Lackawanna County District Attorney v. Coss - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Justice O'Connor

Mr. O'Connor: Now the second case is Lackawanna County District Attorney versus Coss, and it comes on writ of certiorari to United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and it has a resemblance to the case just announced.

This is the state analogue of the Daniel’s opinion which I just described.

In that case as I explained we delth with challenges to federal sentences enhanced by allegedly unconstitutional prior convictions.

In this Lackawanna case, we deal with challenges to state criminal sentences enhanced by allegedly unconstitutional prior state convictions.

In 1986 Mr. Coss was convicted in Pennsylvania State court of assault, vandalism, and criminal mischief.

He filed a petition for state postconviction relief alleging that those convictions were the product of ineffective assistance of counsel.

The Pennsylvania Courts never ruled on his petition and he served his full sentence on those offences.

In 1990, Coss was again convicted in State Court, this time of aggravated assault.

Taking under consideration his extensive criminal record of which his 1986 convictions are a small part, the State Court sentenced Coss to six to twelve years imprison.

Coss then filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C Section 2254 in Federal Court, claiming that his 1986 convictions were the product of ineffective assistance of counsel and that he was in custody in violation of a Constitution of the United States.

The petitioner, the Lackawanna County District Attorney and the Court, understood Coss to be arguing that his sentence for that 1990 crime was adversely affected by his earlier 1986 state convictions.

The District Court held that it had jurisdiction but it denied the petition finding that Coss had not been prejudiced by his 1986 counsel’s ineffectiveness.

The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed the District court had jurisdiction but remanded upon finding that but for his counsel’s ineffectiveness he would not have been convicted in 1986.

In an opinion filed with the Clerk of the Court today we reverse the judgment of the Third Circuit.

Coss does satisfy the in custody requirement for habeas petitioners because he is challenging the sentence is currently serving for his 1990 conviction.

We have not previously determined the extent to which a prior conviction used to enhance a subsequent State Court sentence maybe subject to challenge in an attack on the enhanced sentence.

We extend our holding in Daniel’s which was announced this morning to the Section 2254 context and for the reasons stated in that opinion, we hold once a state conviction is no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies when they were available or because he did so unsuccessfully, that conviction is conclusively valid.

If that conviction is then used to enhance a subsequence state sentence, the previous state conviction may not be collaterally attacked through a Secton 2254 petition directed at the enhanced sentence.

As in Daniel’s we recognized an exception to this general rule where the prior conviction was obtained for failure to appoint counsel.

Justice Scalia has joined all but parts 3B and 3C of the opinion; Justice Thomas has joined all but part 3B; Justice Souter has filed a dissenting opinion which Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsberg have joined; Justice Breyer has filed a dissenting opinion.