Milton v. Miller, No. 12-6187 (10th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseOklahoma state prisoner appellant Antonio Milton was serving a life sentence without parole for drug-trafficking-related convictions. After exhausting his state court remedies, Milton filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus alleging (in relevant part) his counsel on direct appeal was ineffective for failing to assert a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, specifically that Milton’s trial counsel failed to inform Milton of a favorable pretrial plea offer. The district court denied Milton’s petition, but the Tenth Circuit granted Milton a certificate of appealability to challenge the district court’s ruling on the ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claim. Upon further review, the Tenth Circuit concluded that the Oklahoma state courts’ resolution of Milton’s ineffective assistance claim could not survive scrutiny under 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1), and that unresolved issues of fact prevented the Court from completing its own de novo review of the claim. Consequently, the Court reversed and remanded the case to the district court with directions to conduct an evidentiary hearing on Milton’s ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claim.
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