We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

4TH CIRCUIT OKs 2241 FILINGS ON SENTENCING ERRORS

The 4th Circuit reversed years of denying people who had received elevated sentences improperly due to prior state convictions in a decision last week that, at the same time, defined when the Sec. 2255(e) “savings clause” would let someone file a Sec. 2241 habeas corpus action.

The statute that permits federal prisoners to file a habeas corpus-type collateral attack on their convictions or sentences, 28 USC 2255, has fairly strict time requirements, as well as a one-to-a-customer provision that makes the filing of a second 2255 motion extraordinarily difficult.

For that reason, Congress included a section in the statute, 2255(e), commonly called the “savings clause,” which permits prisoners who have already filed and lost a 2255 motion, but cannot get permission to file a second one, to use a 28 USC 2241 classic habeas corpus filing when the 2255 motion “is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” Courts have done their level best over the years to make application of the savings clause as rate as a snowfall on July 4th. But, last week, the 4th Circuit provided some clarity and hope to prisoners.

Gerald Webster had gotten a higher sentence because of a prior North Carolina drug felony that later on was ruled not to be a felony under the United States v. Simmons case (due to a 16-year structured sentencing experiment North Carolina began in 1994). But Simmons’ retroactivity came too late for Jerry, whose 2255 motion had been heard by then. He tried a 2241 motion then, which was denied by the district court because he only showed he was actually innocent of a sentence, not of the underlying conviction.

Whether the 2255(e) savings clause applied to sentences as well as convictions had been left hanging in United States v. Surratt, which was on panel rehearing in the 4th Circuit when President Obama mooted it by giving Mr. Surratt a commutation to time served. Last week, the 4th Circuit patched the hole.

In last week’s decision, the Circuit held that the 2255(e) savings clause could be invoked if (1) when the defendant was sentenced, circuit or Supreme Court precedent made the sentence legal, but  (2) after the prisoner’s direct appeal and first 2255 motion, the settled substantive law changed and (3) the change was retroactive. The defendant must also (4) be unable to make a showing justifying a second and successive 2255 motions, and (5) due to the retroactive change, the defendant’s sentence now presents an error sufficiently grave to be deemed a “fundamental defect.”

The Circuit held that in this case, Jerry’s statutory minimum would have been half of the sentence to which the defendant was subjected, and that error “implicates separation of powers principles and due process rights fundamental to our justice system.” Thus, the error was a fundamental defect, and Jerry was entitled to resentencing with the lower statutory minimum.

United States v. Wheeler, Case No. 16-6073 (4th Cir. Mar. 28, 2018)

– Thomas L. Root