Judge Paul Engelmayer
Dickerson was sentenced to two concurrent terms of 25 years to life in prison after conviction—in a 2002 jury trial—on murder charges stemming from his daughter's death by starvation. The jury proceeded on a deliberate indifference theory—that Dickerson knew of his daughter's malnourishment and actively participated in her mistreatment and starvation. In addition to claiming trial counsel's ineffectiveness, Dickerson's pro se application for 28 USC §2254 habeas relief argued, among other things, that his sentence was excessive and that his Sixth Amendment right was violated because he was denied direct contact with a potential witness. Rejecting Dickerson's June 10 objections, district court—fully adopting a magistrate judge's report after reviewing it for clear error and finding no error whatsoever—denied Dickerson §2254 relief. His objections only repeated prior arguments and incorporated, by reference, prior filings. His only argument doing more than merely directly incorporating prior arguments was his recapitulation of an argument that he made in his amended compliant—that as an absentee father with no knowledge of his daughter's condition, the trial evidence was insufficient to prove depraved indifference.
