Butterworth v. United States

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1076
RYAN BUTTERWORTH,
Petitioner, Appellant,
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Respondent, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. D. Brock Hornby, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
Jane Elizabeth Lee for appellant.
Renée M. Bunker, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom
Thomas E. Delahanty II, United States Attorney, was on brief, for
appellee.
January 5, 2015
KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Ryan Butterworth was convicted
by a jury in 2007 on federal criminal charges arising from his
involvement in a crack-cocaine distribution operation. He
initiated a collateral attack on his sentence after the Supreme
Court, in Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151, 2155 (2013),
held that any fact leading to the imposition of a mandatory minimum
sentence must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The
district court denied Butterworth's motion for habeas relief under
28 U.S.C. § 2255. Butterworth's appeal presents us with an issue
of first impression for this circuit: whether the rule announced in
Alleyne applies retroactively to sentences challenged on an initial
petition for collateral review. We conclude that Alleyne does not
so apply. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of
Butterworth's habeas petition.
I. Background
Acting on an informant's tip that Butterworth and his
roommate were engaged in a drug trafficking operation out of their
shared apartment in Westbrook, Maine, agents searched trash bags
outside of the building. The search uncovered evidence of drugs,
and the agents obtained a warrant to search the apartment. Inside
they seized bags of marijuana, a scale, and (most relevant for this
appeal), 5.04 grams of cocaine from the inside of a soda can.
Butterworth was tried and convicted of two drug trafficking counts:
conspiracy to distribute and to possess five grams or more of
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cocaine base (count 1), and aiding and abetting the possession of
five grams or more of cocaine base with intent to distribute (count
2). 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B), 846, and 18 U.S.C. § 2.
For purposes of setting the applicable mandatory minimum
sentence under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(iii) (2006), the prosecutor
asked the judge at the sentencing hearing to find Butterworth
responsible for fifty grams or more of cocaine base, not just the
5.04 grams that the agents seized. The district court granted that
request, basing its decision on witness testimony that Butterworth
bragged he was earning $1,200 per night (equivalent to about
fourteen grams at the going rate), and that he had been selling
crack cocaine for at least two weeks before his arrest. This drug
quantity finding increased the mandatory minimum sentence from ten
to twenty years for each count.1 The trial judge sentenced
Butterworth to that twenty year minimum on each count, to run
concurrently. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A)(iii).
Butterworth timely appealed his conviction and sentence
to the First Circuit. Anticipating the position eventually adopted
by the Supreme Court in Alleyne, he argued that a jury must find
beyond a reasonable doubt any fact leading to the imposition of a
higher mandatory minimum sentence. United States v. Butterworth,
511 F.3d 71, 76-77 (1st Cir. 2007). We rejected this argument, as
1
Butterworth's sentence was also the product of his prior
felony conviction, the effect of which he did not contest and is
not at issue in this appeal.
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we were required to do by the Supreme Court's holding in United
States v. Harris, 536 U.S. 545, 566-67 (2002). Harris addressed
the Court's earlier holding in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S.
469, 490 (2000), which had declared that any fact, other than the
fact of a prior conviction, that increases the penalty for a crime
beyond the statutorily prescribed maximum sentence must be found by
a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Harris expressly declined to
extend Apprendi's logic to mandatory minimum sentences, thus
allowing judges to continue finding facts that raise mandatory
minimum penalties. Harris, 536 U.S. at 557, 568. In short, at the
time of Butterworth's direct appeal (and his diligent but
unsuccessful petition for certiorari), the controlling case law
dictated that "so long as the applicable statutory minimum (based
on the judicially found facts) [fell] below the default statutory
maximum (based on the jury findings), the Sixth Amendment [was]
satisfied." Butterworth, 511 F.3d at 77 (citing United States v.
Lizardo, 445 F.3d 73, 89-90 (1st Cir.), cert. denied 549 U.S. 1007(2006); United States v. Goodine, 326 F.3d 26, 33 (1st Cir. 2003),
cert. denied, 541 U.S. 902 (2004)). Since the maximum penalty for
five grams of cocaine base was forty years, 21 U.S.C.
§ 841(b)(1)(B) (2006), imposition of a twenty-year minimum sentence
based on judicially found facts did not violate Butterworth's Sixth
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Amendment rights according to the law at the time he was sentenced.
Id. at 77.2
Six years later, in 2013, the Supreme Court overruled
Harris, explaining that the "distinction between facts that
increase the statutory maximum and facts that increase only the
mandatory minimum" was "inconsistent with our decision in Apprendi
v. New Jersey, and with the original meaning of the Sixth
Amendment." Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2155 (citation omitted).
Therefore, "[a]ny fact that, by law, increases the penalty for a
crime is an 'element' that must be submitted to the jury and found
beyond a reasonable doubt." Id.Seeking the benefit of the Court's new interpretation of
the Sixth Amendment, Butterworth promptly moved to vacate his
sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The district court denied
Butterworth's motion for habeas relief, but issued a certificate of
appealability ("COA") to decide whether Alleyne is retroactively
applicable. We allowed Butterworth's appeal to go forward on that
issue. See Grant-Chase v. Comm'r, 145 F.3d 431, 435 (1st Cir.
1998) (ruling that "a COA from a district judge as to an issue is
2
Butterworth also appealed his sentence in 2010 after
Congress amended the Fair Sentencing Act to increase the quantity
of cocaine base that triggered the twenty year mandatory minimum
from fifty to 280 grams. The district court denied Butterworth's
motion to vacate, and we affirmed, citing United States v.
Goncalves, 642 F.3d 245 (1st Cir. 2011) (holding that the Fair
Sentencing Act does not apply retroactively to defendants who were
sentenced before the Act's enactment date of August 3, 2010).
United States v. Butterworth, No. 10-2339 (1st Cir. Sep. 6, 2011).
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itself sufficient to permit an appeal of the issue in 28 U.S.C.
§§ 2254 and 2255 proceedings").
II. Analysis
It is common ground that Butterworth's sentence was
determined under procedures that would fail to suffice under
Alleyne. Today, the jury, not the judge, would have to determine
drug quantity if that quantity were to increase the mandatory
minimum sentence. And it would need to do so under a "beyond a
reasonable doubt" burden of proof.
Alleyne, though, was not the law when Butterworth was
convicted and sentenced. Like thousands of others, he was tried in
full accord with the law as it stood prior to Alleyne. Generally,
new rules of law do not apply to cases concluded before the new law
is recognized. Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656, 665 (2001) (citing
Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989)). Otherwise, every change
could unsettle hundreds or thousands of closed cases, and courts
might even hesitate to adopt new rules for fear of unsettling too
many final convictions and settled expectations. See Jenkins v.
Delaware, 395 U.S. 213, 218 (1969) (stating that the
"incongruities" resulting from "the problem inherent in prospective
decision-making . . . must be balanced against the impetus the
technique provides for the implementation of long-overdue reforms,
which otherwise could not be practically effected"); John C.
Jeffries, Jr., The Right-Remedy Gap in Constitutional Law, 109 Yale
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L.J. 87, 98-99 (1999) (questioning whether Warren Court-era
constitutional protections such as Miranda would have been erected
if "every confessed criminal then in custody had to be set free").
Congress has directed its attention to deciding whether
a new rule of law applies to requests that prior convictions be
reopened. It enacted 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f), which governs the
limitations period for post-conviction federal relief under the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA").
Section 2255(f) provides:
A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion
under this section. The limitation period shall run from
the latest of--
(1) the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes
final;
(2) the date on which the impediment to making a motion
created by governmental action in violation of the
Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if
the movant was prevented from making a motion by such
governmental action;
(3) the date on which the right asserted was initially
recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been
newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made
retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review;
or
(4) the date on which the facts supporting the claim or
claims presented could have been discovered through the
exercise of due diligence.
Butterworth's arguments to this Court rest upon (f)(1) and (f)(3),
but since his (f)(1) argument is outside the scope of the
certificate of appealability and arguably not preserved, we deal
with (f)(3) first.
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A. Does Alleyne create a newly recognized right that
retroactively applies on initial petitions for
collateral review?
Before determining whether Alleyne qualifies as a "newly
recognized" right that is "retroactively applicable to cases on
collateral review," we must address the threshold question of
whether section 2255(f)(3) permits courts of appeals to make a
retroactivity determination on an initial petition for collateral
review. We agree with the reasoned analysis on this issue
undertaken by the Seventh Circuit in Ashley v. United States, 266
F.3d 671, 673 (7th Cir. 2001), which reached its conclusion by
contrasting section 2255(f), governing initial petitions for
collateral review, with section 2255(h), the corresponding
provision for second or successive petitions. In order to obtain
authorization to file second or successive section 2255(h)(2)
motions, a petitioner must show that, in relevant part, his motion
relies upon "a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to
cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was
previously made unavailable." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(2) (emphasis
added).3 Section 2255(f)(3) omits the "by the Supreme Court"
qualifier that appears immediately after "made retroactive to cases
3
The other way to file a successive petition is similar to
(f)(4). Subsection (h)(1) permits a motion to be certified by a
court of appeals when there is "newly discovered evidence that, if
proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be
sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no
reasonable factfinder would have found the movant guilty of the
offense."
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on collateral review," and so to "treat the [(h)(2)] formulation as
identical to [(f)(3)] is not faithful to the difference in the
language." Ashley, 266 F.3d at 673. Therefore, we join our sister
circuits in concluding that "[d]istrict and appellate courts, no
less than the Supreme Court, may issue opinions" on initial
petitions for collateral review holding in the first instance that
a new rule is retroactive in the absence of a specific finding to
that effect by the Supreme Court. Id.; see also Garcia v. United
States, 278 F.3d 1210, 1213 & n.4 (11th Cir. 2010) (deciding that
(f)(3) does not require the retroactivity determination to be made
by the Supreme Court before a district or appellate court can make
such a finding, and noting that the same distinction in statutory
language exists in the comparable provisions for state prisoners in
28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)); Wiegand v. United States, 380 F.3d 890,
892 (6th Cir. 2004) (any federal court can make a retroactivity
decision under (f)(3)); United States v. Swinton, 333 F.3d 481, 486
(3d Cir. 2003) (same); United States v. Lopez, 248 F.3d 427, 431
(5th Cir. 2001) (same); Marquez v. United States, 91 F. App'x 162,
162 (1st Cir. 2004) (unpublished) (citing, inter alia, Ashley, and
rejecting petitioner's suggestion that only the Supreme Court may
decide the retroactivity question); but see Dodd v. United States,
545 U.S. 353, 365 n.4 (2005) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (disagreeing
with the majority's assumption that lower courts may make the
retroactivity determination for purposes of what is now codified as
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section 2255(f)(3), and arguing that the prior prepositional phrase
"by the Supreme Court" contained in section 2255(f)(3) modifies the
phrase "made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral
review").
We can therefore proceed to the merits of Butterworth's
section 2255(f)(3) argument. Since Butterworth filed his motion
well within one year of Alleyne, his motion is timely if Alleyne
triggered a new one-year limitations period for cases on collateral
review. In order to show this, Butterworth needs to establish that
Alleyne: (1) recognized a new right that is (2) "retroactively
applicable" on collateral review.
Butterworth easily convinces us that Alleyne is a "newly
recognized" right, and the government properly concedes the point.
The Supreme Court has explained that "a case announces a new rule
if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time
the defendant's conviction became final," and that "a holding is
not so dictated . . . unless . . . it would have been apparent to
all reasonable jurists." Chaidez v. United States, 133 S. Ct.
1103, 1107 (2013) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Harris governed Butterworth's Sixth Amendment argument at the time
his conviction became final in 2007, and in order to reach its
conclusion in Alleyne, the Court had to overrule Harris. Alleyne,
therefore, was not a "garden variety application" of the Sixth
Amendment to a new set of facts, Chaidez, 133 S. Ct. at 1107, but
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instead a "new obligation" on the government, Teague, 489 U.S. at
301, namely the requirement that it prove facts leading to a higher
mandatory minimum penalty to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Our conclusion that Alleyne was a new rule brings us into accord
with the other circuit courts to have decided the issue. See,
e.g., United States v. Reyes, 755 F.3d 210, 212 (3d Cir. 2014); In
re Payne, 733 F.3d 1027, 1029 (10th Cir. 2013); Simpson v. United
States, 721 F.3d 875, 876 (7th Cir. 2013).
By far the taller hurdle for Butterworth is the
retroactivity question, and this is where his claim under
section 2255(f)(3) fails. Although Alleyne's retroactivity is an
issue of first impression for this circuit,4 we did already decide
that Apprendi itself was not retroactively applicable on collateral
4
Other circuit courts have decided that Alleyne is not
retroactively applicable to second or successive petitions for
collateral review, which would require that the new rule was made
retroactive by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., United States v.
Winkelman, 746 F.3d 134, 136 (3d Cir. 2014); Hughes v. United
States, 770 F.3d 814, 818 (9th Cir. 2014); In re Mazzio, 756 F.3d
487, 489-93 (6th Cir. 2014); In re Payne, 733 F.3d at 130; In re
Kemper, 735 F.3d 211, 212 (5th Cir. 2013). The Tenth Circuit
recently denied a certificate of appealability on the basis that
the petitioner's argument that Alleyne is retroactive to initial
petitions "would be rejected by any reasonable jurist because it is
grounded on a misconception of § 2255." United States v. Hoon, 762
F.3d 1172, 1173 & n.1 (10th Cir. 2014). In Jeanty v. Warden, FCI-
Miami, 757 F.3d 1283, 1285 (11th Cir. 2014), the Eleventh Circuit
stated that Alleyne was not retroactive in the context of a 28
U.S.C. § 2241 petition, which requires a petitioner to satisfy five
requirements, including retroactivity. And the Third Circuit
declined to make Alleyne retroactive to an initial petition in
United States v. Reyes, 755 F.3d 210, 213 (3d Cir. 2014), but in
doing so appeared to use the standard for successive petitions.
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review in Sepulveda v. United States, 330 F.3d 55, 63 (1st Cir.
2003). Our analysis in Sepulveda informs, and arguably dictates,
our decision here, and we now reach the same conclusion about
retroactivity for Alleyne as we did for Apprendi.
In Sepulveda, we applied the Supreme Court's analysis in
Teague, 489 U.S. at 288, to determine the non-retroactivity of the
Apprendi rule. Sepulveda, 330 F.3d at 59-63. We explained that
Teague generally bars retroactive application of new rules of
criminal law, but admits of two exceptions. Sepulveda, 330 F.3d at
58. "The first allows retroactive application of new rules that
either (a) prohibit criminal punishment for certain types of
primary conduct, or (b) forbid the imposition of certain categories
of punishment for particular classes of defendants." Id. This
exception is just as "patently inapposite" to the rule of Alleyne
as it was to Apprendi, because requiring juries to find drug
quantities leading to higher mandatory minimums beyond a reasonable
doubt "neither places any particular type of conduct beyond the
reach of the criminal law nor pretermits any particular type of
punishment for a specific class of defendants." Id. Butterworth's
challenge under section 2255(f)(3), therefore, relies upon the
second Teague exception.
The second exception is for "watershed rules of criminal
procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the
criminal proceeding." Id. at 59 (quoting Graham v. Collins, 506
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U.S. 461, 478 (1993)). In order for a new rule to fall within this
second requirement, an infringement of the rule must: (1)
"seriously diminish the likelihood of obtaining an accurate
conviction," Tyler, 533 U.S. at 665, and (2) "alter the accepted
understanding of the bedrock procedural elements essential to the
integrity and fairness of a criminal proceeding," Sepulveda, 330
F.3d at 60.
Supreme Court precedent elucidates just how difficult it
is to fit into the watershed exception. Indeed, the Court has
noted that since "we operate from the premise that such procedures
would be so central to an accurate determination of innocence or
guilt, we believe it unlikely that many such components of basic
due process have yet to emerge." Graham, 506 U.S. at 478 (quoting
Teague, 489 U.S. at 313). Admitting that the "precise contours of
this exception may be difficult to discern," the Court has cited
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 342, 345 (1963)--which
established the right to counsel for state defendants charged with
a felony--as the lone example of "the type of rule coming within
the exception." Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 495 (1990).
In Sepulveda, we noted that Gideon's "pronouncement--that
representation by counsel is fundamental to a fair trial--reshaped
the legal landscape and dramatically revised the common
understanding of what the Due Process Clause demands in a criminal
trial." Sepulveda, 330 F.3d at 61. The Apprendi rule represented
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no such seismic shift to the "bedrock procedural elements" of our
constitutional protections for criminal defendants. Raising the
burden of proof and re-delegating factfinding from the judge to the
jury, while implicating important constitutional protections,5 did
not seriously diminish the likelihood of the accuracy of conviction
to the extent required by Teague, in part because a defendant has
necessarily already been convicted at the sentencing stage. Id. at
60. We stated that "findings by federal judges, though now
rendered insufficient in certain instances by Apprendi, nonetheless
are adequate to make reliable decisions about punishment." Id.(citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Nor did Apprendi
alter our "concept of ordered liberty" at the time it was handed
down. Id. at 61 (quoting O'Dell v. Netherland, 521 U.S. 151, 157
(1997)). "After all, even in the post-Apprendi era, findings of
fact made by a sentencing judge, under a preponderance standard,
remain an important part of the sentencing regimen." Id. at 60.
We found ourselves in good company when we rejected
Apprendi's retroactivity, as we joined every circuit court to have
reached the issue, id. at 61 (collecting cases), and none have
concluded otherwise since then. See, e.g., Swinton, 333 F.3d at
5
See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 368 (1970) (stating
that "the reasonable-doubt standard is indispensable," and holding
that juveniles are entitled to proof beyond a reasonable doubt when
charged with a crime); Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 149
(1968) (stating that "trial by jury in criminal cases is
fundamental to the American scheme of justice").
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491; Coleman v. United States, 329 F.3d 77, 90 (2d Cir. 2003);
United States v. Brown, 305 F.3d 304, 307-10 (5th Cir. 2002) (per
curiam); United States v. Mora, 293 F.3d 1213, 1218-19 (10th Cir.
2002). The heft of our precedent and that of our sister circuits
bearing on Apprendi's lack of retroactivity weighs heavily upon
Butterworth's chances to prevail due to the close analytical ties
between Apprendi and Alleyne. The majority opinion in Alleyne
stated that the Court could not "reconcile[] [Harris] with [its]
reasoning in Apprendi" because "Apprendi's definition of 'elements'
necessarily includes not only facts that increase the ceiling, but
also those that increase the floor. Both kinds of facts alter the
prescribed range of sentences to which a defendant is exposed and
do so in a manner that aggravates the punishment." 133 S. Ct. at
2158. The way in which Alleyne operated as a logical extension of
Apprendi forecloses the possibility that we could have been correct
in Sepulveda, yet find for Butterworth here. Unable to discern any
difference between statutory maximums and mandatory minimums that
is material for a retroactivity determination (and offered none by
Butterworth), we decline to depart from our analysis in Sepulveda.
Butterworth also contends that even if our conclusion in
Sepulveda appeared to be correct when it was decided, we can now
see with the benefit of hindsight that Apprendi was a much bigger
deal than anyone realized at the time. In essence, Butterworth
takes the position that our error in Sepulveda was a lack of
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prescience. He quotes our statement in United States v. Goodine,
326 F.3d 26, 33 (1st Cir. 2003), that "[n]othing in Apprendi or
subsequent cases calls into question the validity of the Sentencing
Guidelines," perhaps in reference to the fact that the Supreme
Court, just two years later, determined that the federal sentencing
guidelines were subject to the Sixth Amendment jury trial
requirements, namely Apprendi's requirement that a jury must find
facts leading to a higher maximum penalty. United States v.
Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 244-45 (2005).
This twist on Butterworth's argument is unpersuasive. We
are unaware of any instance in which the Supreme Court (or any
federal court) decided that a particular procedural protection is
not retroactively applicable under the watershed exception, and
then changed its mind years later due to the law's intervening
evolution. It is not difficult to imagine why that is so: Judicial
interpretation of the Constitution, by its nature, builds on
itself. The exercise of seeking out the first domino to fall, in
hindsight, would make the retroactivity determination of any given
new rule interminable. So the fact that Apprendi was cited by
subsequent cases extending the jury trial guarantee and heightened
burden of proof to mandatory state sentencing guidelines, Blakely
v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 303 (2004), federal sentencing
guidelines, Booker, 543 U.S. at 244-45, and the death penalty,
Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 589 (2002), does not a watershed
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moment make of Apprendi itself. Put differently, when a non-
retroactive new constitutional rule is later cited in cases that
create more new rules, that first new rule does not then
automatically qualify as retroactive under Teague.
We note, too, that the most relevant guidance the Supreme
Court has provided on retroactivity points squarely against the
conclusion Butterworth wants us to reach. In Schriro v. Summerlin,
542 U.S. 348 (2004), the Court declined to make retroactive a new
rule prohibiting judges from determining the presence or absence of
factors implicating the death penalty, finding "it implausible that
judicial factfinding so seriously diminishe[s] accuracy as to
produce an impermissibly large risk of injustice." Id. at 355-56.6
(alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Schriro only cuts Alleyne's potential retroactivity approximately
in half, since it did not implicate the burden of proof. But
Schriro takes us in the opposite direction of a retreat from
Sepulveda which, just like the question facing us here, implicated
both the beyond a reasonable doubt and jury trial protections.
The Court's analysis in Alleyne itself also undercuts any
claim that the holding represented the type of change to "bedrock
6
Ring, 536 U.S. at 584, supplied the new rule at issue in
Summerlin. In Ring, the Supreme Court held that Apprendi required
the existence of an aggravating factor making a defendant eligible
for the death penalty to be found by a jury. Id. at 589. Ring
invalidated Arizona's death penalty sentencing scheme, which
permitted a judge to make such a finding beyond a reasonable doubt.
Id. at 597.
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elements" of criminal procedure that would warrant retroactive
application. As we explained above, Alleyne was an extension of
the principle already set forth in Apprendi. Alleyne eliminated
the anomaly introduced by Harris, and it aligned the imposition of
mandatory minimums with the Court's then-existing Sixth Amendment
jurisprudence. Like Apprendi but unlike Gideon, Alleyne "did not
cut a new rule from whole cloth," but rather "clarified and
extended the scope of two well-settled principles of criminal
procedure: the defendant's right to a jury trial and the
government's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt." Coleman,
329 F.3d at 89 (internal quotation marks omitted) (distinguishing
Apprendi from Gideon). We therefore conclude that the rule
announced in Alleyne is not retroactively applicable to sentences
on collateral review on an initial habeas petition.7
B. Has Butterworth preserved his equitable tolling
argument?
Butterworth's alternative argument on appeal rests upon
section 2255(f)(1), which leaves open the limitations period within
one year of "the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes
7
Butterworth relies heavily on the dissenting opinion in
Schriro, in which Justice Breyer wrote that "[t]he majority does
not deny that Ring meets the first criterion, that its holding is
'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'" 542 U.S. at 359
(Breyer, J., dissenting). We have already held, however, that the
rule from Apprendi (of which Ring was a part) did not alter
"bedrock procedural elements of our criminal justice system."
Sepulveda, 330 F.3d at 60. And nothing in the majority opinion in
Schriro suggests our decision was incorrect.
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final." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(1). Butterworth's judgment of
conviction became final on October 6, 2008, the day the Supreme
Court denied his petition for certiorari. Butterworth v. United
States, 555 U.S. 830 (2008); see generally In re Smith, 436 F.3d 9,
10 (1st Cir. 2006) (collecting cases for the proposition that "a
conviction becomes final--and the one-year period therefore starts
to run--for purposes of § 2255(f)(1) when a petition for certiorari
is denied"). Nevertheless, Butterworth says his petition was
timely filed because the running of the one-year limitation period
under section 2255(f)(1) should be equitably tolled to reach his
claim.
The government contends that Butterworth's failure to
press this claim below bars him from pressing it here. We agree.
"It is black-letter law that arguments not presented to the trial
court are, with rare exceptions, forfeit[ed] on appeal." Turner v.
United States, 699 F.3d 578, 586 (2012) (alteration in original)
(quoting In re Redondo Constr. Corp., 678 F.3d 115, 121 (1st Cir.
2012)). Neither the magistrate's recommendation nor the district
court's order addressed Butterworth's equitable tolling theory.
This can hardly be attributed to oversight on their part; in order
to glean any hint of an equitable tolling claim from Butterworth's
pro se motions, we must interpret them extremely liberally. Cf.
Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520-21 (1972) (noting that
allegations of a pro se complaint are held to less stringent
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standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers); Boivon v.
Black, 225 F.3d 36, 43 (1st Cir. 2000) (same). Butterworth's
Motion to Vacate, Set Aside, or Correct [His] Sentence and his
memoranda in support of that motion do not mention section
2255(f)(1) or equitable tolling.
On the record before us, the most generous points we can
make in favor of preservation are that Butterworth did strenuously
contend in his motion and memoranda that he raised the Sixth
Amendment issue at sentencing and throughout the appeals process,
and he also stated that Alleyne is not a new rule. Butterworth now
advances both of those arguments to support his equitable tolling
claim, so it is possible that these statements were intended to
articulate such a theory of relief. But that very remote
possibility is overcome by the fact that Butterworth did not alert
the magistrate or district court (by, for instance, submitting a
motion to amend his petition or a motion for reconsideration) that
he sought to rely on section 2255(f)(1) independently of his
section 2255(f)(3) argument.
In addressing a retroactivity argument presented by a
habeas petitioner for the first time on appeal, we have stated that
"[t]he strictness on timing under § 2255 requires petitioners to be
clear in the district court when they are relying on the provisions
of 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(3) and making an independent claim."
Turner, 669 F.3d at 587. The same holds true for claims made under
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section 2255(f)(1). We reiterate that "[s]uch claims must be made
in the district court and not made and developed for the first time
on appeal. This is particularly important in light of the
Congressional intent to cabin such claims." Id. Therefore, on the
basis of forfeiture, we decline to reach the merits of
Butterworth's equitable tolling argument.
Finally, we note that even if the equitable tolling
argument was raised in the district court and preserved,
Butterworth would run into the further problem that the district
judge granted the COA solely on the issue of "the retroactive
application of Alleyne v. United States, because the Court of
Appeals for the First Circuit has not yet ruled on this issue."
United States v. Butterworth, Civ. No. 2:13-CR-282-DBH, 2013 WL
6670377, at *1 (D. Me. Dec. 18, 2013). Circuit precedent and
statutory authority advise us that we typically ought not "consider
the merits of an issue advanced by a habeas petitioner unless a COA
first has been obtained with respect to that issue." Peralta v.
United States, 597 F.3d 74, 83 (1st Cir. 2010) (citing Bui v.
DiPaolo, 170 F.3d 232, 237 (1st Cir. 1999)); 28 U.S.C.
§ 2253(c)(1)(B) ("Unless a circuit justice or judge issues a
certificate of appealability, an appeal may not be taken to the
court of appeals from . . . the final order in a proceeding under
section 2255."). Although we have retained the discretion to
expand the scope of a COA sua sponte, Holmes v. Spencer, 685 F.3d
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51, 58 (1st Cir. 2012), we decline to exercise such discretion
here, particularly in light of our finding of forfeiture.
III. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the district
court correctly determined that Butterworth's petition for
resentencing was untimely. We therefore affirm the denial of
relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.
So ordered.
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