United States v. McGee , 245 F. App'x 857 ( 2007 )

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES CO URT O F APPEALS
August 30, 2007
TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
U N ITED STA TES O F A M ER ICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee, No. 07-5064
v. (N.D. Oklahoma)
M ALCOLM DEROM E M CGEE, a/k/a (D.C. Nos. 03-CV-885-EA and
M alik; a/k/a M ike M cGee, 00-CR-105-EA)
Defendant-Appellant.
OR DER
Before H E N RY, T YM KOV IC H, and HO LM ES, Circuit Judges.
M alcolm M cGee, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, seeks a certificate of
appealability (“COA”) to appeal the district court’s order denying his 28 U.S.C. §
2255 petition to vacate, modify, or set aside his sentence. In his § 2255 petition,
M r. M cGee alleged he received ineffective assistance of counsel because (1) his
trial and appellate counsel failed to argue that he was improperly classified as a
career offender; (2) trial counsel failed to recognized he was not a career offender
during the plea bargain negotiations; and (3) trial counsel failed to file a notice of
appeal of the amended judgment. M r. M cGee also moved to amend his petition to
add a Sixth Amendment Blakely claim, which the district court denied. Before us,
M r. M cGee raises the ineffective assistance claims, and also seeks to challenge
the constitutional validity of his prior convictions. 1 Because M r. M cGee has
failed to make a “substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right,” see
28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2), we deny his application for a COA and dismiss this
appeal.
I. BACKGROUND
As detailed in our opinion affirming M r. M cGee’s conviction and
remanding for resentencing, United States v. M cGee, 291 F.3d 1224, 1225-26
(10th Cir. 2002):
[A] jury found M r. M cGee guilty of conspiring to possess phencyclidine
(PCP) in violation of 21 U .S.C. § 846 [Count 1], causing another person
to unlawfully possess with intent to distribute PCP in violation of 21
U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(A)(iv) and 18 U.S.C. § 2(b) [Count 2],
and using a communication facility to facilitate the comm ission of a
felony in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 843(b) [Count 3]. The district court
granted M r. M cGee’s motion to arrest judgment as to Count 1. It then
sentenced him to life im prisonment on Count 2 and 56 years on Count
3, to run concurrently. O n appeal, M r. M cGee contend[ed] that the
government presented insufficient evidence to support his Count 2
conviction and that the district court imposed an illegal sentence on
Count 3.
On direct appeal we affirmed the judgment of the district court as to Count 2 and
remanded for resentencing on Count 3. On remand, the district court resentenced
1
As the district court noted, “[b]ecause [M r. M cGee] raises only
ineffective assistance of counsel claims in his § 2255 petition, there is no
procedural bar to his claims.” District Ct. O rder, filed Apr. 27, 2007, at 5, n.4.
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M r. M cGee to 96 months’ imprisonment on Count 3. M r. M cGee did not directly
appeal this new sentence.
II. DISCUSSION
In order to obtain a COA, M r. M cGee must make “a substantial showing of
the denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). He may make this
showing “by demonstrating that jurists of reason could disagree with the district
court’s resolution of his constitutional claims or that jurists could conclude the
issues presented are adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.”
M iller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 327 (2003). “[A] claim can be debatable
even though every jurist of reason might agree, after the COA has been granted
and the case has received full consideration, that [the] petitioner w ill not prevail.”
Id. at 338.
M r. M cGee contends he received ineffective assistance of counsel because
counsel erroneously advised him that he was a career offender based upon a 1987
prior conviction for possession of cocaine. Under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, a defendant
may qualify as 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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In the challenge to his career offender classification, the district court agreed with
M r. M cGee that his 1987 conviction for possession of cocaine was not a
“controlled substance offense” for application of the career offender enhancement
unless the record reflected that the crime involved additional elements required
under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2. 2 District Ct. Order, filed Apr. 27, 2007, at 8-9. The
district court concluded however, that M r. M cGee’s 1988 conviction for
possession for sale of cocaine base and a 1990 conviction for battery with serious
injury presented two prior qualifying felony convictions under § 4B1.2. It also
concluded that any error on the part of his attorney was immaterial, and hence,
non-prejudicial because of his statutory mandatory life sentence on Count 2.
Because of this ruling, M r. M cGee seeks a stay of the present proceedings
so that he may go back to state court and challenge his prior 1988 and 1990 state
convictions as constitutionally invalid. M r. M cGee maintains that his recently
recovered transcripts from these cases demonstrate that these convictions “w ere
not constitutionally valid at the time of the commencement of the instant
offense.” A plt’s Br. at 3. He contends that these convictions are invalid under
2
Under § 4B1.2(b), a “‘controlled substance offense’ means an offense
under federal or state law, punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one
year, that prohibits the manufacture, import, export, distribution, or dispensing of
a controlled substance (or a counterfeit substance) or the possession of a
controlled substance (or a counterfeit substance) with intent to manufacture,
import, export, distribute, or dispense.”
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Boykin v. Alabam a, 395 U .S. 238, 242 (1969), which holds that the D ue Process
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that guilty pleas be entered into
knowingly and voluntarily. M r. M cGee thus requests a stay so that he may
review and exhaust his claims attacking his 1988 and 1990 convictions in state
court.
W e agree with the district court that M r. M cGee did not receive ineffective
assistance of counsel because he was properly classified as a career offender. To
the extent M r. M cGee raises new issues, such as the request for a stay, we decline
to consider those issues because they were not presented to the district court. See
United States v. Cook, 997 F.2d 1312, 1316 n.4 (10th Cir. 1993) (issues not raised
in § 2255 motion to district court deemed waived). M oreover, “with the
exception of a collateral attack based on the complete denial of counsel, a district
court sentencing a defendant under the career offender provisions of the
Guidelines cannot consider a collateral attack on a prior conviction.” United
States v. Garcia, 42 F.3d 573, 581 (10th Cir. 1994); see also U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2,
cmt., n.6 (“W ith respect to the current sentencing proceeding, this guideline and
commentary do not confer upon the defendant any right to attack collaterally a
prior conviction or sentence beyond any such rights otherw ise recognized in law. .
. .”).
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III. CONCLUSION
Accordingly, we DENY M r. M cGee’s request for a COA and DISM ISS this
matter.
Entered for the Court,
ELISABETH A. SHUM AKER, Clerk
By:
Deputy Clerk
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