The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant the right to effective assistance of counsel.
The justices will take a look at a federal law that prevents a defendant from filing a second or successive habeas corpus application in most situations.
A habeas application is a request for a court to review a person’s detention or imprisonment. It can be used to contest a criminal conviction.
In the extensively litigated case, the justices agreed to review rules preventing “second or successive habeas” petitions and to review whether they cover such filings when they are made after a district court has turned down an initial application but before an appellate court has gotten involved in the case.
Federal courts of appeals disagree on whether the rules apply in this situation.
Rivers asked to amend his habeas application while a ruling on it was under appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declined to grant the request.
In 2008, Rivers was given temporary custody of his 9-year-old daughter by a Texas judge. The judge also gave Rivers exclusive use of the family residence, directed his former wife to pay child support, and turned down her motion for alimony. Rivers said his ex-spouse had “punished him” by “not letting him see” his stepdaughter, age 12, whom he had raised as his own, according to the petition.
In 2009, his former wife drove the children to a police station while Rivers was outside the home for work. Both young girls said Rivers had sexually abused them. Police carried out a search of the home, took the family laptop computer, and began a forensic investigation that identified “two files of interest” that “appeared to be child pornography.”
Rivers, who did not have a criminal record, was indicted for sexual abuse and possession of child pornography. He entered not guilty pleas.
The girls claimed that there had been more than 200 instances of abuse, although the claims were not corroborated by witnesses or physical evidence, according to the petition.
The jury found Rivers guilty on all charges but rejected the state’s request for a 169-year sentence, recommending 42 years instead. The judge imposed a sentence of 38 years, which was three years more than the minimum.
The Texas Court of Appeals upheld the convictions.
In 2013, Rivers started asking his counsel for his client file so he could represent himself but said that after a two-year effort, his lawyer had never responded. He filed a complaint against his attorney with the Texas State Bar, according to the petition.
In 2016, Rivers argued that his trial lawyer did not “perform an objectively reasonable investigation,” did not “verify the ages of the persons” in the alleged pornography, and was “inebriated” during the trial.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals returned the case to the trial court for more fact-finding. The trial lawyer denied being drunk and said Rivers “admitted [that] … he engaged in sexual acts with the victims.”
The trial court affirmed the convictions, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did the same.
Rivers appealed to a federal court in Texas, repeating his allegations of ineffective assistance by counsel. The court denied his request, and Rivers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which turned down the appeal.
While the appeal was pending, Rivers received the computer files, along with a state investigators’ report indicating in block capital letters that an image at issue was “NOT CHILD PORN,” the petition stated.
The Fifth Circuit turned down Rivers’s motion to add the new evidence to the record but allowed him to proceed with his ineffective assistance claim.
“The restrictions on ‘second or successive’ federal habeas petitions … apply to Rivers’ second petition because it challenged the same six-count judgment of conviction as his initial petition,” Texas stated.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Rivers’s attorney, Peter Bruland of Sidley Austin in Washington, and the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but no replies were received by publication time.
If the Supreme Court decides to schedule oral argument for early 2025, it would probably issue its judgment in the case by June 2025.
