State v. Cosme

Summary

The Delaware Superior Court denied Michael A. Cosme’s motion for postconviction relief arising from his guilty plea to possession of a firearm by a person prohibited. The court rejected claims of a coerced plea, ineffective assistance of counsel, denial of speedy-trial and confrontation rights, and improper sentencing enhancement. The court also granted appointed counsel’s motion to withdraw.

Holdings

1. Cosme's motion was timely and his first postconviction motion, so the time-limit and successive-motion bars in Rule 61(i)(1) and (2) did not apply. Claims not raised before judgment could be procedurally defaulted under Rule 61(i)(3), but the court addressed the challenged claims on their merits; the ineffective-assistance claim was not barred because it could not have been raised earlier.
2. Cosme failed to establish that his guilty plea was coerced or involuntary. His sworn plea-form answers and plea-colloquy statements that he was pleading freely and voluntarily and had not been threatened were presumed truthful and were not overcome by clear and convincing evidence.
3. Cosme's ineffective-assistance claim failed because it was conclusory and unsupported. He did not identify the evidence allegedly subject to suppression, the legal basis for suppression, or concrete prejudice resulting from counsel's conduct.
4. Cosme's guilty plea waived challenges to alleged errors occurring before the plea, including the asserted inability to confront witnesses at the preliminary hearing. In addition, alleged preliminary-hearing errors had no bearing on the subsequent conviction.
5. Cosme's enhanced sentence was lawful. The 2011 PWID conviction was classified as a violent felony under the applicable law, and the two robbery convictions independently qualified as two violent felonies sufficient to support the ten-year minimum mandatory sentence for PFBPP.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Cosme's postconviction claims were barred under Superior Court Criminal Rule 61(i).
2. Whether Cosme established that his guilty plea was coerced or involuntary.
3. Whether Cosme established ineffective assistance of counsel based on alleged suppression-related failures.
4. Whether Cosme's guilty plea waived claims concerning alleged speedy-trial, confrontation, or preliminary-hearing errors.
5. Whether Cosme's sentence was unlawfully enhanced because one or more predicate convictions allegedly did not qualify as violent felonies.

Disposition

other