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Joseph Lombardo v. United States

Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, No. 15-2860 · judgment June 20, 2017

Certiorari denied · February 20, 2018
Pre-decision estimate: 1% cert probability

Before the decision, well below the 4.1% base rate, with no standout signals pointing toward a grant.

Questions presented

  1. Can egregious attorney misconduct other than abandonment ever constitute an “extraordinary circumstance” under the equitable-tolling doctrine?

  2. Joseph Lombardo’s attorney did not research the deadline for filing Lombardo’s petition for postconviction relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Instead, he delegated that important and complex task to an unsupervised non-lawyer, and relied uncritically on that non-lawyer’s flawed analysis. As a result, the attorney untimely filed Lombardo’s petition, denying Lombardo his first and likely last chance to raise an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. Did the Seventh Circuit err in holding that such misconduct can never constitute an “extraordinary circumstance” for equitable-tolling purposes?

Counsel of record

For petitioner
Nicole C. Henning
Jones Day

For respondent
Noel John Francisco
Jones Day

Case

Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference

Linked docket
17A467

Proceedings

  1. Feb 20 2018
    Petition DENIED.
  2. Jan 31 2018
    DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 2/16/2018.
  3. Jan 24 2018
    Waiver of right of respondent United States to respond filed.
  4. Jan 12 2018
    Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due February 20, 2018)
  5. Oct 27 2017
    Application (17A467) granted by Justice Kagan extending the time to file until January 19, 2018.
  6. Oct 25 2017
    Application (17A467) to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari from December 5, 2017 to January 19, 2018, submitted to Justice Kagan.