USA v. Flores

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
Judge William J. Martínez
Civil Action No. 25-cv-00179-WJM
Criminal Action No. 19-cr-00522-WJM-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff/Respondent,
v.
1. JOEL FLORES,
Defendant/Movant.
ORDER DENYING HABEAS PETITION
Before the Court is Defendant-Movant Joel Flores’s amended pro se 28 U.S.C.
§ 2225 motion (“Motion”). (ECF Nos. 291, 295.) The Motion is fully briefed. (ECF Nos.
304, 305.) For the following reasons, the Motion is denied.
I. 	BACKGROUND
In December 2019, Flores was indicted for (1) being a felon in possession of a
firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), (2) possessing with intent to distribute
methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and (3) possessing a firearm in
furtherance of a drug trafficking crime in violation of § 924(c)(1)(A)(i). (ECF Nos. 1, 56.)
In June 2021, a jury convicted him as charged. (ECF Nos. 220, 222.) The Court
sentenced Flores to concurrent 60-month terms of imprisonment on Counts I and 2 and
a consecutive 60-month term of imprisonment on Count 3. (ECF No. 262.) He
appealed only his Count 3 conviction and its mandatory five-year sentence of
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imprisonment on sufficiency of the evidence grounds. The Tenth Circuit affirmed.
United States v. Flores, 2023 WL 5273770, at *3 (10th Cir. Aug. 16, 2023).
Flores timely filed a habeas motion in January 2025. (ECF No. 291.) That
motion, however, cursorily alleged ineffective assistance of counsel without any factual
averment or supporting argument. (Id.) Flores himself described it as “a place-holder”
motion. (Id. at 8.) At the Court’s direction (ECF No. 292), Flores filed the amended
Motion—outside of the filing deadline1—wherein he raises a myriad of claims, most of
which appear to complain of ineffective assistance of counsel. (ECF No. 295.) The
Government’s response construes the Motion similarly, summarizing Flores’s
allegations of “ineffective assistance of counsel in four respects: (A) COVID restrictions
impaired his counsel’s ability to communicate with him; (B) counsel allegedly rejected
plea offers without discussing them with Flores; (C) counsel was ineffective due to
personal conflicts with the court; and (D) counsel failed to move for judgment of
acquittal.” (ECF No. 304 at 7–8.)
II. 	LEGAL STANDARD
Ineffective assistance of counsel claims involve two inquiries: Whether “(1)
counsel’s performance was objectively unreasonable and (2) there was a reasonable
probability that but for counsel’s deficient performance, the result of the proceeding
1 The Court shares the Government’s concerns regarding the propriety of Flores’s “place
holder” motion. See United States v. Woods, 2016 WL 3743197, at *1 (D. Kan. July 13, 2016)
(explaining that a place holder motion is “filed to satisfy the filing deadline with the intent to file a
substantive motion after the limitations period has expired); see also United States v. Fisher, 38
F.3d 1144, 1147 (10th Cir. 1994) (affirming denial of section 2255 petition where allegations
relating to ineffective assistance claims were conclusory and petitioner provided no supporting
factual averments). But the Court elects to resolve the Motion on the merits—to the extent the
original habeas motion asserted an ineffective assistance of counsel claim—since the Court
directed Flores to amend the motion “because it was not submitted on the court-approved form
and does not provide any supporting factual allegations.” (ECF No. 292 at 1.)
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would have been different.” Hancock v. Trammell, 798 F.3d 1002, 1023 (10th Cir.
2015) (citing Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984)). “Reviewing courts
may address the two parts of the test in any order, and failure to satisfy either part
would preclude relief.” Id.
III. 	ANALYSIS
Flores contends that his “criminal prosecution was conducted during the hype of
the COVID-19 pandemic,” which caused “his defense [to be] faced with a breadth of
unprecedented restrictions, as well as outright denials of due process protections under
the Constitution.” (ECF No. 295 at 8.) He says “[t]hese impediments moved beyond a
mere inconvenience and systematically deprived [him] of the substantive legal counsel
needed to ensure a fair trial.” (Id.) He then lists seven categories of rights, “[a]mong
others,” that he believes were allegedly violated: “(1) the right to effective and adequate
assistance of counsel; (2) the right to conflict-free representation; (3) the right to confer
privately with counsel; (4) the right to participate in ones [sic] own defense; (5) the right
to speedy trial; (6) the right to public trial; and (7) the right to a fair and impartial trial.”
(Id.)
Initially, the Court observes that the lion’s share of Flores’s contentions raise
direct appeal challenges to the Court’s rulings. Take categories 5 through 7, for
example. None of these contentions are based on the theory that Flores’s defense
counsel, Daniel Sears, performed deficiently, such that his right to effective counsel was
violated. The contentions are instead based on the theory that the Court deprived
Flores of a fair trial by failing to bring him to trial in a timely, public, and fair manner.
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The same is true with respect to Flores’s claim that he was denied the right to
privately confer with Sears as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic while he was
detained pretrial at Clear Creek County Jail. He argues that he “did not receive a single
in-person attorney-client communication his entire legal proceeding” because of the
health precautions taken by the jail facility. (Id. at 12.) But Flores does not aver that
this was somehow Sears’s fault. He instead attributes this error to the Court:
[T]he trial court failed to consider the substantial
infringement, and manifest prejudice, upon Flores’s
fundamental right to participate in his own defense. The fact
is, Counselor Sears was repeatedly denied, over and over
again by the Court any chance to comprehensively gather
critical information needed to prepare Flores’s defense,
among many other things, by not being afforded the
opportunity to have Flores participate in his defense.
(Id.)2
Flores likewise faults the Court for his alleged “denial of right to conflict-free
representation.” (Id. at 11.) Flores explains that he was denied this right as a result of
“a personal history of bad-blood between” the undersigned and Sears. (Id.) He
elaborates that Sears believed that the undersigned ruled against Flores on multiple
occasions due to these “personal problems,” including by denying Sears’s multiple
motions to withdraw. (Id.) Flores submits that this “substantial conflict-of-interest”
“demanded a change of judgeship to ensure fair and impartial legal proceedings.” (Id.)
2 Flores equivocates at times in the Motion, at one point arguing that “Sears’s performance with
respect to his communications and right to confer privately with [him] was deficient as it did not
meet an objective standard of reasonableness under the Strickland test.” (ECF No. 295 at 4.)
But this argument is inconsistent with the balance of Flores’s argument on this point, which does
not focus on Sears’s conduct. It is also conclusory in that it does not articulate what Sears did
wrong. The Court does not consider these conclusory arguments.
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The problem with these arguments, however, is that they all boil down to the
proposition that the Court failed to do one thing or another: Whether by failing to bring
Flores to trial within the speedy trial deadline; failing to fashion a way for Sears to
privately confer with him during the pandemic; failing to recuse itself from the case
(despite no motion being filed for it to do so); or denying Sears’s motions to withdraw.
Critically, none of these arguments focus on Sears’s conduct or lack thereof.
A habeas action is not the proper vehicle through which to challenge these kinds
of perceived trial court errors. See United States v. McGaughy, 670 F.3d 1149, 1159
(10th Cir. 2012) (“When a defendant fails to raise an issue on direct appeal, he is barred
‘from raising it in a § 2255 motion ‘unless he can show cause excusing his procedural
default and actual prejudice resulting from the errors of which he complains, or can
show that a fundamental miscarriage of justice will occur if his claim is not addressed.’”)
(citations omitted); see also Lopez v. Hatch, 2007 WL 9733681, at *2 (D.N.M. July 31,
2007) (“Habeas corpus is not a substitute for an appeal and matters involving trial errors
may not be reviewed collaterally.”) (citation omitted); Martley v. Douglas, 463 F. Supp.
4, 8 (W.D. Okla. 1977) (“[M]ere trial errors are not reviewable by way of federal habeas
corpus.”). Hence, the Court rejects Flores’s Motion to the extent it alleges ineffective
assistance of counsel based on the Court’s—not Sears’s—alleged errors.3
That leaves what the Court (and the Government) perceives to be two remaining
ineffective assistance of counsel claims: Sears’s alleged failures to (1) communicate or
3 This conclusion extends to Flores’s other accusations scattered throughout the Motion,
including that the Court erred by referring to the trial as a “guinea-pig trial,” proceeding with the
trial despite learning “that a juror was sleeping during testimony,” or “disregard[ing] the federal
judiciary’s own guidance on COVID-19.” (ECF No. 295 at 7.) Those are not appropriate
habeas corpus arguments.
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advise Flores of the Government’s plea offers and (2) move for judgment of acquittal.
(ECF No. 295 at 2.) Both claims necessarily fail.
The Court first addresses Sears’s alleged failure to communicate the
Government’s plea offers to Flores. Specifically, Flores contends that the Government
twice offered him a plea deal pursuant to which he would have pleaded guilty to Count 3
and served the five-year mandatory minimum under § 924(c) in exchange for dismissal
of the other two Counts. (ECF No. 66 at 4.) Had he known about these offers, Flores
submits, he would have accepted them, especially in light of the fact that he was
ultimately convicted of all three charges and sentenced to ten years in prison. (ECF No.
295.)
“The failure to inform a defendant of a favorable plea agreement (deficient
performance) is a viable ineffective assistance of counsel claim when a defendant can
prove that but for counsel’s deficient performance, he would have accepted the plea
(prejudice).” United States v. Castro, 365 F. App’x 966, 967–68 (10th Cir. 2010) (citing
Williams v. Jones, 571 F.3d 1086, 1090 n.3 & 4 (10th Cir. 2009)). The Court initially set
an evidentiary hearing on this issue to determine whether Sears indeed failed to inform
Flores of a favorable plea agreement. (ECF No. 306.) About a month later, however,
the parties stipulated that, “[o]ver the course of Mr. Flores’s prosecution, the
government made formal plea offers on April 9, 2020; May 27, 2020; October 30, 2020;
and May 4, 2021.” (ECF No. 310 at 1.) The parties further stipulated that Sears kept
“[c]ontemporanous, written records” “reflect[ing] that Mr. Flores, being fully advised
regarding each potential plea deal, rejected all four plea offers.” (Id.) Hence, the
parties have definitively disabused the Court of any doubt that Sears failed to inform
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Flores of those offers. Consequently, the Court rejects Flores’s ineffective assistance of
counsel claim based on Sears’s alleged failure to inform him of the Government’s plea
offers, given that the parties’ stipulation establishes precisely the contrary.
Flores’s claim that Sears rendered deficient performance by failing to move “for a
judgment of acquittal at the end of the Government’s presentation of evidence” fares no
better. (ECF No. 295 at 5.) This claim collapses by its own terms because Sears did in
fact so move at the close of the Government’s evidence. Indeed, Sears filed an eight-
page written motion to that effect (which the Court denied). (ECF No. 209.)
To the extent Flores insists Sears’s motion was nonetheless flawed because it
failed to specifically argue that the Government’s evidence hinged merely on
circumstantial evidence, the Court disagrees. “[E]vidence supporting guilt may be
entirely circumstantial,” and “[c]ircumstantial evidence may be accorded the same
weight as direct evidence.” United States v. Henry, 468 F.2d 892, 894 (10th Cir. 1972).
Hence, it is clearly not deficient performance for an attorney not to move for acquittal on
the specific ground that the Government’s evidence focuses solely on circumstantial
evidence. If anything, Sears dutifully stated the applicable law in the following sentence
of his motion: “In reviewing whether to grant a defense motion for judgment of acquittal,
the court must determine whether taking the evidence, both direct and circumstantial,
together with reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, in the light most favorable to
the government, a reasonable jury could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt.” (Id. at 7 (emphasis added).) Thus, the Court does not discern ineffective
assistance of counsel on this ground either.
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Finally, the Court rejects Flores’s cumulative error argument. (ECF No. 295 at
13.) That legal theory presupposes a finding of multiple errors. But the Court has not
identified any errors based on Flores’s arguments. The cumulative error doctrine
therefore has no application here. See Hooks v. Workman, 689 F.3d 1148, 1195 (10th
Cir. 2012) (“[A]s the term ‘cumulative’ suggests, cumulative-error analysis applies where
there are two or more actual errors. It does not apply . . . to the cumulative effect of
non-errors.”) (citation omitted).
IV. 	CONCLUSION
For these reasons, the Court Orders as follows:
1. 	The Motion is DENIED (ECF Nos. 291, 295.)
2. 	Judgment shall enter in favor of Plaintiff-Respondent and against
Defendant-Movant;
3. 	Each party shall bear their own court costs; and
4. 	The Clerk shall terminate this action.
Dated this 19 th day of November, 2025.
BY THE COURT:
______________________
William J. Martínez
Senior United States District Judge
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