Gayle: OSCAR HILLS IV

Oscar Hills IV is a person that some believe was unjustly convicted of the crime of fraud in Louisiana. Hills antagonist is apparently an Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and (Explosives) ATFE [I always thought it was just ATF] agent that was driven to investigate Hills case.

I originally posted Hills story because someone went to the trouble to send it to me. In using my main investigative tool (i.e. Google) I have come up with nearly zilch about Oscar Hills IV.

Recently someone again has sent some Hills information having to do with an effort to use the Appellate Court to overturn or vacate his conviction. AGAIN the Google Search Engine is sparse to non-existent on information on Oscar Hills IV.

If anyone can dig up some information about Oscar Hills IV send it to john.houk@gmail.com. In the mean time here is the latest information sent to me via my old SlantRight.com archive site email of john@slantright.com.

JRH 6/29/12

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OSCAR HILLS IV

Sent by TaWana Gayle

6/28/2012 7:59 PM

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 12-30071

USDC No. 3:11-CV-352

USDC No. 3:09-CR-46-1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee v. OSCAR HILLS, IV, Defendant-Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana

O R D E R:

Oscar Hills, IV, federal prisoner # 05251-095, seeks a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion challenging his convictions for wire fraud. He has also filed an appeal from the district court’s denial of his motion for release on bond pending appeal, and he moves for leave to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) on appeal, for expedited consideration of his IFP motion and his appeal from the district court’s denial of bond, for release on bond pending appeal, and to supplement his COA motion. To the extent that Hills requests a COA with respect to the denial of his Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) motion, this court lacks jurisdiction to consider those claims because he did not separately appeal the denial of that No. 12-30071 motion. FED. R. CIV. P. 4(a)(4)(B)(ii).

In order to obtain a COA, the movant must make “a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). A prisoner “satisfies this standard by demonstrating that jurists of reason could disagree with the district court’s resolution of his constitutional claims or that jurists could conclude the issues presented are adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.” Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 327 (2003).

Hills asserts that the district court did not address his claim that the trial court’s failure to consider his pretrial request for substitute appointed counsel was a structural error that resulted in the violation of his due process rights and his right to effective representation by counsel. He also argues that his counsel was ineffective because he suppressed evidence and coerced his guilty plea. Hills has not shown that reasonable jurists could debate the district court’s denial of these claims or that jurists could conclude that the issues deserve encouragement to proceed further. See id. Any remaining claims of ineffective assistance of counsel that Hills raised in the district court have been abandoned.

See Hughes v. Johnson, 191 F.3d 607, 613 (5th Cir. 1999).

Hills also argues that the district court failed to consider his claim that he was denied counsel at a critical stage of his criminal proceedings, namely the hearing held to consider his motion to withdraw his guilty plea, and that the denial of counsel constituted a structural error. He states that he was forced to proceed pro se at his plea withdrawal hearing and that his pro se representation prevented him for presenting relevant issues to the trial court.

Hills did not raise these claims in his original § 2255 motion, but he did raise them in later filings during his § 2255 proceedings. Accordingly, a COA is ² No. 12-30071 granted in part as to the preliminary issue whether these claims were properly raised before the district court.

To the extent that the claims were properly raised before the district court, Hills has, for the following reasons, demonstrated that they deserve encouragement to proceed further. See Miller-El, 537 U.S. at 327. This court has not yet held but has assumed that a plea withdrawal hearing is a critical stage of a criminal proceeding requiring the assistance of counsel. See United States v. Robles,  445 F. App’x 771, 778 (5th Cir. 2011).

If a plea withdrawal hearing is a critical stage of the proceeding, it is debatable whether, if Hills requested appointed counsel for the plea withdrawal hearing, the trial court erred in failing to appoint counsel, or whether, if Hills indicated his intent to proceed pro se at the hearing, the trial court erred in failing to warn him of the dangers of proceeding pro se. See United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648-59 (1984); Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 802, 813-18 (1975); United States v. Cano, 519 F.3d 512, 516 (5th Cir. 2008). Accordingly, a COA is also granted in part with respect to whether Hills’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated when the trial court did not address his request for appointed counsel in connection with the plea withdrawal hearing and when the trial court allowed Hills to proceed pro se at the hearing without first ensuring that his decision to proceed pro se was knowingly and intelligently made.

Hills’s motion to proceed IFP is granted. His remaining motions are denied.

COA GRANTED IN PART; COA DENIED IN PART; IFP MOTION GRANTED; ALL OTHER MOTIONS DENIED.

/s/ Leslie H. Southwick

LESLIE H. SOUTHWICK

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT JUDGE ³

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SlantRight Note: TaWana Gayle sent this information without comment. Since I had to format it for posting I am guessing this was from a converted PDF file or an OCR scanned document. I found some footnotes however I found no footnoted material. TaWana if you see these notes perhaps you can send a summary of Oscar Hills’ legal battles so that I can post for interested readers. For that matter, could anyone send some information on Oscar Hills’ legal issues from start to the present?

Send to: john.houk@gmail.com

Free Speech Comes to Dearbornistan

John R. Houk

© June 1, 2011

Dearborn, MI was once a powerhouse of automobile and machine building plants in America. I know we call Detroit the Motorcity but a lot of the workers either worked in Detroit suburbs or lived in Detroit suburbs. Auto magnate Henry Ford brought car mass production to Dearborn. Indeed Dearborn is the city Henry Ford died in.

Dearborn is quickly becoming known as a place of growing radical Islamic population. Hence many bloggers including myself have referred to the city as Dearbornistan rather than Dearborn. The Muslim population for Dearborn is immense as this pro-Dearbornistan Muslim article does show.

Recently a Christian from Sudan – George Saieg – was arrested for distributing Christian tracks on the public sidewalks of Dearborn. He sued Dearborn for violating his Free Speech Rights. Saieg lost the suit in Federal Court. The Good News though is this: Saieg won a 2-1 split decision from the Sixth Appellate Court.

Finally, Stealth Jihad via creeping Sharia Law has taken a hit in the Federal Judicial System. The corrupt City Hall and Chief of Police of Dearborn have been validating a nose-thumbing at the U.S. Constitution First Amendment guaranteeing religious freedom and freedom of speech for some time to allow the intolerance of Sharia Law to be practiced.

You can watch an example of the Dearborn Storm Troopers violating the First Amendment HERE.

ACT for America sent a copy of an Andrew Bostom article writing about Saieg’s judicial victory in Appellate Court.

JRH 6/1/11

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Victory over sharia in Dearborn, MI

Sent by ACT for America

Sent: 5/31/2011 1:19 PM

Andrew Bostom, one of the featured speakers at our upcoming national conference, posted some great news over the weekend (see below).

Thanks to the efforts of our friends at the Thomas More Law Center, a judge ruled the free speech rights of a Christian evangelist trumped the efforts of Dearborn, Michigan to, in effect, impose sharia law’s suppression of free speech.

Note especially the highlighted portion below regarding attitudes among Detroit-area Muslims regarding the imposition of sharia law.

Time is running out to register for our June 22 – 24 National Conference and Legislative Briefing. The conference is now over 95% sold out. Visit here to register today!

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First Amendment Trumps Sharia in Dearborn

By Andrew Bostom

May 29th, 2011 by Andrew Bostom

Andrew Bostom: Uncreated, Uncreative Words

A seminal, if ominous report released May 17, 2011 by the Center for Security Policy described fifty appellate court cases from 23 states which involve conflicts between Islamic law—Sharia—and American state law. Nothwithstanding the delusive mindslaughter on display across America’s political spectrum which denies Sharia encroachment in the US, the CSP analysis revealed that,

Sharia has been applied or formally recognized in state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy.

But the grim, seemingly inexorable, progressive acceptance of Sharia-based mores in the US—despite this totalitarian religio-political “law” being antithetical to American law—was at least temporarily reversed late last week, in of all places, Dearborn, Michigan. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2:1 on Thursday May 26, 2011 (in GEORGE SAIEG, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF DEARBORN; RONALD HADDAD, Dearborn Chief of Police ) that Dearborn, and its police department, violated the free-speech rights of a Christian evangelist by barring him from handing out leaflets at an Arab-American street festival last year. The court’s two judge majority opinion concluded,

On the free speech claim, we REVERSE the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendants and its denial of summary judgment to the plaintiffs. We thereby invalidate the leafleting restriction within both the inner and outer perimeters of the Festival.1 The restriction on the sidewalks that are directly adjacent to the Festival attractions does not serve a substantial government interest. The City keeps those same sidewalks open for public traffic and permits sidewalk vendors, whose activity is more obstructive to sidewalk traffic flow than pedestrian leafleting is. Moreover, the prohibition of pedestrian leafleting in the outer perimeter is not narrowly tailored to the goal of isolating inner areas from vehicular traffic. The City can be held liable because the Chief of Police, who instituted the leafleting restriction, created official municipal policy.

Elaborating on the issue of Dearborn’s liability for depriving George Saieg, an American Christian pastor of Sudanese descent, of his first amendment rights, the judges opined,

The City may be held liable for the restriction of Saieg’s free speech rights that the leafleting restriction caused. A municipality is liable if a constitutional injury results from a policy or custom “made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy.” Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 694–95 (1978). In this case, the City approved the Festival “subject to . . . the rules and regulations of the Police Department.” R. 47-13 (Ex. M: Council Resolution)…Chief Haddad described the leafleting policy as his department’s policy, subject only to the approval of the city council and the mayor. R. 47-11 (Ex. K: Haddad Dep. at 95–96) (stating that “the police department will supply the standards that must be met,” such as the “prohibition of individuals handing out . . . materials on the public sidewalk”). The police department’s leafleting policy, made with the authority that the City Council delegated to it, fairly represents official City policy. Therefore, Saieg may hold the City liable for violating his First Amendment right to free speech.

Most remarkably, the majority opinion of Justices Moore and Clay included a salient observation revealing how these judges understood the Sharia-based objections to non-Muslim proselytization which motivated Dearborn’s attempt to abrogate Pastor Saeig’s freedom of speech—mainstream Islam’s continued rejection of freedom of conscience:

Saieg also faces a more basic problem with booth-based evangelism: “[t]he penalty of leaving Islam according to Islamic books is death,” which makes Muslims reluctant to approach a booth that is publicly “labeled as . . . Christian.” R. 48 (Ex. A: Saieg Dep. at 75). Saieg believes that evangelism is more effective when he can roam the Festival and speak to Muslims more discreetly.

Roberta Aluffi Beck-Peccoz, Associate Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Turin, made this rather understated assessment of contemporary Islamdom’s strict opposition to the proselytization of Muslims by non-Muslims—rooted in the Sharia, and ultimately, the grave offense of “ridda,” or apostasy from Islam, deemed “treasonous” against the Muslim community, and punishable by death under Islamic Law—published in 2010:

Islamic States have always strongly opposed this specific freedom [i.e., freedom of conscience as per the first amendment of the US Bill of Rights, or more specifically article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights], claiming that it contravenes Islamic Law. [Note: It does, and that is why the 57 Muslim nation Organization of the Islamic Conference drafted and ratified the antithetical Cairo Declaration which insists upon having Sharia exert supremacy over all “manmade” law!]…Moreover they express fear that proselytism represents a kind of foreign interference in their internal affairs. Consistently, Islamic States do not favor proselytism; they sometimes tend to restrict it even in its lightest forms, such as the simple expression of one’s intimate beliefs…Proselytism is perceived as a major threat to the coherence and cohesion of the umma [i.e., the global Muslim community]: it can lead to ridda [apostasy from Islam] the paradigm of political treason, or fitna, the temptation, the civil war involving doctyrinal dissensions…

Even in moderate, pseudo-secular Arab Tunisia—prior to the “Jasmine revolution” which may have already empowered the formerly banned Tunisian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood under Rachid Ghannouchi—according to a 2010 US State Department report,

It was illegal to proselytize to Muslims as the government viewed such efforts as disturbing the public order.

Neighboring Morocco, also deemed “moderate,” aggressively deports Christians who dare proselytize to Muslims. The globally representative Sharia-based penal law (circa1982) of Comoros (the Muslim archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa, on the northern end of the Mozambique), for example, defines the “criminal” proselytizer as one who, “…indulges, promotes, or teaches Muslims a religion other than Islam.”

The attempt by Dearborn’s large Muslim population to enforce Sharia-based injunctions against non-Muslim proselytism confirms local attitudes documented via polling data collected in 2003, and reported during 2004. “The Detroit Mosque Study: Muslim Views on Policy and Religion,” was conducted by Ihsan Bagby an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky and a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy Understanding—a Muslim organization. Data were gathered during the summer of 2003 and published online in 2004.

These alarming results were described on page 37 of the report:

Mosque participants were asked, whether they agree or disagree with the statement, “Shari’ah should be the law of the land in Muslim countries?”

Apply Islamic Law in Muslim Lands [Bold by SlantRight]

Strongly Agree — 59%
Somewhat Agree — 22%(i.e., collectively = 81%) [Yellow Emphasis ACT for America]

Somewhat Disagree — 8%
Strongly Disagree — 3%
Don’t Know — 8%

Such data supposedly reflected the Detroit area (read Dearborn) Muslims views of “Islamic countries,” only. But given the intrinsic, universally supremacist nature of Islam and the global umma (i.e., as stated in Koran 3:110, and the Orwellian-named Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, “Ye are the best community that hath been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency; and ye believe in Allah”), once an area has a Muslim majority it is assumed by Muslims that Islamic Law should prevail—hence the “enclave” phenomenon, now evident in the United States.

Following the issuance of the verdict, Pastor Saeig’s intrepid attorney, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, made these apposite remarks, which all who cherish our unique Western freedoms must heed, and support:

Everybody should be pleased. Dearborn is getting a pretty strong reputation as being the enemy of the First Amendment. As long as they keep passing these draconian restrictions that violate the rights of everyone, we’re going to challenge them.

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Free Speech Comes to Dearbornistan

John R. Houk

© June 1, 2011

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Victory over sharia in Dearborn, MI

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

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First Amendment Trumps Sharia in Dearborn

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