WASHINGTON (CN) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson balked Tuesday at the refusal from her colleagues on the high court to consider ineffective counsel claims from a man sentenced to just under 160 years in prison for a string of armed robberies.
“The instant case not only implicates a divergence of circuit opinions, but also is an ideal vehicle to evaluate the Eleventh Circuit’s bright-line rule that an adequate showing of prejudice requires an actual plea offer,” Justice Jackson wrote in a 3-page dissent joined by fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Quartavious Davis was given the life sentence after a jury convicted him in connection to a string of seven armed robberies from 2010 in South Florida that targeted businesses including a Little Caesar's pizza shop, a Walgreens drug store, an Amerika gas station and a Wendy's. During the two-month span that the robberies occurred, Davis turned 19 years old.
While his co-defendants negotiated plea deals that carried less than 40 years of imprisonment, Davis, a first-time, was subjected to six mandatory consecutive terms of 25 years’ imprisonment and one mandatory consecutive term of five years for the 16 counts of which he was convicted.
The court initially gave Davis a sentence of more than 161 years but it was reduced to just over 159 years after an en banc panel of the 11th Circuit found a sentencing enhancement error.
In his petition to the Supreme Court last year, Davis noted that his trial counsel failed to discuss with him the pros and cons of going to trial versus pleading guilty. One thing that he says was never discussed was the likelihood that Davis would “receive a life sentence based on the mandatory stacking of his penalties.” He also says they never discussed how the fact that his co-defendants were already cooperating with the government would hurt his chances at being found not guilty — “particularly when considered alongside powerful cellphone location data evidence placing Davis near the robbery sites.”
The government noted meanwhile that Davis had failed to meet the test to prove ineffective assistance, and that his conduct in at least six of the seven robberies was particularly dangerous.
“In each of the armed robberies, petitioner and one or two of his co-conspirators entered a store or restaurant while employees — and sometimes customers — were present, and then used weapons and threats to obtain money or other valuables,” the response brief states.
“During one robbery, of a beauty salon, petitioner temporarily split off from his two co-conspirators in order to rob a martial arts studio next door that was ‘filled with children,’” the government’s brief continues. “In the studio, petitioner ‘pointed his gun at a man and forced him to the floor,’ stole a camera and multiple cell phones, and knocked over a 77-year old woman while another adult hid the children in a back room. Petitioner then rejoined his two co-conspirators in the beauty salon, where they held one of the employees at gunpoint, stole money from the cash register and purses, and ‘fled while the children from the Tae Kwan Do studio screamed.’”
Concerned about a circuit split on the matter, Jackson argued in her dissent Tuesday that the high court missed an opportunity to weigh in on the fact that the government never extended Davis a plea deal affects his effective counsel claim.
“That important legal question is isolated here; since the Eleventh Circuit assumed deficient performance, so can we. And because the lower courts denied Davis’s motion without an evidentiary hearing based solely on the pleading deficiency, the sole question before us is whether a defendant must allege (and then ultimately show) that an actual plea offer was made,” Jackson’s dissent notes.