United States v. Keyes

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
May 29, 2008
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee, No. 07-1506
v. (D. Colorado)
RANDY EUGENE KEYES, (D.C. No. 1:07-CV-00867-LTB)
Defendant - Appellant.
ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY
Before BRISCOE, MURPHY, and HARTZ, Circuit Judges.
Randy Eugene Keyes pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for
the District of Colorado to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. See
18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He was sentenced on January 20, 2006, to a term of 70
months’ imprisonment, and judgment was entered on January 30. On April 26,
2007, Mr. Keyes filed a motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Relying on
Lopez v. Gonzales, 127 S. Ct. 625, decided on December 5, 2006, he asserted that
the district court erroneously considered his conviction in Nevada as the predicate
offense for his § 922(g)(1) conviction. The district court dismissed the motion as
time-barred. See 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(1). Mr. Keyes now seeks a certificate of
appealability (COA) to appeal the district court’s ruling. See id. § 2253(c)
(requiring COA to appeal denial of § 2255 motion). We deny a COA and dismiss
the appeal.
Under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2), a COA will issue “only if the applicant has
made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” This standard
requires “a demonstration that . . . includes showing that reasonable jurists could
debate whether (or, for that matter, agree that) the petition should have been
resolved in a different manner or that the issues presented were adequate to
deserve encouragement to proceed further.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473,
484 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the prisoner must
show that the district court’s resolution of the constitutional claim was either
“debatable or wrong.” Id. If the § 2255 motion was denied on procedural
grounds, the movant faces a double hurdle. Not only must the movant make a
substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right, but he must also show
“that jurists of reason would find it debatable . . . whether the district court was
correct in its procedural ruling.” Id. “Where a plain procedural bar is present and
the district court is correct to invoke it to dispose of a case, a reasonable jurist
could not conclude either that the district court erred in dismissing the [motion]
or that the [movant] should be allowed to proceed further.” Id.
The district court was clearly correct in ruling that Mr. Keyes’s motion was
time-barred. The statute of limitations for motions under § 2255 states, in
pertinent part:
-2-
(f) A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion under
[§ 2255]. The limitation period shall run from the latest of—
(1) the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes
final; [or]
...
(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 . . . .
28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(1) & (3). Mr. Keyes does not contest that his motion was
filed more than one year after his judgment of conviction became final. Judgment
was entered on January 30, 2006, and became final on February 13, the end of the
period when he could have appealed his conviction. See Kapral v. United States,
166 F.3d 565, 577 (3d Cir. 1999) (“If a defendant does not pursue a timely direct
appeal to the court of appeals, his or her conviction and sentence become final,
and the statute of limitation begins to run, on the date on which the time for filing
such an appeal expired.”); Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1) (notice of appeal must be filed
within 10 days of the entry of the judgment of conviction). His § 2255 motion
was filed more than a year later, on April 26, 2007.
Therefore, Mr. Keyes’s § 2255 motion was untimely unless he can rely on
§ 2255(f)(3). He contends that his case is governed by the Supreme Court’s
decision in Lopez, which was handed down less than a year before he filed his
§ 2255 motion. But Lopez does not satisfy the requirements of § 2255(f)(3). To
begin with, the Supreme Court has not ruled that Lopez applies retroactively to
-3-
cases on collateral review. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, Lopez
provides Mr. Keyes with no new right. The statute under which Mr. Keyes was
convicted does not use the term felony, but simply prohibits possession of a
firearm by a person “who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable
by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1); see
United States v. Norris, 319 F.3d 1278, 1283 (10th Cir. 2003) (“What . . .
matter[s] is that under the law of the jurisdiction where the proceedings were
held, at the time of those proceedings, [the defendant] had committed an offense
punishable by more than one year.”). Lopez, however, concerned different
language in a different statute. It construed the term “felony punishable under the
Controlled Substances Act” in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(2). See Lopez, 127 S. Ct. at627–628. Thus, the holding in Lopez is irrelevant to Mr. Keyes’s conviction.
Because § 2255(f)(3) has no application to Mr. Keyes’s § 2255 motion, his
motion was properly dismissed as untimely.
We AFFIRM the district court’s denial of relief and DISMISS this appeal.
We also DENY Mr. Keyes’s pending motions for clarification and limited
remand.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Harris L Hartz
Circuit Judge
-4-