James v. Keyser

Background

Sharkey James was convicted in New York Supreme Court, New York County, on February 25, 2015, of first-degree robbery and second-degree robbery. On September 1, 2015, he received an indeterminate sentence of twenty-two years to life. He filed a federal petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a procedure allowing a person in state custody to challenge custody on federal constitutional or statutory grounds, and later amended it to assert seven grounds for relief.

The case was referred to Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron, who recommended denying the amended petition in full. James filed timely objections. The district court reviewed the challenged portions of the recommendation independently and reviewed the unchallenged portions for clear error, meaning an obvious mistake in the record.

Claims and analysis

The seven claims challenged: the admission of evidence of uncharged crimes; the jury’s verdict as against the weight of the evidence; the denial of a motion to suppress the robbery victims’ show-up identification; the denial of a speedy-trial motion; the calculation of the ten-year period used to classify James as a persistent violent felony offender; the use of a 1988 guilty plea as a predicate conviction for that classification; and ineffective assistance by appellate counsel.

James’s objections focused on the last claim. He argued that appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise (1) a federal constitutional speedy-trial claim and (2) a challenge to the use of his 1988 guilty plea to enhance his later sentence.

Speedy-trial claim

The court applied the four-factor test for a constitutional speedy-trial claim: the length of the delay, the reason for the delay, whether the defendant asserted the right, and prejudice to the defendant. About twenty-eight months passed between the state’s charging James and the beginning of his trial. That period was long enough to require review of the other factors, but the court explained that length alone did not establish a constitutional violation.

The court agreed that the reasons for most of the delay weighed against James. Some delays resulted from his pretrial motions, a change in counsel, and delays requested because counsel was unavailable. Other delays resulted from the temporary unavailability of robbery victims and the prosecution’s effort to try James with an alleged accomplice. The court treated those reasons as attributable to James or as serving legitimate government purposes. Less than eleven months remained attributable to the government, and James did not show a meaningful trial-related disadvantage caused by the delay.

Although the court stated that a speedy-trial argument would not have been frivolous, it concluded that the claim was unlikely to succeed. Appellate counsel therefore was not ineffective for failing to raise it.

1988 guilty plea and enhanced sentence

James argued that his 1988 guilty plea was invalid because a court clerk, rather than a judge, gave the warning about sentencing consequences. The court found that James misunderstood the warning. The warning addressed the possible effect of a prior predicate felony on the sentence for the 1988 case itself; it did not advise that the 1988 conviction could increase the sentence for a future offense.

The court held that the possible use of the 1988 conviction to enhance a sentence for a future offense was a collateral consequence, not a direct consequence that had to be explained during the plea proceeding. It also found that James was fully aware of the actual direct consequences of his plea. The court therefore concluded that the plea and resulting conviction were constitutionally valid, and that using the conviction to enhance James’s later sentence was constitutional. Because the proposed appellate argument lacked merit, appellate counsel was not ineffective for failing to raise it.

Disposition

Judge Cronan found James’s objections without merit, adopted the magistrate judge’s Report and Recommendation in its entirety, and denied the amended petition. The court found that James had not made a substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied, so it did not issue a certificate of appealability. It also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees. The Clerk was directed to close the case, enter judgment for William F. Keyser, and mail the order to James, who was representing himself.