In re Edwin A. Towne, Jr.

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Petitioner Edwin Towne, Jr. appealed the dismissal of his tenth and eleventh petitions for post-conviction relief (PCR). In 1989, petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder. In his ninth petition, petitioner argued the 1986 traffic stop that precipitated his arrest for murder, he had ineffective assistance of counsel during both his trial and direct appeal. In the tenth and eleventh petitions, petitioner raised arguments similar to those previously raised in petitions one through nine. In March 2013, the PCR court granted the State’s motion to dismiss. With respect to petitioner’s claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, the court concluded on the basis of the reasoning in Martinez v. Ryan, 556 U.S. 1 (2012) and Maples v. Thomas, 565 U.S. 266 (2012), that ineffectiveness of petitioner’s lawyer in his first PCR proceeding could overcome the procedural bars of successiveness and abuse of the writ to enable the court to consider the merits of petitioner’s PCR claims on the basis of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. However, the court concluded that petitioner had failed to establish that the first PCR court had erred in determining that his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim was without merit. In September 2015, the court dismissed the eleventh petition on the basis that his claims had either already been raised and addressed on the merits in previous petitions, or they could have been raised in previous petitions. Furthermore, the court noted that “there is nothing to suggest that if trial counsel had done what [petitioner] now thinks he should have done, the result at his trial or sentencing would have been different.” The Vermont Supreme Court found that petitioner’s claims that were not addressed on the merits in earlier petitions were an abuse of the writ under any standard of review. “For that reason, our resolution of this case does not turn on whether we review the trial court’s ruling as to newly raised claims for abuse of discretion or without deference. We accordingly decline to decide at this juncture which standard governs our review of the trial court’s dismissal of claims raised in a second or subsequent PCR petition on account of abuse of the writ.” Because his various claims are either successive, an abuse of the writ, or outside the scope of the PCR statute, the Supreme Court affirmed their dismissal. View "In re Edwin A. Towne, Jr." on Justia Law