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A man who unknowingly pleaded guilty to a charge for which the statute of limitations had run has failed to secure habeas relief at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals after also failing to secure post-conviction relief in the state courts.
In 2015, Ray Crowell was charged with 13 felony counts related to child sex crimes. However, the statute of limitations had run on six of the counts. Crowell was unaware of that, and his appointed attorney failed to inform him or the prosecution.
The state offered Crowell a plea deal, causing “friction” between Crowell and his attorney. A week before the scheduled trial, Crowell moved to fire his attorney for lying to him about his family’s cooperation with the prosecution.
The court denied Crowell’s motion and reminded him to either plead or go to trial. Crowell said he would not take the plea deal.
But four days later, Crowell signed an agreement pleading guilty to one count of each of Class A felony child molesting, B felony sexual misconduct with a minor and Class C felony incest. The other counts were to be dismissed.
The Class B felony Crowell pleaded guilty to would have been barred by the statute of limitations, but he still did not know.
Pursuant to the agreement, Crowell was sentenced to a total of 24 years executed and six years suspended. If he earned all good time credit, he could be released after 12 years.
Crowell later sought post-conviction relief in state court, but his petition was denied and the Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed in January 2020.
The COA didn’t address in its opinion whether trial counsel’s performance was constitutionally deficient but instead focused on whether Crowell was prejudiced by counsel’s performance. The court ruled that Crowell hadn’t shown that he would have rejected the plea offer and gone to trial if he was aware of the statute of limitations defense.
Crowell then filed a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The U.S. District court for the Southern District of Indiana denied relief, finding the state appellate court had reasonably applied Strickland. The district court also denied a certificate of appealability, but the 7th Circuit granted the certificate and recruited appellate counsel.
On appeal, Crowell argued that he was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. But the 7th Circuit determined the decision of the state Court of Appeals was not unreasonable.
“The state court reasonably concluded that contemporaneous evidence did not support a finding that if Crowell had been properly advised, he would have rejected the plea agreement,” Senior Judge David Hamilton wrote.
“In Crowell’s view, the court should have considered the possibility that, if he had gone to trial, he would have received concurrent sentences, as well as the possibility that he would not have been convicted on all seven timely charges,” Hamilton wrote. “He offers no evidence, however, that these outcomes would have been any more likely than the sentences considered by the Indiana appellate court.
“He notes that Indiana appellate courts occasionally reduce sentences in some child sex abuse cases. That possibility does not rebut the finding of the post-conviction trial court, cited by the appellate court, that Crowell was unlikely to have received concurrent sentences given the ‘great length and severity of [his] course of abusive conduct,’” the judge continued. “More important, Crowell identifies no Supreme Court precedent establishing that the state appellate court committed a legal error ‘beyond any possibility for a fair-minded disagreement’ when it gauged Crowell’s likely decision by assuming he would have faced conviction and consecutive sentences on all timely counts.
“… For these reasons, the judgment of the district court denying Crowell’s petition for a write of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 is affirmed,” Hamilton concluded.
The case is Ray O. Crowell, Jr. v. Mark R. Sevier, Warden, 21-2416.
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