United States v. Williams, Edward

257 F. App'x 997

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Decided: December 19, 2007
• Docket: 07-2495
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

ORDER

The appellant was convicted on drug and related charges and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992. The conviction and sentence were eventually affirmed by this court in 1997 in an unpublished opinion 1997 WL 303359. He later filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. section 2255 to vacate the judgment. It was dismissed as being an unauthorized second section 2255 motion after an earlier motion of his under Fed. R.Crim.P. 33 was recharacterized as a section 2255 motion. In 2006 he filed a third collateral attack, this one denominated as a request for relief under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. section 1651. The district court denied relief, and this appeal followed. We affirm. Like the earlier Rule 33 motion, the motion under section 1651 is functionally a section 2255 motion. Nomenclature is irrelevant. A convicted defendant cannot evade the limitation on successive such motions by calling a motion by a different name. E.g., United States v. Scott, 414 F.3d 815 (7th Cir.2005).

AFFIRMED.