Nguyen v. Attorney General — habeas corpus — affirmance — Greenberg

The Third Circuit today affirmed the denial of habeas corpus relief in a case where the prisoner argued his trial counsel was ineffective for raising a speedy-trial issue only in a letter-brief footnote. The court noted its intimate familiarity with the (New Jersey) state court’s procedures and its certainty that those courts would view the footnote as sufficient to preserve the legal issue, and accordingly it held that counsel’s performance was not deficient. The court also rejected the prisoner’s strained argument that the state courts had found as fact that counsel had not raised the speedy-trial issue.

The opinion’s holding and its core reasoning both seem sound, but I wonder about some of the language. The opinion says at pages 3 and 20 that it reviewed the ineffective-assistance claim through a “doubly deferential” lens. In habeas cases, this double deference refers to the interplay of (1) the Strickland ineffective-assistance standard with (2) the 28 USC 2254(d) limitation on relief for claims adjudicated on the merits in state court. But here the state court denied the claim on prejudice grounds only (see op. p. 22, which states “District Court took no position” but presumably means ‘state court took no position,’ compare p.15), while the Third Circuit denied relief on deficient-performance grounds only, so the 2254(d) limitation on relief did not apply. So the “doubly deferential” language seems out of place here and I hope it does not create confusion in future cases.

Joining Greenberg were Ambro and Jordan; Ambro also concurred separately. Arguing counsel were Jonathan Edelstein of Edelstein & Grossman for the prisoner and James McConnell for the state.