Milton v. Miller, No. 15-6069 (10th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseOklahoma state prisoner Antonio Milton requested a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition for habeas relief. In 2007, Milton was prosecuted in two separate cases pending simultaneously before a state district court: a charge for crack cocaine trafficking; the other, involvement in a drive-by shooting. Because Milton had two earlier felony drug-trafficking convictions, the crack-cocaine-trafficking charge mandated life without parole if convicted. The State extended Milton at least one plea offer that covered at least one of Milton’s two cases. Milton ultimately rejected the offered plea deal(s) and went to trial in the drug-trafficking case, where he was convicted. After this, the State let the drive-by-shooting case lapse, leaving the court to dismiss it for lack of prosecution. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) affirmed all of Milton’s convictions and sentences, including the drug-trafficking conviction with its mandatory life-without-parole sentence. Later, Milton filed a pro se application for post-conviction relief and requested an evidentiary hearing in Oklahoma state district court. Relevant here, Milton argued “that his appellate counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to assert on direct appeal that Milton’s trial counsel was ineffective for failing to inform Milton of a plea-bargain offer made by the prosecution prior to the preliminary hearing.” The state district court denied Milton’s application for post-conviction relief on his ineffective-assistance-of-appellate-counsel claim. As Milton’s application for post-conviction relief proceeded through Oklahoma courts, the courts considered conflicting evidence about offers for a 20/20 Deal, a 25/20 Deal, and a supposed 23-year deal. The timing, communication, and existence of each of these deals were the basis of Milton's grounds for appeal here: had one of Milton's defense counsel offered Milton the 20/20 Deal minutes before the preliminary hearing, Milton could not have suffered prejudice from any earlier failure by his counsel to communicate a less favorable 23-year offer. But had defense counsel offered Milton the 25/20 Deal before the preliminary hearing, Milton could have suffered prejudice if his counsel failed to communicate a more favorable 23-year deal before the preliminary hearing. But the state courts denied Milton relief without ever determining whether the 23-year deal was ever offered, and if so, whether Milton’s counsel had told Milton about it. Milton sought a COA to appeal the denial of habeas relief, arguing again, he received ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. New evidence discovered at the federal evidentiary hearing assisted the Tenth Circuit's de novo review of Milton’s ineffective-assistance claims, and the Court concluded that all of them lacked merit. Accordingly, the Court denied Milton’s request for a COA on all bases presented.
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