U.S. v. Njos

Ct. of Appeals granted defendant’s motion to discharge his appointed appellate counsel under circumstances, where: (1) defendant was subject to revocation of his supervised release based upon his commission of series of state-court offenses that resulted in 20-and 25-year concurrent sentences; (2) Dist. Ct. thereafter revoked defendant’s supervised release and sentenced him to 82-month term of incarceration based upon violation of his supervised release; (3) appointed appellate counsel held belief that defendant had only one meritorious issue on appeal regarding whether Dist. Ct. could impose said sentence under circumstances where Dist. Ct. imposed sentence via written order rather than face-to-face hearing with defendant’s personal presence; (4) Ct. of Appeals initially denied defendant’s motion to dismiss appointed counsel, but granted defendant ability to file supplemental brief raising only issues regarding merits of sentence; and (5) defendant made clear to Ct. of Appeals that he had no interest in challenging legality of imposing instant sentence in writing. Ct. of Appeals then sua sponte reconsidered defendant’s motion to dismiss appointed counsel and granted said motion based on existence of instant conflict between appointed counsel and defendant regarding what issues to present on appeal. As such, Ct. of Appeals accepted defendant’s decision not to argue about his right to be present at sentencing hearing, and that defendant had waived said issue in Ct. of Appeals. Ct. further rejected defendant’s arguments that: (1) Dist. Ct. could impose sentence only between 33 and 41 months; and (2) instant sentence was substantively unreasonable.