Buzzi v. United States

655 F. Supp. 1221, 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1924
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedMarch 16, 1987
DocketNo. 87 Civ. 1379 (MP)
StatusPublished

This text of 655 F. Supp. 1221 (Buzzi v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Buzzi v. United States, 655 F. Supp. 1221, 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1924 (S.D.N.Y. 1987).

Opinion

MILTON POLLACK, Senior District Judge.

Buzzi was tried before this Court in April, 1982, on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud.1 The jury convicted Buzzi and his co-defendant of all counts on April 20, 1982. On June 29, 1982, the Court sentenced Buzzi to a total of twelve years’ imprisonment, plus five years’ probation to follow the expiration of the prison term or related parole, and ordered him to pay a fine of $7000. Buzzi now collaterally attacks that judgment, alleging that he received ineffective assistance of counsel, that the government withheld exculpatory material, and that the imposition of probation to follow the expired prison sentence was unlawful. Buzzi moves, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 22552, to vacate his sentence and set aside the conviction against him.

BACKGROUND3

Buzzi, in May and June of 1979, was a salesman for International Metals Exchange, Ltd. (IME), a commodities “boiler-room.” As an IME salesman, Buzzi placed telephone calls to potential customers throughout the United States, seeking to induce them to purchase “deferred delivery contracts” for gold and silver. Actually, what he was selling was no more than an option to buy gold and silver. Buzzi employed high pressure sales tactics and outright lies to convince unsophisticated inves[1223]*1223tors to purchase these options. Virtually all of Buzzi’s customers at IME lost all the money which they invested with him.

Government witnesses testified at defendant’s trial to the details of the IME scam. IME’s customers were crassly characterized by the IME salesmen as “jerks,” “suckers,” or “peasants.”4 According to the testimony, in order to make sales, Buz-zi misrepresented to his customers the age and reputation of IME, the nature of IME’s business, the extent of IME’s links with organized commodities exchanges and the characteristics of IME’s clientele. He lied to potential purchasers about the nature of their investment, the refundability of money paid to IME and the riskiness and likely profitability of investments in precious metals.

Approximately two years after his conviction 5, Buzzi moved for a new trial, pursuant to Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, alleging that he had come upon “newly discovered evidence” entitling him to such relief. This evidence consisted of documents which pertain to contracts between IME and several dealers in rare metals. In his motion, Buzzi asserted that these documents showed that the paper he was selling had value in that IME was prepared to provide the actual metals if its customers ever actually chose to exercise the options they had purchased.

This Court denied Buzzi’s motion on several grounds. First, the newly discovered evidence did not undermine the grounds upon which Buzzi was convicted. The indictment had not charged him with selling “naked options,” but instead had listed, with great detail, numerous examples of Buzzi having committed fraud on his customers by making false and misleading misrepresentations to them. The defense put in substantial evidence that IME had “covered” its sales to customers by making contracts with metals wholesalers.6 The government acknowledged this fact in its closing argument.7 The prosecution contended, instead, that the defendants’ fraud had been in leading investors to believe that they were purchasing gold and silver, rather than mere options to buy those metals. Investors were thus unaware that the fee they paid to IME was an option price, and did not entitle them to ownership of any metals. Consequently, the newly discovered evidence of IME’s contacts with metal wholesalers simply did not challenge the bedrock fact of Buzzi’s fraud upon his customers.

Second, it is dubious that the offered evidence was in the government’s possession at the time of trial. The documents dealt with three separate metal wholesalers. The first set, (the Bernstein documents) first became available to the government pursuant to a grand jury subpoena in a related case. This subpoena was issued six months after Buzzi’s trial had concluded. Indeed, the prosecutor who conducted the government’s case against Buzzi affirmed that he never saw any of the documents before or after Buzzi’s trial.8

Third, none of the documents mention Buzzi or are related to any of the schemes he perpetrated while at IME. Both the Bernstein documents and the second set (the New Era documents) deal exclusively with matters which were completed before Buzzi ever came to work for IME. The third set of documents (the Cohn documents) did contain references to several transactions which occurred during Buzzi’s tenure. However, these related to purchases of gold coins by Buzzi’s employer to reward his salesmen, not to contracts covering options sold to IME’s customers.

[1224]*1224In summary, the Court found that the evidence which Buzzi offered in no way undermined the verdict against him and denied his motion for retrial.

THE PRESENT MOTION

Buzzi now seeks to challenge his conviction again. Initially, this Court notes that the showing Buzzi must make to collaterally attack his conviction is significantly higher than even that burden he failed to meet when he directly appealed his conviction.9 Under § 2255, movant must show that his trial contained a fundamental defect which inherently resulted in a complete miscarriage of justice.10 Buzzi must show that the proceeding was infected with an error of fact or law of such a fundamental character that it rendered the entire trial irregular and invalid.11

Two of Buzzi’s three claims12 again focus on the documents which underlay his unsuccessful Rule 33 motion. First, Buzzi contends that the failure of his counsel to obtain and offer these documents constituted a violation of his right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The Supreme Court has established a two-pronged test to decide if a defendant was denied this constitutional right at trial. First, defendant must show that, in light of all the circumstances, the attorney’s conduct was so deficient that it was outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance. Second, defendant must further show a reasonable probability that, but for his attorney’s poor performance, the result of the proceeding would have been different.13

Buzzi’s showing fails both prongs of the constitutional test. First, if, as seems likely, the government did not even possess these documents before Buzzi’s trial, counsel’s failure to obtain them can hardly constitute professional incompetence. Even assuming arguendo that the documents were available if counsel had requested them, it is arguable whether a reasonably competent counsel would even have offered them in evidence. As discussed above, the materiality of the documents was highly dubious.

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577 F.2d 782 (Second Circuit, 1978)

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Bluebook (online)
655 F. Supp. 1221, 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1924, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/buzzi-v-united-states-nysd-1987.