| Guilty Plea
to Assaulting Cooperator In Doubt 4 Years
Later In Empty SDNY Habeus Corpus
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive Pod
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SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Dec 8 – Robert Gist came to
plead guilty on February 15,
2018 to selling marijuana in
The Bronx and to assaulting
Cicero Williams while in
prison a year before.
At the change of
plea proceeding his lawyer
Aaron Goldsmith began by
apologizing for not having
changed his clothes and
instead being dressed
casually, saying that the plea
deal had come together very
quickly.
It should
have been apparent that
something was
wrong.
That day,
U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York
Judge Gregory H. Woods
accepted the plea.
He asked Robert
Gist, "please tell me what it
is that you did that makes you
believe that you are guilty of
these offenses."
Robert Gist said,
"on February 4, 2017, I
assaulted Cicero Williams
while both of us were
incarcerated at MCC. At the
time, I knew it was wrong to
assault him. I also believed
that he was cooperating with
the government."
Now on
December 8, 2020, in a SDNY
courthouse nearly emptied amid
the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert
Gist appeared before Judge
Woods again, from inside a
plexiglass box.
Inner City
Press was the only one in the
courtroom gallery, so empty
that when pulling out a pen to
take notes brought out a
quarter to fall on the bench,
the noise distracted the court
reporter.
This was
an evidentiary hearing in a
habeus corpus proceeding
brought by Robert Gist. There
were only two witnesses: him
and then, for the government,
Aaron Goldsmith.
To get this far,
Gist had been required to
waive his attorney client
privilege.
Gist recounted being involved
of the plea deal he agreed to
only shortly before the
proceeding, and having told
Goldsmith he has assault
Williams because Williams had
called him a "rat," not the
other way around.
He said Goldsmith
told him he would probably get
a sentence of 24 to 36 months,
and to take the deal before
he, Goldsmith, had to fly to
Los Angeles for a
week.
Judge Woods
didn't know any of this, back
then. He accepted the plea,
and months later sentenced
Robert Gist to 77 months. Gist
on December 8 recounted how he
had been confused and
shocked.
Goldsmith,
who testified by Skype, argued
that he had made all the
required disclosures to Gist.
He
acknowledged he had been on
his way to Los Angeles but
said he would have taken his
laptop there and continued to
work on the case if Gist had
not pled guilty.
While insisting
that Gist never told him to
file a notice of appeal, he
added that if he had, he would
have told Gist that he was
quitting, as there was not
basis to appeal, Gist's deal
also waive appellate rights
for any sentence below 96
months.
A key issue
at the hearing, not yet
decided by Judge Woods, was
whether the Assistant US
Attorney had handed Goldsmith
a piece of paper with what
Gist was supposed to say in
his allocution (that he
"believed that [Cicero
Williams] was cooperating with
the government"), or whether
Goldsmith had written the word
and showed them to the
prosecutor to make sure they
were sufficient.
His original
notes were somehow not in the
supposedly complete file for
the case.
After two
and a half hours, Judge Woods
asked the parties to submit
briefs on whether he could
consider written testimony
from Gist's grandfather, given
health issues, and said he
would be awaiting any subpoena
returns from the MCC.
Expect the habeus
corpus petition be ruled
on by Christmas. Inner City
Press will continue to report
on the case. It is Gist v. US,
19-cv-5095 (Woods)
***
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