Nasir Salaam v. James Slaughter, et al.

Summary

The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey considers Nasir Salaam’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The petition challenges the admission of a custodial statement, the effectiveness and conflicts of trial counsel, jury instructions, and the constitutionality of petitioner’s sentence. The court denies the petition, concluding that the claims lack merit under the applicable federal habeas standards.

Holdings

1. The Miranda claim was denied on the merits because Salaam was represented by counsel, was advised of his rights, and voluntarily waived them before giving the statement.
2. The ineffective-assistance claims concerning counsel's advice and conduct in arranging Salaam's April 20, 2007 statement were denied because the Sixth Amendment right to counsel had not attached before formal criminal proceedings began.
3. Even assuming the Sixth Amendment applied, Salaam failed to show deficient performance and prejudice under Strickland.
4. The challenges to the reasonable-doubt, robbery, and attempted-robbery instructions failed because, viewed as a whole, the instructions did not infect the trial with constitutional error.
5. Salaam's challenge to the greater severity of his sentence compared with his codefendants did not present a cognizable federal habeas claim and lacked constitutional merit.
6. Salaam's forty-year aggregate sentence did not violate the Eighth Amendment because it was not a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for a juvenile, and state law allowed sentence review after twenty years.

Questions Presented

1. Whether admission of Salaam's April 2007 custodial statement violated Miranda and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
2. Whether trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective by advising Salaam to give the statement, relying on advice from a codefendant's attorney, failing to investigate, failing to consult Salaam's mother, or misrepresenting the existence of a plea or sentencing agreement.
3. Whether the jury instructions on reasonable doubt, the separate robbery counts, and attempted robbery violated due process.
4. Whether Salaam's aggregate forty-year sentence was grossly disproportionate to his codefendants' sentences in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
5. Whether the sentence violated the Eighth Amendment under Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana because Salaam was a juvenile at the time of the offense.

Disposition

denied