Joseph A. Brown v. United States

This appeal arises from the denial of appellant Brown's pro se D.C. Code § 23-110 motions, in which he pursues relief from convictions in the 1990s on account of his mental illness and possible insanity at the time. Brown's principal claim is an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel challenge to his 1997 conviction for first-degree murder. The salient consideration for me is that the Superior Court denied this claim without an evidentiary hearing and without first appointing counsel to assist Brown, in spite of Brown's current mental disabilities and incarcerated status and the strong statutory…