Robert Joseph Butler v. Louie L. Wainwright, Etc.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Robert Joseph Butler v. Louie L. Wainwright, Etc., 610 F.2d 334 (5th Cir. 1980)
1980 U.S. App. LEXIS 21096
Goldberg, Rubin, Pol-Itz

Robert Joseph Butler v. Louie L. Wainwright, Etc.

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

Appellant Robert Joseph Butler filed in the district court a pro se petition for habe-as corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, attacking his conviction in the Florida state courts for robbery and possession of firearms by a convicted felon. The court below dismissed appellant’s motion without a hearing. We affirm.

As the sole basis for his petition for habeas relief, appellant alleges that his privately retained counsel was ineffective in presenting his defense because he failed to move to suppress the fingerprint standard taken following appellant’s arrest and because he failed adequately to investigate the facts of the case. Our review of the record convinces us that counsel was not ineffective under the standard set by Fitzgerald v. Estelle, 505 F.2d 1334 (5th Cir. 1974) (en banc), cert. denied, 422 U.S. 1011, 95 S.Ct. 2636, 45 L.Ed.2d 675 (1975). Our affirmance of the district court’s dismissal of appellant’s petition does not of itself foreclose appellant from pursuing a future action in state court based on the illegality of his arrest and the use of evidence obtained as a result of that arrest. Of course, we express no opinion on the merits of such an action.

AFFIRMED.

Reference

Full Case Name
Robert Joseph BUTLER, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, Etc., Respondent-Appellee
Status
Published