Timothy Spriggs v. USA

Filing

Opinion issued by court as to Appellant Timothy Howard Spriggs. Decision: Reversed and Remanded. Opinion type: Non-Published. Opinion method: Per Curiam. The opinion is also available through the Court's Opinions page at this link http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions.

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Date Filed: 08/09/2017

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 15-10659
Non-Argument Calendar
________________________
D.C. Docket Nos. 2:13-cv-14189-JEM,
2:10-cr-14013-JEM-1
TIMOTHY HOWARD SPRIGGS,
Petitioner - Appellant,
versus
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Respondent - Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
________________________
(August 9, 2017)
Before MARTIN, JORDAN, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Timothy Spriggs, a federal prisoner, appeals the denial of his 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255 motion to vacate his conviction for receipt of child pornography.

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Mr. Spriggs contends that the government prosecuted him using evidence that was
obtained illegally, and that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by
failing to challenge the admissibility of that evidence. The district court, adopting
the magistrate’s report and recommendation, declined to consider the merits of Mr.
Spriggs’ alleged Fourth Amendment violation in addressing the ineffectiveness
claim and denied the motion without a hearing.
The district court granted a certificate of appealability on the ineffectiveness
claim, as well as on whether Mr. Spriggs is entitled to an evidentiary hearing.
Following a careful review of the record and the parties’ briefs, we reverse and
remand for further proceedings.
I
Mr. Spriggs pled guilty to one count of knowingly receiving child
pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2). As part of his guilty plea, he
stipulated to facts that depicted his encounter with law enforcement as one of
cooperation and acceptance of responsibility. In a sworn affidavit filed in this
§ 2255 proceeding, however, Mr. Spriggs disclaims that factual proffer. Briefly,
we summarize both versions below.
A
According to the factual proffer, Brian Broughton, a detective with Martin
County, determined that files containing pornographic depictions of minors had

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been downloaded by a computer with an IP address corresponding to a single
family home residence with the street number 11501. He went to the residence
with a colleague to execute the warrant. Upon arriving, Detective Broughton
spoke with Mr. Spriggs and his family outside the home, who told him that they
were staying at a “mobile home parked at the side of the [11501] house.” D.E. 8-7
at 2. Mr. Spriggs then asked to speak with the detectives alone, at which point he
admitted having downloaded child pornography onto his Dell laptop using a
peer-to-peer file-sharing program.

The detectives confiscated the laptops

belonging to Mr. Spriggs and his family, and obtained a search warrant for the
computers. They recovered illicit videos from Mr. Spriggs’ laptop.
B
In the version he now alleges, Mr. Spriggs portrays his interaction with law
enforcement as coercive and accuses Detective Broughton of lying about the scope
of the search warrant. Mr. Spriggs alleges that he was staying with his parents at
their mobile home, which was parked in a lot with the street number 11491,
adjacent to the 11501 residence.

He was editing a video for his parents’

anniversary when his mother told him that law enforcement officers were outside
with a warrant for child pornography. Mr. Spriggs went outside and saw his father
and brother speaking to the detectives on the 11491 lot. They told them that they

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had a search warrant for the 11501 residence and that their mobile home was also
subject to search under the warrant. See D.E. 8 at 22.
Sometime later, Detective Broughton and his colleague pulled Mr. Spriggs
aside to speak to him alone, and repeatedly asked him if he had ever downloaded
child pornography. Mr. Spriggs at first declined to answer without an attorney, but
eventually admitted that he had accidentally downloaded illicit files.
The detectives then searched the mobile home (supposedly as authorized by
the warrant) over the objection of Mr. Spriggs’ mother. They also had Mr. Spriggs
identify the green Dell laptop as his after reiterating that their warrant allowed
them to search every laptop in the mobile home.
C
Mr. Spriggs maintains that he is innocent because he did not knowingly
receive child pornography. See 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2) (making it unlawful to
“knowingly” receive illicit images). He says his attorney ignored his claim of
innocence and his allegations of what transpired, and warned him that a
round-a-bout attempt at getting his version of the facts on the record would net him
15 to 20 years in prison. Mr. Spriggs also alleges that his attorney refused to
consider a Fourth Amendment challenge based on his version of events.
Mr. Spriggs was initially sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment, but was
re-sentenced to a term of 126 months after we reversed his initial sentence on the

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ground that the district court had improperly applied a five-level distribution
enhancement under the Sentencing Guidelines. See United States v. Spriggs, 666
F.3d 1284, 1288–89 (11th Cir. 2012).
II
In reviewing a denial of a motion to vacate under § 2255, we exercise
plenary review over a district court’s legal conclusions and review factual findings
for clear error. See Stoufflet v. United States, 757 F.3d 1236, 1239 (11th Cir.
2014). “We review the district court’s denial of an evidentiary hearing in a § 2255
proceeding for abuse of discretion.” Winthrop-Redin v. United States, 767 F.3d
1210, 1215 (11th Cir. 2014). “A district court abuses its discretion if it applies an
incorrect legal standard, applies the law in an unreasonable or incorrect manner,
follows improper procedures in making a determination, or makes findings of fact
that are clearly erroneous.”

Id. (quoting Citizens for Police Accountability

Political Comm. v. Browning, 572 F.3d 1213, 1216–17 (11th Cir. 2009)).
III
Mr. Spriggs contends that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by
failing to “investigate, research, . . . and timely challenge,” through a motion to
suppress, the admissibility of the answers he gave to law enforcement and the
evidence of child pornography obtained from his computer. See Br. of Appellant
at 7–8.

Mr. Spriggs says that, had he been properly advised of his Fourth

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Amendment rights, he would have sought to suppress the evidence obtained by
Detective Broughton and then proceeded to trial instead of pleading guilty.
A defendant claiming ineffective assistance of counsel must show both
deficient performance and prejudice. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687
(1984). On the first prong, the defendant must demonstrate that trial “counsel’s
representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness,” which is an
inquiry we undertake with a “strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls
within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.” Id. at 688–89. To
establish prejudice, a defendant “must show that there is a reasonable probability
that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would
have been different.” Id. at 694.
But when “a defendant alleges his counsel’s deficient performance led him
to accept a guilty plea rather than go to trial, we do not ask whether, had he gone to
trial, the result of that trial ‘would have been different’ than the result of the plea
bargain.” Lee v. United States, 582 U.S. ___, ___, 2017 WL 2694701, at *6 (U.S.
Jun. 23, 2017). Instead, “when a defendant claims that his counsel’s deficient
performance deprived him of a trial by causing him to accept a plea, the defendant
can show prejudice by demonstrating a reasonable probability that, but for
counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on

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going to trial.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Hill v. Lockhart,
474 U.S. 52, 59 (1985)).
The crux of Mr. Spriggs’ Fourth Amendment argument is that Detective
Broughton lied about having a warrant to search his family’s mobile home and that
his “false claim of search authority,” Br. of Appellant at 8, invalidated any consent
the detectives had to search the mobile home and confiscate the computers inside.
The district court, adopting the magistrate’s report and recommendation, declined
to consider Mr. Spriggs’ Fourth Amendment argument altogether on the ground
that the only issue for habeas purposes was whether trial counsel was
constitutionally ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress.
Proceeding under this framework, the district court explained that any false
statements or deception by Detective Broughton was “irrelevant,” D.E. 17 at 9,
because counsel’s performance could not have been deficient when she
successfully pursued a litigation strategy that secured Mr. Spriggs a lower
sentence. The court also found no deficient performance in part because there was
no contention that trial counsel had “ignored or failed to act upon some expressed
directive to pursue Fourth Amendment relief.” Id. at 10. In fact, Mr. Spriggs did
allege that his attorney “refused” to listen to his complaint that his “rights were
violated,” D.E. 16 at 5, and failed to consider a Fourth Amendment challenge in
light of his version of what occurred.

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With respect to the prejudice prong, the district court correctly explained
that Mr. Spriggs’ ineffectiveness claim is “premised on the assumption that the
omitted motion to suppress would have been successful,” D.E. 17 at 10, but then
expressly declined to engage in the “speculative exercise” of determining whether
any such motion would have succeeded because “[e]ven if before pleading guilty
[Mr. Spriggs] had felt that he had a strong case for relief, he and his counsel still
would have faced a fork in the road: whether to pursue a motion to suppress (and
risk the disadvantages of losing it) or whether to leverage his cooperation for a
reduced sentence.” Id. at 11. The court, in other words, assumed without analysis
that a motion to suppress would have failed, and then decided that, as a result, it is
unlikely Mr. Spriggs would have gone to trial.1
The problem with this analysis is that a district court’s inquiry into trial
counsel’s performance in advising a client to plead guilty cannot be unmoored
from the merits of an alleged Fourth Amendment violation, particularly when, as
here, the defendant claims he is innocent of the offense he pled guilty to and when
a motion to suppress may have been outcome-determinative. The Supreme Court
has said that, as far as performance goes, “[n]o reasonable lawyer would forgo
1

Despite expressly declining to consider the merits of the alleged Fourth Amendment violation,
the district court noted that it is unclear whether the 11501 and 11491 lots are indeed “different
lots” or whether they “shar[ed] a common premise[ ],” D.E. 17 at 8–9, which appears to be a
reference to the good-faith exception in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. From this isolated
foray, however, we cannot conclude that the district court truly assessed the alleged Fourth
Amendment violation in deciding Mr. Spriggs’ ineffectiveness claim.
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competent litigation of meritorious, possibly decisive claims.”

Kimmelman v.

Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 382 n.7 (1986) (emphasis added).

And it recently

clarified that to establish prejudice when the “decision about going to trial turns on
[a defendant’s] prospects of success and those are affected by the attorney’s
error—for instance, where a defendant alleges that his lawyer should have but did
not seek to suppress [evidence]”—the defendant must show that “he would have
been better off going to trial,” a showing that unquestionably implicates (at least to
some degree) the merits of the alleged Fourth Amendment violation. Lee, 582 U.S.
at ___, 2017 WL 2694701, at *6. Consistent with Supreme Court precedent, we
too have said that, “[i]n cases like this one, where a [defendant] faults his lawyer
for failing to pursue a motion to suppress prior to entering a plea, both the deficient
performance and prejudice prongs of Strickland turn on the viability of the motion
to suppress.” Arvelo v. Sec’y, Florida Dep’t of Corr., 788 F.3d 1345, 1348 (11th
Cir. 2015).
IV
The district court here adopted a report and recommendation that treated the
alleged Fourth Amendment violation as completely “irrelevant” to the
ineffectiveness claim. See D.E. 17 at 9. The district court’s wholesale refusal to
consider Mr. Spriggs’ alleged Fourth Amendment violation cannot be squared with

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our precedent and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lee. We therefore
reverse and remand this case to the district court for further consideration. 2
REVERSED AND REMANDED.

2

As we recently held in United States v. Spivey, et al., No. 15-15023, 2017 WL 2782852, at *3–
4 (11th Cir. Jun. 28, 2017), not all forms of deception by law enforcement negate a defendant’s
consent to search. On remand, the district court will have an opportunity to consider what
impact, if any, Spivey has on Mr. Spriggs’ claim.
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