U.S. v. Lewisbey

In prosecution on various firearm charges, defendant failed to establish that his trial counsel labored under actual conflict of interest, even though trial counsel was subject to two criminal investigations that gave him potential incentive to curry favor with govt. Defendant waived any conflict arising out of first investigation that involved trial counsel’s contempt proceeding, where defendant expressly waived any conflict and consented to counsel’s continued representation, after being questioned about said conflict by Dist. Ct. Moreover, defendant failed to establish any conflict of interest arising out of second, unrelated criminal investigation against trial counsel, where: (1) said investigation did not come to light until after defendant’s conviction and sentence; and (2) trial counsel immediately withdrew from representing defendant at time investigation came to light, which allowed defendant to obtain substitute counsel, who represented defendant on his appeal. Also, Dist. Ct. did not err in admitting certain inculpatory text messages from defendant’s cell-phones and posts from his Facebook page, where said text messages were comprised of his own statements, which would not violate hearsay rule. Furthermore, text messages defendant received from others were properly admitted for purpose of giving context to defendant’s own text messages.