United States Court of Appeals,
Eleventh Circuit.
No. 94-2587
Non-Argument Calendar.
Robert Lee LANE, Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
Harry K. SINGLETARY; Robert A. Butterworth, Respondents-
Appellees.
Feb. 9, 1995.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of Florida. (No. 92-362-Civ-T-23(A)), Steven D. Merryday,
Judge.
Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, KRAVITCH and DUBINA, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
On August 31, 1989, in the Circuit Court for Manatee County,
Florida, petitioner pled guilty, pursuant to a plea bargain with
the state, to possessing and trafficking in crack cocaine.
Petitioner now seeks a writ of habeas corpus setting aside those
convictions. He contends that he is entitled to habeas relief
because (1) his attorney provided him ineffective assistance of
counsel (a violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments), and
(2) his pleas of guilty to the two offenses were involuntary (a
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment). The district court,
adopting the findings of fact and conclusions of law reached by a
magistrate judge following an evidentiary hearing, denied the writ.
We affirm.
After he was convicted in state court, petitioner was indicted
and prosecuted in the Middle District of Florida for the conduct
that gave rise to his state court convictions. A jury found
petitioner guilty as charged, and the district court sentenced him
to prison for life. The two state court convictions at issue
played an enhancing role in the district court's fashioning of
petitioner's sentence.
Petitioner contends that his attorney's performance in state
court failed to meet the Sixth Amendment standard of Strickland v.
Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984),
because, among other things, his attorney failed to advise him that
he could be prosecuted in federal court, and that, if he were
convicted, the court would take his state court convictions into
account in fashioning his sentence. Specifically, petitioner
claims that his attorney should have advised him that his state
court convictions could trigger a sentence of life imprisonment.
Had counsel informed him of this possibility, petitioner contends,
he would not have pled guilty to the state charges.
The magistrate judge found that counsel's performance in
defending petitioner in the Manatee County Circuit Court conformed
to the professional standards articulated in Strickland. At the
time petitioner tendered his guilty pleas to the Manatee County
Circuit Court, it was the policy of the United States Attorney for
the Middle District of Florida (which includes Manatee County) not
to seek a federal indictment for the same criminal act that formed
the basis of a conviction in a state court within the district. As
Chairman of the Criminal Law Section of the Manatee County Bar
Association, petitioner's attorney was well aware of that policy
and, thus, as the magistrate judge found, had no reason to believe
that, if petitioner pled guilty in state court, he might face
federal prosecution for essentially the same offenses. For this
reason, advising petitioner of the possibility of a federal
indictment did not enter counsel's mind.
We do not find clearly erroneous the court's factual finding
that counsel performed in a manner that satisfied the standard of
practice expected of criminal practitioners in the community. Nor
do we quarrel with the court's conclusion that counsel's
performance satisfied the first prong of the Strickland test—that
is, that it did not "[fall] below an objective standard of
reasonableness." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688, 104 S.Ct. at 2064.
It may be that, in a given case, counsel, if he or she is to be
effective in the Sixth Amendment sense, must inform a defendant who
is considering a plea of guilty to a charge of the possibility that
the defendant could be prosecuted in another jurisdiction for the
criminal conduct that gave rise to the charge and that any sentence
that might be imposed on the charge would be taken into account by
the court in the other jurisdiction in fashioning the defendant's
sentence. The case before us now, however, is not such a case.
Petitioner's other allegations of attorney ineffectiveness and
his claim that his guilty pleas were involuntary are meritless, and
thus require no discussion. The judgment of the district is,
accordingly,
AFFIRMED.