Jamal Abu Samak v. Warden, FCC Coleman - Medium

766 F.3d 1271, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 17484, 2014 WL 4441203
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit·Decided September 10, 2014·No. 13-12161·Published·Cited by 50 cases

Opinions

PER CURIAM:

Jamal Samak, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, appeals the district court’s dismissal for lack of jurisdiction of his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 habeas corpus petition challenging his convictions and total sentence of life imprisonment, imposed after a jury found him guilty of one count of conspiracy to violate the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (“OCCA”), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; and one count of violating the OCCA through destruction by fire, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844(i). The district court’s dismissal was based on its conclusion that Samak had failed to establish the necessary conditions for his claims to satisfy the savings clause in 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e) such that they might be considered in a § 2241 petition.

On appeal, Samak argues that because the version of § 844(i) in effect at the time of his conviction and sentencing required a jury recommendation to impose a life sentence, and because the jury did not provide such a recommendation, the district court erred in sentencing him to life imprisonment. He also argues that his counsel was ineffective for failing to advise him to enter into a plea agreement.1 He provides no argument as to why either of these claims satisfies the savings clause.

Upon a thorough review of the record, and after consideration of the parties’ briefs, we affirm.

Whether a prisoner may bring a § 2241 petition under the savings clause of § 2255(e) is a question of law that we review de novo. Bryant v. Warden, FCC Coleman-Medium, 738 F.3d 1253, 1262 (11th Cir.2013). The applicability of the savings clause is a threshold jurisdictional issue, and the savings clause imposes a subject-matter jurisdictional limit on § 2241 petitions. Williams v. Warden, Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 713 F.3d 1332, 1337-38 (11th Cir.2013). The petitioner bears the burden of demonstrating that the § 2255 remedy was “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention” for purposes of § 2255(e). Mackey v. Warden, FCC Coleman-Medium, 739 F.3d 657, 661 (11th Cir.2014). Pro se pleadings are liberally construed. Tannenbaum v. United States, 148 F.3d 1262, 1263 (11th Cir.1998).

Under § 2241, a district court has the power to grant a writ of habeas corpus to a prisoner in custody in that district. 28 [1274]*1274U.S.C. § 2241(a), (d). This power is limited by § 2255(e), which states,

An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by [a § 2255 motion], 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.

28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). “An application for a writ of habeas corpus” includes a petition filed under § 2241. Bryant, 738 F.3d at 1262.

When a prisoner previously has filed a § 2255 motion to vacate, he must apply for and receive permission from the court of appeals before filing a successive § 2255 motion. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244(b), 2255(h). Such restrictions on successive § 2255 motions, standing alone, do not render that section “inadequate or ineffective” within the meaning of the savings clause. Gilbert v. United States, 640 F.3d 1293, 1307-08 (11th Cir.2011) (en banc). In Wofford, we stated that a petitioner meets the requirements of the savings clause when: (1) the petitioner’s claim is based on a retroactively applicable Supreme Court decision; (2) the holding of that Supreme Court decision establishes that the petitioner was convicted of a nonexistent offense; and (3) circuit law squarely foreclosed such a claim at the time it otherwise should have been raised at the petitioner’s trial, appeal, or first § 2255 motion. Wofford v. Scott, 177 F.3d 1236, 1244 (11th Cir.1999).

In Williams, we held that Wofford resolved Williams’s appeal because he could not show that our caselaw foreclosed his objection to treating his two Florida burglary convictions as violent felonies under the ACCA. Williams, 713 F.3d at 1343-44. We stated that Wofford established two necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, conditions for a sentencing claim to pass muster under the savings clause: (1) “the claim must be based upon a retroactively applicable Supreme Court decision”; and (2) “the Supreme Court decision must have overturned a circuit precedent that squarely resolved the claim so that the petitioner had no genuine opportunity to raise it at trial, on appeal, or in his first § 2255 motion.” Id. at 1343. We held that there was no circuit precedent during Williams’s direct and collateral attacks that “squarely held” that the Florida offense of burglary of a dwelling, which Williams was now contending was not a predicate offense, was a violent felony for ACCA purposes. Id. at 1344-45. Thus, Williams could have challenged the use of his burglary of a dwelling convictions as predicate offenses in his original § 2255 motion, and his § 2255 motion was not “an ineffective test of his claims.” Id. at 1345.

In responding to Williams’s argument that Begay2 was the “circuit-law busting, retroactively applicable Supreme Court decision” required by Wofford, we clarified that the Supreme Court case must be “circuit-law busting” in that it overturned circuit precedent that specifically addressed the claim the prisoner now asserts. Id. at 1346-47. We concluded that “Begay is not circuit law-busting in Wofford’s sense of the term” because it “changed the analytical framework for determining whether a given state offense is a violent felony at a high level of abstraction by crafting its ‘purposeful, violent, and aggressive’ test,” but “[i]t did not abrogate all of this Court’s pre-Begay violent felony jurisprudence.” Id. at 1347.

[1275]*1275In Bryant, we held that for a petitioner to bring a § 2241 challenge to the legality of his detention on the ground that a prior state conviction had been improperly designated a predicate offense for purposes of the ACCA, he must make a five-part showing that a prior § 2255 motion was “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” Bryant, 738 F.3d at 1274. First, a petitioner must show that, “throughout his sentencing, direct appeal, and first § 2255 proceeding, our Circuit’s binding precedent had specifically addressed [his] distinct prior state conviction that triggered § 924(e) and had squarely foreclosed [his] § 924(e) claim that he was erroneously sentenced above the 10-year statutory maximum penalty in § 924(a).” Id.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Jamal Abu Samak v. Warden, FCC Coleman - Medium, 766 F.3d 1271, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 17484, 2014 WL 4441203 (11th Cir. 2014).

766 F.3d 1271 (Jamal Abu Samak v. Warden, FCC Coleman - Medium) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

GELIN v. MERENDINO
S.D. Indiana, 2024
Mitchell Nicholas v.
Third Circuit, 2024
Candelaria v. Warden
S.D. Florida, 2023
Jones v. Hendrix
599 U.S. 465 (Supreme Court, 2023)
Clarence Wallace v.
Third Circuit, 2023
Waller v. (FCI) Mcdowell Warden
S.D. West Virginia, 2022
Hammoud v. Ma'at
49 F.4th 874 (Fifth Circuit, 2022)
Proctor v. Biden
S.D. Florida, 2022
Frank L. Amodeo v. FCC Coleman - Low Warden
984 F.3d 992 (Eleventh Circuit, 2021)
Roberto Beras v. Calvin Johnson, Warden
978 F.3d 246 (Fifth Circuit, 2020)
Marcus White v.
Third Circuit, 2020
Riascos v. F.C.I. Mcdowell Warden
S.D. West Virginia, 2020
Harry Beckett v.
Third Circuit, 2020
John Sutton v.
Third Circuit, 2020