United States v. Joseph M. Palomba

On October 22,1990, Appellant Joseph Pa-lomba (Palomba) was convicted of mail fraud, wire fraud and making false statements to a federal agency, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 , 1343 and 1001. He was sentenced to 71 months imprisonment and three years supervised release. Palomba challenges his conviction on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel and the district court’s lack of subject matter jurisdiction or venue.

Palomba contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed (i) to argue that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the crimes; (ii) to object when Palomba was not brought to trial within 70 days of indictment pursuant to Section 3161(c) of the Speedy Trial Act (STA), 18 U.S.C. § 3161 et. seq.; and (in) to argue that two counts in the superseding indictment violated the 30-day limit set forth in Section 3162(a)(1) of the STA. Palomba further contends that the district court committed reversible error in imposing a consecutive sentence of 11 months for mail fraud, in addition to a 60 month sentence for a separate count of wire fraud, to achieve a combined sentence exceeding the maximum punishment for…