United States v. Wright

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff/Respondent, v. AARON WRIGHT, Defendant/Petitioner.

Criminal Case No. 2:18-cr-20302-1

Civil Case No. 2:20-cv-11209

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION

July 7, 2021

HONORABLE STEPHEN J. MURPHY, III

OPINION AND ORDER DENYING MOTION TO VACATE SENTENCE UNDER 28 U.S.C. § 2255 [60]

Defendant Aaron Wright pleaded guilty to child exploitation enterprise in violation of 18 U.S.C § 2252A(g). ECF 47, PgID 610. The Court sentenced Defendant to 504 months in prison. Id. at 611.

Defendant timely petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. ECF 60. Defendant's counsel later submitted a brief to support the petition. ECF 64. The Government responded to the petition, ECF 67, and Defendant replied, ECF 70. The Court reviewed the filings and a hearing is unnecessary. See E.D. Mich. L.R. 7.1(f)(1). For the following reasons, the Court will deny the motion.

BACKGROUND

Defendant spent several years during his late thirties and early forties as a "talker" in an online group of men that targeted young girls to produce child pornography. ECF 30, PgID 223; see ECF 57, PgID 678 (the Government agreeing that Defendant was talker). As a talker, Defendant messaged young girls in a chatroom and dared the girls to engage in sexual acts. ECF 30, PgID 225. Defendant would record the girls showing their "genitals, masturbating, and [doing] other sexual acts" that are too graphic to detail here. Id. at 225-28. Defendant later saved the videos of the girls on his computer and would share the videos with other members in his criminal group. ECF 30, PgID 224-26. Because of Defendant's crimes, many victims ultimately inflicted self-harm on themselves while other victims even attempted suicide. ECF 57, PgID 670, 682. Defendant and his criminal group targeted not only teenagers, but also preteens. See ECF 30, PgID 226-28.

Apart from recording these victims, Defendant spoke very cruelly about the victims. As the Government recalled at sentencing, for example, Defendant called "a 14-year-old girl a bitch for not engaging in sexual activity with her 12-year-old cousin." ECF 57, PgID 678.

At Defendant's arrest, Government agents found an enormous child pornography collection: 9,000 videos totaling more than 920 hours. Id. at 676-77. Defendant had 445 videos of just one victim. Id. at 681. Other videos showed sexual abuse of infants and toddlers. Id. at 675.

After Defendant's guilty plea, the Sentencing Guidelines suggested that Defendant receive a life term in prison. ECF 30, PgID 229. The mandatory minimum sentence for Defendant's crime was 240 months in prison. Id.

At sentencing, the Court stressed that the evidence showed "a level of anger and brutality and criminality toward the victims that [from the Court's] perspective [was] notable." ECF 57, PgID 689. The Court also noted that Defendant had used anelaborate computer and VPN to evade law enforcement while he committed his crimes. Id. at 689. The Court, however, recognized that a life sentence was improper because, at sentencing, Defendant showed a "deep sense of regret." ECF 57, PgID 690. The Court therefore sentenced Defendant to 504 months in prison. Id. at 692.

Defendant timely challenged his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 based on two ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Defendant first argued that his trial counsel failed to present mitigating evidence at his sentencing. ECF 60, PgID 730. Defendant's second claim argued that his trial counsel also offered flawed advice over his cooperation with the Government and the plea process. Id. at 731.

LEGAL STANDARD

A defendant sentenced by a federal court may seek "to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence" under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a). The statute provides four grounds for claiming relief: "(1) that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or [federal] laws [], (2) that the [C]ourt [lacked] jurisdiction to impose [the] sentence, (3) that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, and (4) that the sentence is otherwise subject to collateral attack." Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 426-27 (1962) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2255) (internal quotation marks omitted). Generally, the motion must allege "(1) an error of constitutional magnitude; (2) a sentence imposed outside the statutory limits; or (3) an error of fact or law that was so fundamental as to render the entire proceeding invalid." Weinberger v. United States, 268 F.3d 346, 351 (6th Cir. 2001) (citation omitted).

DISCUSSION

The Court will deny each ineffective assistance of counsel claim in turn. After, the Court will deny a certificate of appealability and in forma pauperis status on appeal.

I. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

"Defendants alleging the ineffective assistance of counsel bear 'a heavy burden of proof.'" Pough v. United States, 442 F.3d 959, 966 (6th Cir. 2006) (quoting Whiting v. Burt, 395 F.3d 602, 617 (6th Cir. 2005)). To succeed on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, Defendant must show: (1) that his counsel's representation "fell below an objective standard of reasonableness," and (2) "that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different." Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 688, 694 (1984).

A. Sentencing

For the first claim, Defendant argued that his trial counsel, Mr. Alvin Keel, was ineffective at sentencing because Mr. Keel did not present the Court with statistics about the life expectancy of prisoners. ECF 64, PgID 759-60. Defendant believed that if Mr. Keel had presented the statistics to the Court, then the Court would have not sentenced Defendant to 42 years in prison. Id. at 767-78. Rather, Defendant believed that there was a reasonable chance that the Court would have sentenced him to a term "far closer to the 20-year minimum" sentence. Id. at 767.

To address the first Strickland prong, the Court must "strongly presume" that Mr. Keel "rendered adequate assistance and made all significant decisions in theexercise of reasonable professional judgment." 466 U.S. at 690. "Working from this presumption, the [C]ourt should resist 'the temptation to rely on hindsight.'" Poulsen v. United States, 717 F. App'x 509, 514 (6th Cir. 2017) (quoting Carson v. United States, 3 F. App'x 321, 324 (6th Cir. 2001)). The Court must judge Mr. Keel's performance based "an objective standard of reasonableness." United States v. Arny, 831 F.3d 725, 731 (6th Cir. 2016) (quotation omitted).

Defendant cannot overcome the strong presumption that Mr. Keel rendered effective assistance for two reasons. First, Mr. Keel rendered adequate assistance by arguing at sentencing that a 20-year sentence would adequately protect the public because Defendant was already 44 years old. ECF 57, PgID 673-74. Mr. Keel also highlighted that Defendant would likely die in prison if subjected to a 45-year sentence. Id. Mr. Keel did not need statistics to point out the obvious: Defendant's chances of living into his seventies and eighties would decrease as he aged.

Second, the statistics that Defendant claimed Mr. Keel should have offered would not have improved Mr. Keel's sentencing argument. The study that Defendant relied on looked at a New York state parolee population from 1989 to 2003. ECF 64-6; see, e.g., Evelyn J. Patterson, The Dose-Response of Time Served in Prison on Mortality: New York State, 1989-2003, 103 Am. J. Pub. Health 523 (2013) https://bit.ly/35KCy29 [https://perma.cc/D3PN-3WWK]. The study would not have improved Mr. Keel's argument for four reasons.

One, the study looked only at the New York state parolee population—not a federal prison population. ECF 64-6, PgID 856. Two, the sample population isoutdated by nearly 20 years. Id. Three, the sample population in no way reflects Defendant's characteristics. For example, less than 20% of the sample population was non-Hispanic white, only 21% percent of the population had education beyond high school, and less than 20% of the population was between the ages of 35 to 44 years old. Id. at 857. Defendant is a non-Hispanic White, with education beyond high school, and, at sentencing, he was 44 years old. Last, the study's finding that each year of prison leads to a two-years' decline in life expectancy rested on the possibility of death while on parole—not while in prison. Id. at 856-57. If Mr. Keel had presented the Patterson study at sentencing, then the study would have stymied Mr. Keel's otherwise compelling argument because the Court would have challenged Mr. Keel about the flaws that the Court just addressed.¹ In all, Defendant has not overcome the strong presumption that Mr. Keel offered anything but adequate assistance under Strickland's first prong.

Moving to the second Strickland prong, to prove prejudice Defendant must prove "a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different." 466 U.S. at 694. "A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." Id.

Defendant cannot show prejudice under Strickland's second prong because Defendant mischaracterized why the Court sentenced him to a below-Guidelines sentence. The Court did not find "that a life term—whether de jure or de facto—wasnot called for in this case." ECF 64, PgID 762-63. Rather, the Court merely found that although "a life sentence might be called for," Defendant's acceptance of responsibility "convince[d] [the Court] that a life sentence would not be appropriate." ECF 57, PgID 690. In other words, the Court found only that departing from the Guidelines was appropriate.

From there, the Court decided whether to sentence Defendant to the Government's requested sentence of 45 years in prison or "somewhere less than that." Id. The Court also noted that going down to Defendant's requested sentence of 20 years in prison would have been "an...