Scott v. United States

81 F. Supp. 3d 1326, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8449, 2015 WL 310604
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Florida
DecidedJanuary 26, 2015
DocketCase Nos. 3:11-cv-1144-J-32PDB, 3:06-cv-906-J-32HTS, 3:03-cr-343-J-32PDB
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 81 F. Supp. 3d 1326 (Scott v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Scott v. United States, 81 F. Supp. 3d 1326, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8449, 2015 WL 310604 (M.D. Fla. 2015).

Opinion

ORDER

TIMOTHY J. CORRIGAN, District Judge.

This case is before the Court on Petitioner Gino Velez Scott’s Motion Under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to Vacate, Set Aside, or Correct Sentence (Doc. 1)1 and Memorandum of Law (Doc. 3). The Court appointed counsel for Petitioner in this matter. (Crim. Doc. 141). On July 9, 2014, the Court directed counsel for Petitioner to file a supplemental brief explaining why the Court should not dismiss Petitioner’s § 2255 motion as second or successive, or alternatively, why Petitioner’s Rule 60(b)(3) motion is not untimely. Petitioner and the government have since filed several supplemental briefs. (Docs. 26, 31, 34). Having reviewed the parties’ filings, the Court is satisfied that it has been briefed on the matter and is prepared to rule. Upon review of the case law, the Court concludes that Petitioner’s § 2255 motion is second or successive and is due to be dismissed without prejudice to his right to seek permission from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to file a second motion to vacate. However, Petitioner’s alternative [1329]*1329motion for relief from judgment on his’ initial § 2255 motion, pursuant to Fed. R.Civ.P. 60(b)(3), is appropriately tailored as such and due to be granted, with further instructions to follow.

I. Background

On June 30, 2004, a jury found Petitioner guilty of one count of conspiracy to possess five kilograms or more of cocaine with intent to distribute. (Crim. Doc. 89). Because of prior convictions, the Court sentenced Petitioner to life in prison. (Crim. Doc. 109). Petitioner appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed Petitioner’s conviction in 2005. United States v. Scott, 136 Fed.Appx. 273 (11th Cir.2005). The Supreme Court denied Petitioner’s request for cer-tiorari review.

In 2006, Petitioner filed an initial motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Among other things, Petitioner alleged that counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to investigate and uncover further evidence that would have impeached one of the government’s witnesses against him, an ex-convict-turned-DEA-informant named Freddy Pena. The Court denied Petitioner’s motion to vacate on April 16, 2008, explaining that trial counsel elicited damaging admissions from Pena on cross-examination relating to his prior heroin conviction and status as a paid informant, but that Petitioner failed to show that further investigation would have yielded any additional impeachment. (Case No. 3:06-cv-906-J-32HTS, Doc. 12 at 5-7). The Court therefore concluded that Petitioner had failed to show prejudice under Strickland v. Washington.2 For its part, the United States argued:

What would further investigation have disclosed? ... [T]he defendant must provide some evidence that had defense counsel conducted a more thorough investigation of the witness, something of use.to the defense would have been uncovered. The defense has had more than two years to suggest something that further investigation would have turned up that might have made a difference in the trial. The petition has nothing on this topic ... Notably, even if the defense had found a Brady or Giglio violation during these intervening years, the burden still would be on the defendant to show that, had the evidence been disclosed, a reasonable probability exists that the outcome of the trial would have been different.

(Case No. 3:06-ev-906-J-32HTS, Doc. 8 at 8). Thus, the United States contended that no prejudice resulted from trial counsel’s abridged investigation of Pena because there was no further impeachment evidence that counsel could have uncovered.3

But there was more impeachment evidence. In April 2011, the United States notified Petitioner that it had information about Pena about which it claimed to have been unaware during Petitioner’s trial and initial § 2255 proceeding. The United States disclosed to Petitioner that: (1) Pena lied to investigators about the source of heroin that was the subject of his 1996 arrest for heroin trafficking, (2) in October [1330]*13302001, Pena and a DEA confidential source stole 1.5 kilograms of cocaine from a drug dealer who was the target of a DEA investigation; (3) in November 2001, the DEA’s Tampa office activated Pena as a confidential source, but Pena did not disclose his participation in the theft of cocaine one month earlier; (4) sometime in 2002, DEA agents learned about the theft of cocaine and confronted Pena about it, and Pena admitted to the theft; and (5) in June 2002, the Tampa DEA’s office moved Pena to “restricted use,” with one Assistant United States Attorney commenting that he would- be hesitant to use Pena again in the future. Later in 2002, the Jacksonville DEA’s office activated Pena anyway for the investigation against Petitioner. Petitioner was not aware of any of the aforementioned information during his trial or first § 2255 proceeding, nor did the United States disclose it during pretrial discovery.

The United States made the belated disclosures after an Assistant United States Attorney from Massachusetts alerted the Jacksonville United States Attorney’s Office to the information. The Massachusetts prosecutor was researching Brady material on Pena because his office was using Pena as a witness in one of its own trials, and discovered the above information while reviewing the files of the DEA’s Tampa office. Another prosecutor with the Jacksonville office had also disclosed this same impeachment evidence in another trial where Pena was a witness4, but the prosecutor in Petitioner’s case averred that he was not actually aware of this information until learning about it in March or April of 2011. The prosecutor maintains that he notified Petitioner as soon as he learned about the information.

Based on the new disclosures, Petitioner filed a second § 2255 motion to vacate on November 17, 2011. (Doc. 1). Petitioner asserts that the prosecution suppressed evidence in Petitioner’s trial and subsequent collateral proceeding on four occasions: (1) by failing to comply with the Court’s standing pretrial discovery order; (2) by representing that all Brady material had been turned over when trial counsel protested that the United States’ disclosures were incomplete (See Crim. Doc. 96 at 51-53); (3) when the United States elicited testimony from Pena at trial that Pena had never provided false or misleading information to the DEA; and (4) when the United States argued, in response to Petitioner’s initial § 2255 motion, that Petitioner could not show prejudice from trial counsel’s failure to adequately investigate Pena because there was no further impeachment evidence to uncover. (See Doe. 3 at 1314). Petitioner has not obtained permission from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to file a second or successive motion to vacate, as is typically required. by 28 U.S.C. §§ 2255(h) and 2244(b). Petitioner contends that the disclosures revealed Brady and Giglio

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
81 F. Supp. 3d 1326, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8449, 2015 WL 310604, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/scott-v-united-states-flmd-2015.