Abraham Moses Fisch v. United States

Abraham Fisch’s case raises a pressing issue for this court’s consideration: Has the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power when it denied Fisch’s Certificate of Appealability (COA) without discussion or explanation. Specifically, did the Fifth Circuit depart so far from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings when it failed to evaluate the facts and applicable law on his claim that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to raise the affirmative defense of 18 U.S.C. 1515(c) and for knowingly and intentionally failing to investigate and cross-examine a key government witness with available impeachment evidence.