Workman v. Superintendent — habeas corpus — reversal — Fuentes

Well, something seems not quite right here, but here goes. Back in September, the Court issued a panel opinion, link here, which I summarized as follows:

The Third Circuit today ruled in favor of a habeas corpus petitioner, holding that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing almost entirely to mount a defense and that post-conviction counsel’s ineffectiveness excused default of that issue under Martinez v. Ryan. Notably, the court held that the petitioner did not need to prove prejudice from his counsel’s error because, under United States v. Cronic, prejudice was presumed due to counsel’s near-total failure to contest the prosecution’s case.

[Disclosure: I provided minor consulting assistance to counsel for the petitioner.]

Joining Fuentes were Ambro and Restrepo. Arguing counsel were Marshall Dayan of the WDPA defender for the petitioner and Catherine Kiefer of the Philadelphia DA’s office for the Commonwealth.

Then last month the panel granted the Commonwealth’s petition for panel rehearing, vacated its original opinion, and promised a new one. The Commonwealth’s rehearing petition had argued that applying Cronic here was error but (remarkably) that the court could more soundly reach the same result by finding that counsel was ineffective under the usual deficient-performance-and-prejudice Strickland test.

But then today, the panel reissued the opinion with, as best I can tell, no substantive changes.  The new opinion corrects a few missing line-spaces between paragraphs (while leaving a typo in a heading, “Asssistance,”) but still applies Cronic.

I’m not sure how to interpret this, to be honest, but stay tuned.

[UPDATE: my original post linked to the old opinion instead of the new one, sorry to add to the confusion.]

[UPDATE2: the panel granted rehearing again.]

[UPDATE3: here’s the new opinion.]

Alpizar-Fallas v. Favero–civil — reversal — Rendell

The Third Circuit today reversed a district court’s dismissal of a deception claim brought under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act.

Joining Rendell were Jordan and Vanaskie. Arguing counsel were Charles Gormally of Brach Eichler for the appellant and Kymberly Kochis of NY for the appellee.