United States v. Miles
Opinion
Defendant Alexander Christian Miles appeals the denial of his second petition for a writ of coram nobis. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to submitting a false affidavit in connection with an application for a visa for a 14-year-old girl from Cambodia to whom he was engaged. He has already unsuccessfully challenged that judgment in a direct appeal, a motion for relief under
I. BACKGROUND
Defendant, age 43 at the time, married a 14-year-old Cambodian girl, S.K., in a Cambodian wedding ceremony in October 2001. The previous July he had applied to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for a K-1 visa on S.K.'s behalf, and represented in his affidavit in support of the application that she was 18 years old. The visa was granted and he and S.K. moved to New York, where they were married in December 2001. In February 2002, S.K. applied to the INS for adjustment of status, and Defendant again lied about her age on his affidavit in support of that application.
In July 2002, Defendant and S.K. moved to Oklahoma. Shortly thereafter, federal prosecutors charged him with violating the Mann Act,
The government re-indicted Defendant under the Mann Act, this time specifying that the underlying Oklahoma offense was forcible rape. He moved to dismiss that indictment on double-jeopardy grounds, but the district court denied the motion and we affirmed after an interlocutory appeal.
See
United States v. Miles (Miles I)
,
The plea agreement contained a clause waiving Defendant's right to "[a]ppeal or collaterally challenge his guilty plea," and his right to "[a]ppeal, collaterally challenge, or move to modify ... his sentence as imposed by the Court and the manner in which the sentence is determined, provided the sentence is within or below the advisory guideline range determined by the Court to apply to this case." Aplt. App. at 42. The court imposed a five-year sentence and sex-offender conditions, Defendant appealed the imposition of the sex-offender conditions, and we affirmed the sentence.
See
United States v. Miles
(
Miles II
),
In 2011, Defendant filed a pro se § 2255 motion claiming (1) that he was actually innocent of making a material false statement to the INS in February 2002, because his wife's age was not material to the application for adjustment of status, (2) that his attorney in the double-jeopardy appeal had been ineffective, and (3) that if the charge to which he pleaded had actually been making a false statement on a K-1 visa application for S.K. in February 2002,
*802
his plea had no factual basis and any false statement was immaterial because he had already obtained a K-1 fiancée visa by that time. The district court denied the motion, and we declined to issue a certificate of appealability.
See
Miles III
,
In 2013, after he had served his sentence, Defendant filed a pro se petition for a writ of coram nobis under the All Writs Act,
Defendant's petition asserted that he had thought his guilty plea was based on making a false statement on the 2002 adjustment-of-status form rather than the 2001 visa application, that his trial counsel had told him that was the case, and that he discovered that he had pleaded guilty to lying on the visa application only upon reading this court's decision on his § 2255 motion. The district court denied the petition, and we affirmed.
See
United States v. Miles (Miles IV)
,
Finally, Defendant filed a second petition for a writ of coram nobis, the one at issue in this appeal. He claims that he is actually innocent of the false-statement offense to which he pleaded guilty because his false statement of S.K.'s age was not material to either the visa application or the application for adjustment of status. And he claims that his trial counsel was ineffective in two respects: (1) for not fulfilling his duty under
Padilla v. Kentucky
,
*803 II. DISCUSSION
A. General Principles Governing Collateral Attacks on Convictions
Before filing the coram nobis petition at issue here, Defendant had appealed his sentence, pursued relief under § 2255, and sought relief under a prior coram nobis petition. The question naturally arises whether there is any limit to how many postconviction petitions he can file. Are there procedural barriers to such petitions, or must we always address each issue he raises?
There is a body of law limiting second or successive habeas corpus petitions (including applications under
The successive-use-of-the-writ doctrine "authorized a federal court to decline to consider a habeas petition presenting a claim that was previously raised and adjudicated in an earlier habeas proceeding, unless the court determined that hearing the claim would serve the ends of justice."
Stanko
,
"Another principle, abuse of the writ, authorized a court to decline to hear a second or subsequent habeas petition raising a claim that could have been presented in an earlier petition but was not."
Stanko
,
We can think of no reason why these same restrictions should not apply to petitions for writs of coram nobis. The writ is not to be granted lightly. Its availability is limited to "extraordinary cases presenting circumstances compelling its use to achieve justice."
Denedo
,
Indeed, Tenth Circuit precedent already imposes a bar to coram nobis relief "unless relief under
B. Application to This Case
Defendant's petition asserts two grounds for relief: (1) that he is actually innocent of *805 the false-statement offense to which he pleaded guilty, because his false statement of S.K.'s age was not material 1 , and (2) that he received ineffective assistance of counsel in connection with his guilty plea, because his trial counsel did not inform him of potential immigration consequences of his guilty plea and did not adequately investigate the factual basis of his guilty plea. Both are procedurally barred.
Defendant's actual-innocence claim was raised and rejected in prior collateral attacks. In his § 2255 proceeding we held that his falsification of S.K.'s age in the visa application was a material falsehood and he was not actually innocent of the charge even if the date in the information was incorrect.
See
Miles III
,
As for Defendant's first ineffective-assistance claim, he relies on the Supreme Court's decision in
Padilla
, which postdated his conviction. Perhaps coram nobis is a proper avenue for relief if a claim is based on Supreme Court law that was declared after the defendant had fully served the criminal sentence.
Cf.
United States v. Snyder
,
*806 It is even clearer that Defendant's second ineffective-assistance claim could have been raised earlier. The matters that he contends his counsel should have discovered before he pleaded guilty were all presented in his § 2255 proceedings. He was aware of everything that he needed to raise the present ineffective-assistance claim.
To be sure, the procedural bars to Defendant's present claims may be overcome in certain circumstances. But Defendant has not identified any legitimate ground to do so here. He argues that cause for his failure to raise his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claims is present because of (1) ineffectiveness of trial counsel-in the very respects that he complains of in his coram nobis petition, (2) "new developments in law," Aplt. Br. at 41, and (3) "extrinsic fraud," id. at 43. We are not persuaded. He does not explain how ineffectiveness of trial counsel kept him from arguing his ineffectiveness claims in his § 2255 proceedings or his first coram nobis petition; the cases he cites as "new developments" are not essential, or even material, to his present claims; and the evidence of asserted fraud is only the untrue allegation that the prosecution and the courts incorrectly characterized his guilty plea as being to his false statement on the visa application.
Nor can Defendant rely on the actual-innocence exception to procedural bar. The only new evidence he puts forward in support of his argument for actual innocence is a 2013 Department of Homeland Security guidance document that he claims tends to prove that a 14-year-old can qualify for a fiancée visa. He argues that this document establishes that his false statement of S.K's age was not material. But we doubt that this document would have affected our reasoning in rejecting Defendant's actual-innocence claim in his § 2255 proceeding.
See
Miles III
,
III. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the denial of Defendant's petition.
The Supreme Court has "not resolved whether a prisoner may be entitled to habeas relief based on a freestanding claim of actual innocence"
McQuiggin
,
There is a much more disturbing reason why Defendant's
Padilla
claim fails. Although he is a citizen of Sweden, his counsel conceded at oral argument that he is also a naturalized United States citizen.
Padilla
concerns counsel's obligation "to inform [a]
noncitizen
client that he faces a risk of deportation."
The apparently knowing and material misrepresentations in Defendant's filings are potential violations of the rules of professional conduct for the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, and the rules of professional conduct in California and Nevada, two states in which Defendant's counsel, Don P. Chairez, is licensed to practice law. It appears that Defendant is currently not eligible to practice law in California for administrative reasons, but these misrepresentations might justify professional discipline against him as well. We direct the clerk to forward copies of this opinion to the State Bar of California and the State Bar of Nevada so that they can assess whether counsel's conduct and/or Miles's conduct warrants any sanction.
See
In re Graham
,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Alexander Christian MILES, Defendant - Appellant.
- Cited By
- 12 cases
- Status
- Published