurors could speak freely without being overheard. The court found that the required procedure for handling a jury note was followed: the note was written, read into the record, marked as an exhibit, discussed with counsel, and read again when the jury returned.

The court also found that Cohn’s decision not to question the jurors or immediately seek a mistrial was professionally reasonable. At the time, there was a rational explanation for the note: a court security officer had told the jurors to keep their voices down because they could be heard. The court concluded that Cohn reasonably addressed the immediate problem by arranging for the jury to deliberate in another room. Williams therefore failed to establish ineffective assistance on this issue.

Video evidence and confrontation claim

The court concluded that Cohn’s decision not to recall Rosario was reasonable. Cohn explained that recalling Rosario would have risked emphasizing that Rosario had already admitted making the inconsistent statements, while the court had limited the defense to showing the portions of the video containing those statements.

The court also found no prejudice. In an earlier ruling, it had determined that the full video did not contain body language that would allow the jury to meaningfully compare Rosario’s demeanor in the video with his demeanor at trial. The court had also found ample other evidence of Williams’s guilt, and the Court of Appeals had affirmed that conclusion. Because Williams presented no new facts, the court found no basis to change its earlier determination.

The court separately rejected Williams’s argument that failing to play the video excerpts for Rosario while he was on the witness stand violated the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause. That issue had been raised and rejected on direct appeal, and the court stated that a § 2255 motion cannot be used to relitigate an issue already considered on appeal.

Additional claims

The court found that Cohn’s statement about the court “forging a signature,” which Cohn described as a joke concerning redactions to the indictment, caused no prejudice. It also found that Williams identified no specific prejudice resulting from Cohn’s alleged disrespect toward Williams’s mother.

As to the alleged sleeping, the court noted that Cohn disputed the allegation and that the government did not observe him sleeping. Even accepting Williams’s account of sleep on a couple of occasions, the court found that this did not approach the substantial portion of trial testimony involved in the precedent Williams cited. The record showed Cohn participating in objections, cross-examination, and closing argument, and the court observed that Cohn was alert throughout the trial. Williams therefore failed to show the required prejudice.

Disposition

Judge Analisa Torres denied Williams’s § 2255 motion and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motions at ECF Nos. 203 and 205.