Woody v. Marberry

178 F. App'x 468
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedApril 25, 2006
Docket05-1403
StatusUnpublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 178 F. App'x 468 (Woody v. Marberry) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Woody v. Marberry, 178 F. App'x 468 (6th Cir. 2006).

Opinion

OPINION

R. GUY COLE, Jr., Circuit Judge.

Pro se Petitioner-Appellant Thomas Franklin Woody filed a habeas petition in the judicial district in which he was incarcerated pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241. The district court determined that, while a portion of Woody’s petition properly sought relief under § 2241, Woody raised claims that should have been brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The district court concluded that 1) relief under § 2241 was improper because the Bureau of Prisons did not err in calculating Woody’s sentence and that Woody had not shown that the remedy under § 2255 was inadequate such that he could seek relief for his ostensible § 2255 claims under § 2241, and 2) that § 2241 offered the incorrect framework to analyze Woody’s § 2255 claims. The district court then recharacterized Woody’s petition under § 2241 as a petition under § 2255 and determined that the interest of justice did not require that Woody’s petition be transferred to the Northern District of Florida, where Woody properly could have brought his § 2255 petition. Finally, the district court dismissed Woody’s petition for lack of jurisdiction.

For the following reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment as to Woody’s § 2241 claims, VACATE the district court’s jurisdictional holding on Woody’s § 2255 claim and REMAND for the limited purpose of having the district court comply with the Supreme Court’s opinion in Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375, 124 S.Ct. 786, 157 L.Ed.2d 778 (2003), and give Woody the opportunity to either withdraw his petition, have his petition transferred under 28 U.S.C. § 1631 to the appropriate judicial district, or have his petition construed as one being brought under § 2255 and, therefore, be denied on jurisdictional grounds.

I.

The essential facts of this case are not in dispute. On March 31, 1994, Woody was in state custody in Florida serving a two and one-half year state prison sentence. Pursuant to a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, Woody was brought into federal custody. On July 29, 1994, Woody was sentenced to three concurrent 140-month terms of imprisonment in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida on three counts of bank robbery. The judgments of sentence indicated that the federal sentences would run concurrently with one another but were silent as to whether the federal sentences would be concurrent or consecutive to any sentences imposed in the state courts.

On August 1,1995, Woody completed his first state sentence. However, while Woody was serving this state sentence, “a detainer was placed on him by the Hills-borough County Circuit Court in Tampa, *470 Florida for a hearing to determine whether to” punish Woody for violating his probation/community control status on several felony convictions. On August 3,1995, two days after completing his first state sentence, Woody’s community control status was revoked and he was sentenced to five and one-half years in state prison by the Hillsborough County Circuit Court.

As the district court summarized:

Petitioner remained in the custody of the State of Florida until he was discharged from his state sentence by the Florida Department of Corrections (F.D.O.C.) on November 26, 1997. Petitioner was then transferred to the Bureau of Prisons to commence his federal prison sentences.
On March 19, 2004, petitioner filed a request with the Bureau of Prisons [ (“B.O.P.”) ] to receive approximately twenty eight months credit against his federal sentences for the time between August 3, 1995 and November 26, 1997 that he was incarcerated in the State of Florida after his probation was revoked .... Because the judgment in petitioner’s federal sentences had been silent as to whether these sentences would be served consecutively or concurrently to any as yet imposed state sentences, the B.O.P. contacted the federal judge in this case pursuant to Program Statement 5160.05, to ascertain his intent when sentencing petitioner. On June 17, 2004, Judge Maurice M. Paul wrote the B.O.P.’s Inmate Systems Administrator and informed him that his intent was that petitioner’s federal sentences would commence only after he had completed his state sentence and “entered into exclusive federal custody.”

(Emphasis added).

At about the same time the administrative procedure was occurring, Woody moved the Northern District of Florida to clarify which date his federal sentence commenced. On June 23, 2004, the district court denied the motion, stating that Woody’s “federal sentence was meant to run consecutively to his state sentence, thereby setting the date he entered into exclusive federal custody, November 26, 1997, as the date his sentence commenced.”

On July 3, 2004, Woody sought reconsideration in the Florida district court. This motion was denied on July 21, 2004.

On December 9, 2004, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241, Woody filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Eastern District of Michigan, the judicial district in which he was incarcerated at the time he filed his petition. Woody’s petition basically contained two substantive claims. First, Woody claimed that the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) miscalculated his sentence under federal law. Second, Woody claimed that the order of the Florida district court ten years after Woody’s federal conviction and original sentence, which held that Woody’s sentence was to run consecutively to the yet-to-be-imposed state sentence, violated federal law and the Constitution.

The district court analyzed Woody’s first claim through the lens of § 2241, and determined that Woody did not have a cognizable § 2241 claim. The district court then determined that the rest of Woody’s claims relating to the Florida district court’s 2004 sentencing order should have been brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255 rather than § 2241. The district court determined that Woody had not met his burden to show that § 2255 provided an inadequate remedy such that § 2241 was the proper avenue for habeas relief. The district court further determined that it was without jurisdiction to adjudicate Woody’s § 2255 petition.

*471 Importantly, while it did not do so explicitly, the district court recharacterized Woody’s pro se habeas petition as one under § 2255 when it considered transferring Woody’s habeas petition to the Northern District of Florida because the district court could not transfer a § 2241 petition to Florida. The district court did this without notice to Woody that the court intended to recharacterize part of Woody’s motion as a habeas petition brought pursuant to § 2255, and without providing Woody an opportunity to withdraw his § 2255 claims.

Woody timely appealed.

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178 F. App'x 468, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/woody-v-marberry-ca6-2006.