Tag Archives: 2255(e)

Summer of Our Discontent – Update for July 10, 2023

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

JONES TSUNAMI ROLLING OVER PENDING CASES

The two-week-old Jones v. Hendrix decision is claiming its first victims.

innocent210504You recall that in Jones, the Supreme Court held that if a federal prisoner has previously filed a § 2255 motion – even one addressing a completely unrelated issue – he or she cannot file a second post-conviction challenge arguing that, under a new Supreme Court decision that changes a statutory interpretation, even if the change means that the prisoner was not guilty of a crime.

In other words, as attorney Adam Unikowsky blogged last week, “Even if the federal prisoner is indisputably innocent, the prisoner must serve his full sentence.”

I know of a number of pending district court 28 USC § 2241 cases that Jones has already torpedoed. Last Friday, the 7th Circuit added to the carnage.

DeAngelo Sanders had argued in a 28 USC § 2241 habeas petition that he did not have the required three prior drug or violent convictions for a mandatory minimum 15-year sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act. His filing came well after his § 2255 post-conviction motion had been denied, and only because the Circuit had just ruled that a conviction for Illinois residential burglary cannot be used to enhance an ACCA sentence.

The Circuit was in the middle of considering whether DeAngelo could rely on the 28 USC § 2255(e) saving clause to raise his actual-innocence-of-ACCA-sentence when the Supreme Court handed down Jones. Last Friday, the 7th denied DeAngelo’s case.

The Supreme Court’s Jones decision ruled that “Section 2255(h) specifies the two limited conditions in which Congress has permitted federal prisoners to bring second or successive collateral attacks on their sentences,” the Circuit said. “The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy those conditions does not mean that he can bring his claim in a habeas petition under the saving clause. It means that he cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen finality over error correction in his case.”

courthouseclosed170605The same thing happened to Carlous Horton’s habeas petition, which argued that his mandatory life sentence for drug distribution, based on three prior drug trafficking convictions, should be vacated. “The government conceded that two of Carlous’s prior drug convictions are not proper § 841 predicates under Mathis,” the 7th said last Friday, “and a third – the 1995 Illinois cocaine conviction mentioned above – also could not be counted as a predicate under a recent Circuit decision in United States v. Ruth. But the government opposed relief, arguing that although Carlous’s habeas petition was premised on new statutory interpretation developments, he had not been previously precluded by Eighth Circuit precedent from making” the same arguments.

Last Friday, the Circuit dismissed Carlous’s case, holding that Jones kicked the legs from under his claim as well.

Adam Unikowsky concedes that the Jones majority opinion, written by Justice Thomas, “is well-written and persuasive. He puts forward a powerful argument that under the plain text of the applicable federal statutes, federal prisoners are forbidden from bringing this type of challenge. Justice Jackson’s dissent is also well-written and persuasive. She puts forward a powerful argument that the majority’s interpretation conflicts with congressional intent and would lead to unfair consequences. In the end, Jones presents a tough, close issue.”

Rather than focus on Jones’s merits, Unikowsky argues for a statutory fix that would allow prisoners to file successive Section 2255 petitions when new Supreme Court decisions establish their innocence. “This is not a tough, close issue,” he writes. “It is an obviously correct position that should prevail by unanimous voice votes in the House and Senate.”

congress151220Writing in Law 360, Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed agreed. “Perhaps Congress could add a third route, and even tailor it narrowly to gain bipartisan support,” Medwed wrote. “Specifically, Congress could change the law to permit a successive or second habeas filing when the Supreme Court has recognized a new statutory principle that is made retroactive and that could be relied on by those in custody to claim legal innocence. This would address Justice Jackson’s core concern about ‘slamming the courtroom doors to a possibly innocent person,’ while simultaneously avoiding any reference to the saving clause, let alone making that provision the ‘license for unbounded error correction’ that Justice Thomas feared.”

Sanders v. Joseph, Case No. 19-2504, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 17176 (7th Cir. July 7, 2023)

Horton v. Lovett, Case No. 21-1004, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 17177 (7th Cir. July 7, 2023)

Adam’s Legal Newsletter, Imprisoning innocent people is bad (July 2, 2023)

Law360, Justices’ Habeas Ruling Further Saps Writ Of Its Strength (July 7, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Judge Friendly Had It Right: Innocence Really Is Irrelevant – Update for June 23, 2023

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

JONESING FOR SOME UNDERSTANDING
Not anymore...
Not anymore…

Back in 1970, Second Circuit Judge Henry J. Friendly titled his proposal for a unitary approach to collateral attack “Is Innocence Irrelevant? Collateral Attack on Criminal Judgments.” We got the answer yesterday: Yes, it is.

The response has been fast and furious to the Supreme Court decision in Jones v. Hendrix, which held that federal prisoners may not rely on the saving clause in 28 USC § 2255(e) to avail themselves of a Supreme Court decision that the statute under which they were convicted was wrongly applied by the trial court.

Jones v. Hendrix held that a prisoner who has done 27 years for being a felon in possession of a gun (28 USC § 922(g)(1)) could not bring a habeas corpus action alleging he was innocent of the conviction because the Supreme Court had redefined § 922(g) in the 2019 Rehaif v. United States decision to require that a defendant know that he was prohibited from possessing a gun.

Hendrix held that petitioner Marcus Jones could not file such a petition, leaving him without recourse. In so holding, the decision drives a stake through the heart of 28 USC § 2255(e).

Subsection 2255(e), known as the saving clause, provides that

An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.

Before yesterday, most courts accepted that where a change in statutory interpretation made federal prisoners actually innocent of the offense of which they had been convicted, they could resort to the classic habeas corpus petition (28 USC § 2241). That was because unless they were that magic one-year period after conviction during which they could file a 28 USC § 2255 motion, a reinterpretation of a statute – rather than a constitutional holding – did not open up their time period in which to bring a § 2255 motion.

manyguns190423The Supreme Court sanctioned such as procedure in 1998’s Bousley v United States ruling. After the Supreme Court ruled in Bailey v. United States that 18 USC § 924(c) prohibiting the use of a firearm in drug and violent offenses meant more than mere possession of the gun, many people convicted of § 924(c) offenses, perhaps because they had been selling pot at the schoolyard but had a .22 rifle in the closet at home, were suddenly no longer guilty of the crime for which they were doing time. But because Bailey just reinterpreted § 924(c) without finding the prior interpretation unconstitutional, the prisoners were precluded from bringing a 28 USC § 2255 to challenge their convictions.

Most federal appeals courts permitted prisoners convicted under the broader interpretation of § 924(c) to challenge their convictions even if they’d previously filed a § 2255 or were beyond the original deadline. In Bousley, the Supremes sanctioned that approach provided that a change in statutory interpretation since a § 2255 motion was due to be filed made a defendant actually innocent of the offense.

The saving clause procedure permitted by Bousley was so settled that the Solicitor General refused to defend the position that petitioner Marcus Jones was precluded from raising his actual innocence of a gun possession charge under the saving clause. Instead, the Government argued for a slightly stricter showing a defendant would have to make in order to use a § 2241 petition under the saving clause.

The Supreme Court had to appoint a law firm to argue Warden Hendrix’s position. That firm, New York white-shoe firm Sullivan and Cromwell, took a victory lap yesterday, leading Above the Law to observe

It’s a sad day that someone will spend 20+ years in prison for a conviction that never actually existed… I should clarify. This has been a sad day for some. It’s not stopping the attorneys over at Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm appointed by the Court to argue that Jones shouldn’t have a second habeas petition no matter what, from rubbing the victory in everyone’s faces over on Twitter.

To be sure, not everyone was depressed over yesterday’s decision. Crime & Consequences called Jones v. Hendrix a “major victory for finality of judgments,” arguing that in the decision, “[t]he Court rejected an attempt by the petitioner to do ‘an end-run around AEDPA,’ i.e., the limits oVictory220113n collateral review of convictions enacted by Congress in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996…. Even more important, the Court has finally rejected the notion that the Suspension Clause of the Constitution requires collateral review of final judgments by courts of general jurisdiction. That clause is limited to the scope of habeas corpus understood at the time, which did not include such review. Congress may authorize such review, of course, but it is fully capable of imposing such limits as deems to be good policy.”

Most of the commentary was negative, however. Vox complained

in [Justice] Thomas’s telling, the main purpose of this “inadequate or ineffective” provision is to protect prisoners who are unable to bring a habeas challenge in the court where they were originally convicted — such as if Congress later passed a law eliminating that court. Indeed, in a footnote, Thomas suggests that the “inadequate or ineffective” provision may largely be a relic of an age before the federal interstate highway system was built, when transporting a prisoner to the judicial district where they were convicted “posed difficulties daunting enough to make a § 2255 proceeding practically unavailable.”

Under Jones v. Hendrix, a “prisoner who is actually innocent, imprisoned for conduct that Congress did not criminalize, is forever barred … from raising that claim, merely because he previously sought postconviction relief,” Justices Sotomayor and Kagan wrote in a two-page dissent. “It does not matter that an intervening decision of this Court confirms his innocence. By challenging his conviction once before, he forfeited his freedom.”

The franchise dissent, however, in Jones belonged to Justice Jackson. In addition to what I noted yesterday, she observed that the majority’s approach sanctions dramatically different treatment of prisoners with virtually identical habeas claims:

Consider two individuals who have been convicted of the same federal crime—perhaps two codefendants who were tried and sentenced together. Both complete their direct appeals, but only one files a § 2255 motion within AEDPA’s statute of limitations, while the other one decides not to or misses the deadline. If § 2255(h) bars a successive petition raising a legal innocence claim, then when Rehaif is handed down—altering the elements of the crime of conviction such that both prisoners have a colorable claim of legal innocence—only the one who did not previously file a § 2255 petition can raise this retroactive statutory innocence claim.

Writing in Reason, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin suggested that the very act of keeping a legally innocent person in prison violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment: “The clause bars the government from depriving a person of ‘life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’ Keeping a man in prison when the activity he was convicted of was not actually illegal seems an obvious deprivation of ‘liberty’ without any basis in ‘law.’ And, because Jones never had a chance to raise the relevant issue, this practice can’t be justified on the basis of efficiency or procedural finality.”

RIPsaving230623University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman argues in Slate that “as a result of this opinion, people with illegal convictions and sentences—people who are legally innocent—will be stuck in prison for no good reason because the courts screwed up, not because they did. The law certainly did not require this result. And the Jones debacle carries a few warnings about the nightmare at One First Street. One is that the Jones majority is part of a larger trend of the Supreme Court believing that the court (and all federal courts) are above reproach and can do no wrong…”

Something that has not been pointed out yet is how Jones v. Hendrix may energize the compassionate release business. The Sentencing Commission has proposed adding USSG 1B1.13(a)(6), which holds that non-retroactive changes in the law may be “considered in determining whether the defendant presents an extraordinary and compelling reason, but only where such change would produce a gross disparity between the sentence being served and the sentence likely to be imposed at the time the motion is filed, and after full consideration of the defendant’s individualized circumstances.”

It would be hard to imagine a disparity grosser than doing time for an offense of which one was innocent.

Above the Law, Sullcrom Is Super Proud Of Themselves For Making It Easier For The State To Confine The Innocent (June 22, 2023)

Crime & Consequences, Major Victory for Finality of Judgments (June 22, 2023)

Vox,The Supreme Court’s latest opinion means innocent people must remain in prison (June 22, 2023)

Washington Post, Supreme Court denies prisoner second chance to show innocence (June 22, 2023)

Reason, A Troubling Supreme Court Habeas Decision (June 22, 2023)

Slate, Clarence Thomas’ Latest Criminal Justice Ruling Is an Outright Tragedy (June 22, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Explainer: When Federal Prisoners Can Get Relief Under Range, Dubin – Update for June 12, 2023

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

ASK THE PROFESSOR

explainer230612Last week, I reported on the 3rd Circuit’s en banc ruling that someone convicted of a nonviolent “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” (18 USC § 922(g)(1)) could not constitutionally be prohibited from possessing a gun or ammo. That report was followed by a dispatch on the Supreme Court’s decision last Thursday that dramatically limited the reach of the aggravated identity theft statute (18 USC § 1028A).

This was followed by the predictable questions from prisoners: “When can I use the Range decision to get my § 922(g) conviction vacated? And how about getting rid of my aggravated identity theft conviction under § 1028A?”

Very good questions, and inquiries for which the hopemongers who will write any motion for a federal prisoner in exchange for a modest fee – let’s call them what they are, hopemongers – have a ready answer. That answer usually starts with, “Pay me…”

Now let’s ask the professor.  Or, because he’s nowhere around, ask me…

professor230612To be sure, a lot of people could be affected by the decisions, provided there’s a procedural route to raise them. About 21% of federal prisoners have a § 922(g) conviction, while about 2% are doing time for aggravated ID theft. That’s a potential of about 35,000 felon-in-possession and 3,500 § 1028A defendants.

Range: Remember first that the Range decision is only binding in the 3rd Circuit. If your case isn’t from there, Range doesn’t help you. In fact, as I reported a week ago, the 8th Circuit just went the other way in its United States v. Jackson decision.

However, if your 1-year deadline for filing a § 2255 motion hasn’t expired, by all means challenge § 922(g) constitutionality in your motion. But if your time has expired, your options are limited. Under 28 USC § 2255(f)(3), you can file within a year of a new SCOTUS ruling on the constitutionality of a statute, but Range is not a Supreme Court case. If you have already lost your § 2255 motion, you have to get Court of Appeals permission to file another § 2255 and that standard likewise requires that the motivating decision be from the Supreme Court.

So how about a 28 USC § 2241 petition? We’ll know a lot more about § 2241s in a few weeks when SCOTUS decides Jones v Hendrix. For now, fitting a Range-type claim into the standards for bringing a § 2241 (under the § 2255(e) saving clause) will be tough.

dice161221For § 922(g) defendants, it may be worth a shot if your conviction came from a 3rd Circuit district court. For everyone else, it’s a waiting game…

ID Theft: For those beyond the § 2255 filing deadline, the traditional 28 USC § 2241 petition for habeas corpus will likely be available under the saving clause.

Because Dubin is a statutory interpretation and not a constitutional holding (despite Justice Gorsuch’s argument that it could easily have been), the route of filing a second or successive § 2255 (under the rules set up by § 2255(h)) is probably unavailable.

General Pro Tip: If you’re proceeding on § 2255 or § 2241, find competent help. Procedural questions are boring but vitally important to winning.

Ohio State University law prof Doug Berman observed last week that “offenders now looking to pursue what might be called “Dubin claims” could, of course, face procedural barriers of all sorts. But the still-open-ended sentence reduction authority of 3582 might be one ready means for at least some (over-sentenced) prisoners to secure relief…”

USSC, Quick Facts – Felon in Possession (June 2022)

USSC, Quick Facts – Sec 1028A Aggravated Identity Theft Offenses (July 2022)

Sentencing Law and Policy, How many of the many thousands convicted of federal aggravated identity theft might now have Dubin claims? (June 8, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

Supremes Hear Saving Clause Argument Today – Update for November 1, 2022

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SUPREME COURT TO HEAR 2255 SAVING CLAUSE ARGUMENT

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on the reach of 28 USC § 2255(e), the so-called saving clause.

In Jones v. Hendrix, the high court will consider whether a prisoner may use a 28 USC § 2241 habeas corpus petition to make a Rehaif claim – that he did not know he was subject to the proscription on possessing a gun or ammo – where he could have made the claim in a § 2255 motion years ago.

At least two circuits hold that where the issues could have been raised in the § 2255 motion – even though raising it would have been futile because Circuit precedent was totally against the argument – the saving clause will not let the prisoner file a § 2241 petition.

one-tripcar221101SCOTUSBlog said last week, “one suspects that the conservatives who joined the Rehaif majority… may nonetheless be open to concluding that prisoners like Jones cannot reap the benefit of their ruling. With rare exceptions, the court’s conservative majority has exalted finality over the fairness of individual proceedings – and did so long before the current 6-3 supermajority (as Justice Harry Blackmun noted in a dissent more than 30 years ago, “one searches the majority’s opinion in vain… for any mention of petitioner[]’s right to a criminal proceeding free from constitutional defect”). And though it will mean that defendants like Jones continue to serve time in prison for conduct that the court has said is not criminal, AEDPA’s bar on second or successive petitions provides a vehicle for that result. This car is good for just one ride.”

SCOTUSBlog, On the narrow road to challenge a federal conviction, when is a vehicle “inadequate”? (October 28, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

The Supremes Finally Take The 2255(e) Debate! – Update for May 16, 2022

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LATE-BREAKING NEWS…

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Jones v. Hendrix by order issued at 9:30 am on Monday, May 16.  

Could the Justices be reading my blog? Doubtful, but the certiorari may be good news for thousands of federal inmates trapped in the 10th and 11th Circuits (depending, of course, on the outcome of this case sometime next year).

SCOTUS MAY FINALLY SETTLE THE 2241 DEBATE
... but a 2255(e) ain't, depending on where you are.
… but a 2255(e) ain’t, depending on where you are.

Let’s say you were standing in front of Sunny’s Cigars with a gun and two prior convictions, one for selling drugs and the other for manslaughter. If the Feds picked you up, you would have been sentenced to a minimum 15 years under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), the Armed Career Criminal Act.

After the U.S. Supreme Court (generally known by the shorthand “SCOTUS“) ruled in Borden v. United States that a crime committed through recklessness was not a “crime of violence” predicate for ACCA, you would want to file with your sentencing court to get the ACCA sentencing enhancement thrown out.

The Borden ruling was not a constitutional ruling, but instead just an interpretation of a statute. That meant that you could not file a second-or-successive 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, because 28 U.S.C.  § 2244(b) limits successive § 2255s to newly discovered evidence or decisions on constitutionality. However, 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e) – known as the “saving clause,” lets you file a traditional 28 U.S.C. § 2241 habeas corpus motion attacking the ACCA sentence where a § 2255 would be inadequate to address the issue.

Or at least it would let you file a § 2241 petition if you’re locked up in, say, Kentucky (in the 6th Circuit). A § 2241 habeas corpus petition is filed in the federal district in which you’re located at the time you file. If you were at FCI Manchester, you’d file in the Eastern District of Kentucky. Go a few miles east of there to do your time in Beckley, West Virginia, for example, and you’d be filing in the Southern District of West Virginia (4th Circuit). Fourth Circuit precedent forecloses you from using a § 2241 petition as a workaround.

gunknot181009Writing in SCOTUSBlog last week, John Elwood noted that Ham v. Breckon, a 4th Circuit decision, and Jones v. Hendrix, an 8th Circuit decision, both asked the same question, and both have been “relisted” by the Supreme Court.

A “relist” is a petition for certiorari that is scheduled to be decided at the Supreme Court’s regular Friday conference, but is “relisted” to be considered further at a subsequent conference. A “relisted” petition is statistically more likely to have review granted by the Court, and that is even more likely where there are two relisted petitions asking the same question.

This is important, because two circuits – the 10th and 11th – don’t permit § 2241 petitions even where the movant is challenging guilt or innocence. A SCOTUS decision on Ham or Jones would not only settle whether a movant could challenge a statutory sentencing enhancement using a § 2241 petition under the “saving clause,” but would address the circuit split between the two outlier circuits (the 10th and 11th) and everyone else on whether guilt and innocence could be challenged as well.

circuitsplit220516Elwood thinks that, while the Court has ducked the issue in the past, it will grant review this time. He wrote, “The government — which generally is a pretty successful respondent as well as a successful petitioner — admits that there is a circuit split on the issue. It would have a hard time saying otherwise, since the government itself petitioned for Supreme Court review on this very issue a couple years back in the much-relisted United States v. Wheeler, before a vehicle problem arose (the prisoner… was released from prison) that apparently persuaded the Supreme Court to deny review in that case.”

Ham v. Breckon, Case No 21-763 (pending certiorari)

Jones v. Hendrix, Case No 21-857 (certiorari granted)

SCOTUSBlog, Challenges to administrative action and retroactive relief for prisoners (May 11, 2022)

– Thomas L. Root

Sure You’re Innocent, But WHY Are You Innocent? – Update for July 12, 2021

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JUST SAYING IT DOESN’T MAKE IT SO

smile210712Sam Abram had a brief but prolific career as a bank robber, an occupation that Sam found to be more rewarding if he employed a smile and a gun rather than a smile alone. When the FBI nabbed him, Sam was convicted of the robberies and – for good measure – as a convicted felon in possession of a gun, a violation of 18 USC § 922(g).

Sam was convicted, lost on appeal, and then lost again on a post-conviction 28 USC § 2255 motion. Several years later, the Supreme Court held in Rehaif v. United States that to be convicted of being a felon-in-possession, the defendant had to actually know he was a member of a class of people prohibited from possessing a gun. In Sam’s case, Rehaif said he had to know he was a convicted felon at the time he possessed the gun.

Generally, a § 2255 motion is the only way to mount a post-conviction challenge to an unlawful conviction or sentence, but 2255 motions are pretty much one-to-a-customer. If you have already filed one § 2255 motion, you must get permission from the Court of Appeals to file a second one, and getting permission is tough. Under 28 USC § 2244, you must either show you have discovered new evidence you couldn’t have feasibly found before – evidence that would have been a home run with the jury – or that the Supreme Court had handed down a constitutional ruling made retroactive on appellate review.

Rehaif was a reinterpretation of a statute that virtually all of the Federal circuits had gotten wrong, but because it was a decision of statutory construction rather than a decision that 18 USC § 922(g) was unconstitutional, Sam couldn’t get leave to file a new § 2255 motion.

savings180618But § 2255 has a “savings clause,” § 2255(e), which lets people in Sam’s position file a traditional 28 USC § 2241 habeas corpus petition when a § 2255 motion “is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” And a § 2255 motion is “inadequate or ineffective” if “(1) the § 2241 petition raises a claim that is based on a retroactively applicable decision; (2) the claim was previously foreclosed by circuit law; and (3) that retroactively applicable decision establishes that the petitioner may have been convicted of a nonexistent offense.”

Sam filed a § 2241 petition, arguing that his § 922(g) conviction should be thrown out because his indictment never alleged he knew he had been convicted of a prior felony, and, by the way, he was actually innocent in that he didn’t know about his convicted-felon status. The district court shot down his § 2241 petition, and last week, the 5th Circuit agreed.

The Circuit said that Sam had to provide some evidence or argument supporting that he may have been convicted of a nonexistent offense. That requirement is “particularly important in the Rehaif context,” the 5th said, because “[c]onvicted felons typically know they’re convicted felons” (a Kavanaugh quip from last month’s Supreme Court decision, Greer v. United States). The Circuit said, “if a defendant was in fact a felon, it will be difficult for him to carry the burden… of showing a reasonable probability that, but for the Rehaif error, the outcome of the district court proceedings would have been different.”

innocent210712All Sam did was assert he was actually innocent, which was nothing more than parroting the standard for a “savings clause” § 2241 petition. Where a prisoner just does that – without providing some evidence or argument supporting his claim that he was unaware of his relevant status – then, the Circuit ruled, “he has failed to demonstrate that he is entitled to proceed under § 2255(e)’s savings clause.” And thus, a substantive defect in the prisoner’s showing becomes a procedural defect as well.

Abram v. McConnell, Case No. 20-30199, 2021 US App. LEXIS 20174 (5th Cir. July 7, 2021)

– Thomas L. Root

If Today’s Thursday, My Position Has Changed – Update for May 20, 2021

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DANCE WITH THE GIRL WHO BRUNG YOU

dancegirlbrung210520I used to practice in front of crusty old judge Walter J. Miller, who liked to warn attorneys that he expected them to “dance with the girl who brung you.” By that he meant that if you argued an evidentiary position in front of him, you were expected to maintain that position even if it became uncomfortable.

The government – which has a history of changing its position as the day, fashion, and its overarching goal of keeping people imprisoned may dictate – ran smack into that doctrine last week in the 7th Circuit. Dean Guenther was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm (18 USC § 922(g)(1)) in the District of Minnesota. Because he had three prior Minnesota burglaries, he was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act. He appealed, and then tried a § 2255 motion. Both failed.

But some time after that, the 8th Circuit held that the Minnesota burglary statute was too broad to count as the kind of generic burglary that the ACCA intended to count against its predicate. Then, Johnson v. United States threw out the ACCA’s residual clause. Dean brought a 28 USC § 2241 habeas corpus motion in the 7th Circuit (where he was imprisoned) under the § 2255(e) saving clause. The district court denied his motion.

miscarriage-of-justiceLast week, the 7th Circuit reversed. A § 2255 motion is normally the exclusive method to collaterally attack a federal sentence, but the § 2255(e) saving clause provides a limited exception, letting a prisoner seek § 2241 habeas relief in the district where he is confined if “the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” Generally, the saving clause works when the prisoner relies on an intervening statutory decision announcing a new, retroactive rule that could not have been invoked in his first § 2255 motion and the error is serious enough to amount to a miscarriage of justice.

Dean’s motion fit everything except the question of whether his ACCA-enhanced sentence amounts to a miscarriage of justice. Since ruling that the Minnesota burglary was not an ACCA predicate, the 8th Circuit has reversed its position, but the 7th Circuit more recently ruled that the Minnesota burglary could not be used to qualify a defendant for the ACCA.

Dean and the government argued whether the ACCA sentence was a miscarriage should rely on 7th Circuit law (which said it was) or the 8th Circuit (which now says it might not be). The Circuit settled the issue easily, noting that in a prior case, the government argued that “the law of the circuit of confinement — this circuit — should control. That position, if accepted, meant no relief.” At the time, the 8th had held Minnesota burglary was not an ACCA predicate but the 7th had not ruled on the question. By the time that case reached the court of appeals, the tables had turned. The 8th had reversed itself, but the 7th had held that Minnesota burglary could not be counted under the ACCA.

flipflop170920In the prior case, of course, the government’s position was that the 7th Circuit’s interpretation should govern, because that had a more severe outcome for the defendant. In Dean’s case, however, the 8th Circuit’s interpretation would have hammered the defendant more. Bu the government’s logic, that one should apply.

The court did not state the obvious in such stark terms, but it did rather pointedly note that prior case, “we held the government to the position it took in the district court and applied the law of this circuit. We follow the same approach here.”

Thus, under 7th Circuit precedent, Dean’s Minnesota burglary convictions are not ACCA predicates (meaning he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years instead of a minimum sentence of 15 years).

Enjoy the dance, Mr. United States Attorney. She’s your date, after all.

Guenther v. Marske, Case No 17-3409, 2021 USApp LEXIS 14055 (7th Cir May 12, 2021)

– Thomas L. Root

Procedure Matters on a 2241 Motion, 4th Circuit Says – Update for September 4, 2020

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JUST BECAUSE A 2255 WON’T WORK DOESN’T MEAN A 2241 WILL

A military aphorism credited to more than one general (the oldest of whom was General Omar Bradley) is “amateurs talk strategy, but professionals talk logistics.” A post-conviction adjunct might be, “clients talk substantive issues, but lawyers talk procedure.”

nuns200903What we mean is in post-conviction proceedings on federal convictions, the best case on the planet (imagine a newly-discovered busload of nuns who all swear they saw you helping your mother weed her garden 50 miles from the back that was being robbed at the same time) does not help you if you have no procedural course for getting back into court. And the procedural snares of 28 USC § 2255 are many and varied.

Lee Farkas was charged with various white-collar fraud offenses, and the government got court permission to freeze all of his considerable assets before trial. The purported reason is to be sure there is enough money to pay criminal forfeiture and restitution if the government wins, but the real reason, of course, is that it hamstrings the defendant, making it impossible to afford a defense that might level the playing field with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

And it worked (for awhile). Lee had a lot of trouble affording the lawyers he needed. The result showed it: Lee was convicted, and got 360 months in prison.

A few years later, after Lee had filed and lost a 28 USC § 2255 motion, the Supreme Court ruled in Luis v. United States that freezing all of a defendant’s innocent assets violated the 6th Amendment. Based on that decision, the 4th Circuit ruled that criminal forfeiture statutes could not reach assets that might be substituted for forfeitable assets if the defendant lost.

Based on these decisions, Lee filed a 28 USC § 2241 petition for habeas corpus, arguing that under the 28 USC § 2255(e) savings clause, he could use the § 2241 to demand a new trial, because the seizure had violated the 6th Amendment and statute. Last week, the 4th Circuit shot him down.

"Actual innocence" is important for procedural reasons as well as substantive ones...
“Actual innocence” is important for procedural reasons as well as substantive ones…

The Circuit followed its three-part test defining the “limited circumstances” under which § 2255 will be “inadequate to test the legality of the prisoner’s detention.” First, at the time of conviction, the settled law of the Circuit or the Supreme Court must have established the conviction’s legality. Second, after the prisoner’s direct appeal and previous § 2255 motion, the substantive law must have changed so that the conduct of which the prisoner was convicted is no longer criminal or the sentence is illegally extended. And third, the prisoner cannot satisfy the gatekeeping provisions of § 2255(h) because the new rule is not one of constitutional law.

The 4th said a constitutional issue can never be heard on a § 2241 motion, because a § 2255 motion is intended for adjudicating such claims. What’s more, Lee was not claiming that he was actually innocent of the offense or sentence, but rather that taking his money was a fundamental defect in the proceeding. That is not good enough for a § 2241, the Circuit said.

Farkas v. Warden, Case No. 19-6347, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 27233 (4th Cir. Aug. 26, 2020)

– Thomas L. Root

One Lost, One Still in Certiorari Limbo – Update for March 5, 2019

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

LAST WEEK’S SCORE IS 0-1-1 ON SCOTUS CERTIORARI

Two Supreme Court petitions for certiorari (which is how parties get the Court to take their cases for review) came up last week, leaving our score 0-1-1.

jenga190305The petition in United States v. Rivera–Ruperto, important to people with stacked 924(c) sentences, who were left behind by the First Step Act’s nonretroactivity, asked whether 160 years for a defendant who carried a gun to multiple government-staged drug buys could get 130 years’ worth of stacked 924(c) sentences complied with the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Despite a lot of interest in the criminal justice community that this argument be addressed (and the 1st Circuit’s remarkable en banc opinion asking SCOTUS to take up the issue), the Supremes denied certiorari last week without further comment.

Meanwhile, the government’s request for certiorari in United States v. Wheeler was relisted a second time, and yesterday appeared to be relisted yet again. As noted last week, Wheeler asks whether a prisoner whose 2255 motion challenging a statutory minimum was denied based on current circuit precedent may later seek habeas relief in a 2241 petition (allowed by the 2255(e) “escape clause”) on the ground that the circuit’s interpretation of the statutory minimum has changed. A relist does not mean that cert will be granted, but it increases the odds.

Beneath the surface in Wheeler there is percolating a mootness battle. The 4th Circuit refused to stay its decision in the case, instead issuing the mandate – which is the green light for the district court to apply its holding – nine months ago. Last week, the district court got around to resentencing defendant Gerald Wheeler, and reduced his sentence to time served. Gerry walked out the door a free man, having had whopping eight months cut off his 120-month sentence.

mootness190305In an inversion of what usually goes on at the Supreme Court – a defendant begs to be heard while the Dept. of Justice Solicitor General’s office argues the case is unworthy of review – the government filed a letter with SCOTUS last week arguing that “the grant of habeas relief to shorten [Gerald’s] term of imprisonment means that this case ‘continue[s] to present a live controversy regarding the permissibility of such relief.’”  Gerry’s lawyers, showing their irritation at the government’s conduct in the case, shot back that the Supremes should take a hard pass on this one:

The district court entered its written judgment on March 1, 2019, and Mr. Wheeler has filed a notice of appeal to challenge one aspect of the district court’s resentencing decision. During the course of those appeal proceedings, the government will have the opportunity to ask the en banc Fourth Circuit to reverse the panel decision… Given that the government recently—in the middle of this case—changed a two- decades-old position regarding its interpretation of § 2241, the opportunity for additional percolation in the courts of appeals would be beneficial for this Court’s ultimate review.

Now one might wonder why Gerry, now a free man (to the extent that anyone on supervised release is truly free) would have found anything to appeal in a “time served” sentence. No one involved in the case has Skyped me to explain this, but I suspect his lawyers, whose primary duty to their client was to get him out of prison, filed the notice of appeal in order to be able to do exactly what they have done: to argue that because the case is headed back to the 4th Circuit, the Supreme Court does not need to take it up at this time.

The Supreme Court neither granted nor denied certiorari on the case yesterday, suggesting yet another realist. The Court undoubtedly wanted to digest the dueling letters it received at the end of last week.

lovelawyerB170811My selfish view is that I would like the Supreme Court to settle the issue on the 2255(e) “escape clause,” going with the ten circuits that recognize the legitimate use of a 28 USC 2241 petition in cases like Gerald’s. But Gerald’s lawyers – the Federal Public Defender in the Western District of North Carolina – are doing some first-rate lawyering for their client. As a result, he awoke last Saturday in his own bed for the first time in almost a decade.

That’s what good criminal defense lawyering is all about.

Sentencing Law and Policy, After swift cert denial in Rivera-Ruperto, should I just give up hoping for an improved Eighth Amendment to check extreme non-capital sentences? (Feb. 25)

United States v. Wheeler, Case No. 18-420 (Sup.Ct.) petition for certiorari pending)

– Thomas L. Root

Minus One, Plus Two at Supreme Court – Update for December 12, 2017

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

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CERTIORARI DENIED TO DAN MCCARTHAN, BUT TWO OTHER SENTENCING CASES GRANTED SCOTUS REVIEW

You may recall McCarthan v. Collins, a case dealing with when and under what terms an inmate may use a 28 USC 2241 motion. Nine federal circuits let inmates file 2241s under the 2255 “saving clause,” which provides that a prisoner may use the 2241 form of federal habeas corpus if it “appears that the remedy by [2255] motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

futility171212Earlier this year, however, the 11th Circuit held that an initial Section 2255 motion is an adequate and effective remedy to “test” a sentence, even when circuit precedent forecloses the movant’s claim at the time of the motion. After all, the Circuit said, a movant could have asked the court of appeals to overrule its precedent, sought Supreme Court review, or both. The saving clause in Section 2255(e), the 11th said, is concerned only with ensuring that a person in custody has a “theoretical opportunity” to pursue a claim, even if, at the time of the initial 2255 motion, the claim was virtually certain to fail in the face of adverse precedent. In other words, you have to raise arguments even when the court has already said the arguments are futile.

Both the 11th and 10th adhere to this draconian view. Dan McCarthan challenged the 11th Circuit interpretation. A few weeks ago, we reported that the Trump Justice Department asked the Supreme Court not to take the case, even though it acknowledged that the legal question is significant and that its new position could condemn inmates to serve out unlawful sentences. A week ago, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to Dan.

Meanwhile two new sentencing cases have been added to the Supreme Court docket. Hughes v. United States revisits the 2011 Freeman v. United States decision. Freeman said that a defendant with a F.R.Crim.P. 11(c)(1)(C) sentence – one where the sentence was fixed in the plea agreement – could get a sentence reduction under retroactive Guidelines changes only were the sentence was somehow tied to the Guidelines. Freeman was a 5-4 decision, and the fifth Justice only concurred, which made her concurring opinion the one that controlled.

undo160812Freeman has been a mess. Hughes gives the Court a chance for a do-over that may let more people with Rule 11(c)(1)(C) sentences reductions.

It frequently happens that defendants cooperate with the government, and are rewarded with a reduction in sentence under Sec. 5K1.1 of the Sentencing Guidelines. In Koons v. United States, the Supreme Court will determine whether a defendant who has a mandatory minimum sentence prescribed by statute, but who gets a 5K1.1 sentence reduction beneath that minimum, can later get a sentence reduction under retroactive Guidelines changes, even where the new sentence is below the mandatory minimum that was voided by the 5K1.1 motion.

Hughes v. United States, Case No. 17-155 (certiorari granted Dec. 8, 2017)

Koons v. United States, Case No. 17-5716 (certiorari granted Dec. 8, 2017)

– Thomas L. Root

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