Williams v. Oliver , 571 F. App'x 721 ( 2014 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit
TENTH CIRCUIT July 15, 2014
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
MARCUS ROBERT WILLIAMS, Clerk of Court
Petitioner – Appellant,
No. 14-1191
v. (D.C. No. 1:14-CV-00332-LTB)
JOHN OLIVER, Warden, (D. Colo.)
Respondent – Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
Before LUCERO, TYMKOVICH, and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges.
Marcus Williams is a federal prisoner currently housed at the United States
Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.
In 2007, near Raleigh, North Carolina, Williams and an accomplice robbed a roadside
convenience store at gunpoint. A few months later, Williams found himself indicted in
the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on two counts:
(1) robbery affecting interstate commerce and aiding and abetting in violation of 18
U.S.C. §§ 2 and 1951(a); and (2) using, carrying, and possessing a firearm during and in
* After examining the briefs and the appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist this appeal, so the case is
ordered submitted without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R.
34.1(G). This order and judgment is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of
law of the case, claim preclusion, and issue preclusion. It may be cited, however, for its
persuasive value consistent with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 and Tenth
Circuit Rule 32.1.
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relation to a crime of violence and aiding and abetting in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 and
924(c)(1)(A).
Williams pleaded guilty to both counts. On the firearm count, Williams pleaded guilty
to the specific offense of brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of
violence in violation of § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii). Williams’s plea agreement expressly recites
the mandatory minimum for that count: “7 years, consecutive to any other sentence
served.” Plea Agreement at 6, United States v. Williams, No. 5:07-CR-00259-FL-2
(E.D.N.C. June 2, 2008), ECF No. 45.
The plea agreement also shows that Williams agreed to “waive knowingly and
expressly” most of his appellate and postconviction rights:
The Defendant agrees … to waive any right to contest the conviction or the
sentence in any post-conviction proceeding, including any proceeding
under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, excepting an appeal or motion based upon grounds
of ineffective assistance of counsel or prosecutorial misconduct not known
to the Defendant at the time of the Defendant’s guilty plea.
Id. at 1–2.
Before sentencing, Williams filed a sentencing memorandum arguing that his
presentence report had improperly classified him as a career offender under the United
States Sentencing Guidelines. The Guidelines define a career offender as follows:
A defendant is a career offender if (1) the defendant was at least eighteen
years old at the time the defendant committed the instant offense of
conviction; (2) the instant offense of conviction is a felony that is either a
crime of violence or a controlled substance offense; and (3) the defendant
has at least two prior felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a
controlled substance offense.
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U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 4B1.1(a) (2008). Picking up on that final criterion,
Williams argued that one of his prior felony convictions—a North Carolina conviction for
larceny from the person—did not count as a crime of violence.
At sentencing, the district court rejected that argument and sentenced Williams to 262
months in prison—178 months on the robbery count and 84 months on the firearm
count.1 Williams appealed, but the Fourth Circuit dismissed the appeal based on the
appeal waiver in Williams’s plea agreement.
After unsuccessfully petitioning the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, Williams
pursued postconviction relief by filing a § 2255 motion in the Eastern District of North
Carolina. The district court denied most of Williams’s claims based on the waiver in his
plea agreement, and the Fourth Circuit dismissed his appeal as untimely. Williams then
filed a second § 2255 motion in the Eastern District of North Carolina, which the district
court immediately dismissed, advising Williams that he needed the Fourth Circuit’s
permission before filing a second § 2255 motion. The Fourth Circuit denied Williams’s
ensuing request to file a second § 2255 motion.
This history brings us to the present case. In February 2014, Williams filed a pro se
habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the United States District Court for the District
of Colorado. He raised two claims. First, he renewed his claim that the sentencing court
erred when it treated him as a career offender under the Guidelines. Second, citing
1
The Fourth Circuit has since vindicated the district court’s view. In United States v.
Jarmon, the Fourth Circuit held that larceny from the person under North Carolina law is
a crime of violence for Guidelines purposes. United States v. Jarmon, 596 F.3d 228, 233
(4th Cir. 2010).
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Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151 (2013), he claimed that raising his mandatory
minimum sentence based on the sentencing judge’s finding that he brandished a firearm
violated his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.
In response, the district court issued a show-cause order directing Williams to explain
why his § 2241 petition should not be dismissed because his initial § 2255 motion
provided an adequate and effective mechanism for testing those claims. After receiving
Williams’s response, the district court dismissed the action, concluding that Williams had
failed to establish that his first § 2255 motion was inadequate or ineffective to test the
legality of his conviction or sentence. The district court entered its final judgment and
Williams timely appealed.
Before us, Williams renews his argument that his initial § 2255 motion was
inadequate and ineffective to test his conviction and sentence. He concedes that by virtue
of his plea agreement he waived the right to press his career-offender and Sixth
Amendment arguments in his initial § 2255 motion. But he contends that his plea was
involuntary, so when the district court erroneously enforced that waiver against him, it
rendered his initial § 2255 motion inadequate and ineffective to test his arguments.
Before addressing Williams’s argument, we first review the legal principles governing
this appeal. Congress has decided that “a federal prisoner’s attempt to attack the legality
of his conviction or sentence”—like Williams’s attempt here—“generally must be
brought under § 2255, and in the district court that convicted and sentenced him.” Prost v.
Anderson, 636 F.3d 578, 581 (10th Cir. 2011). “Meanwhile, § 2241 petitions, brought in
the district where the prisoner is confined, are generally reserved for complaints about the
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nature of a prisoner’s confinement, not the fact of his confinement.” Id. (emphases in
original).
Nevertheless, “[28 U.S.C.] § 2255(e) includes a so-called ‘savings clause’ which
sometimes allows a federal prisoner to resort to § 2241 to challenge the legality of his
detention, not just the conditions of his confinement.” Id. But to take advantage of the
savings clause, “a prisoner must show that ‘the remedy by motion under § 2255 is
inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.’ ” Id. (quoting 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255(e)).
In Prost, we adopted a test for determining whether a § 2255 motion is inadequate or
ineffective under the savings clause. We held that a federal prisoner may not invoke the
savings clause and § 2241 if the prisoner had an opportunity to bring his arguments
challenging the legality of his detention in an initial § 2255 motion. Id. at 584. Put
another way, a federal prisoner may not bring a § 2241 petition challenging the legality of
his conviction or sentence “so long as [the] petitioner could’ve raised his argument in an
initial § 2255 motion.” Id. at 588.
That rule captures this case. Williams could have raised all the arguments he presses
now in his initial § 2255 motion. For example, Williams could have argued in that motion
that he did not validly waive his postconviction rights in his plea agreement. He also
could have argued that he didn’t qualify as a career offender under the Guidelines. And he
could have argued that his 7-year mandatory minimum sentence on the § 924(c) charge
violated his Sixth Amendment rights. Thus, because Williams could have raised all his
arguments in his initial § 2255 motion, he may not resort to § 2241 to raise them now.
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Of course, Williams disagrees with that. He says he never had an opportunity to
present his arguments in his initial § 2255 motion because the district court erroneously
concluded that he had waived those arguments in his plea agreement. At bottom though,
Williams’s complaint is not that he lacked an opportunity to press his arguments in his
initial § 2255 motion, but that his initial § 2255 motion failed to bear fruit. But we have
said that the savings clause “is concerned with process—ensuring the petitioner an
opportunity to bring his argument—not with substance—guaranteeing nothing about
what the opportunity promised will ultimately yield in terms of relief.” Id. at 584
(emphases in original). Indeed, “[t]he ultimate result [of a § 2255 motion] may be right or
wrong as a matter of substantive law, but the savings clause is satisfied so long as the
petitioner had an opportunity to bring and test his claim.” Id. at 585. The upshot is that
just because the district court concluded that Williams had waived most of his arguments
doesn’t mean that Williams had no opportunity to raise them in his initial § 2255 motion.
We conclude that the district court correctly dismissed Williams’s § 2241 petition
because his initial § 2255 motion provided an adequate and effective mechanism for
testing his arguments. We affirm the district court’s judgment and we deny Williams’s
motion to proceed on appeal in forma pauperis.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Gregory A. Phillips
Circuit Judge
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