Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03049/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03049-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 510
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Vacate Sentence
Cause of Action: 

---

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 14-3049 

BENJAMIN BARRY KRAMER, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Respondent-Appellee. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of Illinois. 

No. 14-cv-678 — J. Phil Gilbert, Judge

____________________ 

ARGUED APRIL 22, 2015 — DECIDED AUGUST 17, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER and KANNE, Circuit Judges, and DARRAH,

District Judge.

KANNE, Circuit Judge. 

 

 

The Honorable John W. Darrah, of the United States District Court for 

the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation. 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
2 No. 14-3049 

I. BACKGROUND

In 1988, Appellant Benjamin Barry Kramer was convicted 

of two offenses: (1) conspiring to distribute marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846; and (2) engaging in a Continuing 

Criminal Enterprise (“CCE”), in violation of 21 U.S.C. 

§ 848(b). As the result of a motion filed under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2255, Kramer’s section 846 conviction and sentence were 

vacated in 1998. His section 848 conviction and sentence 

were affirmed. In June of 2014, Kramer filed another motion 

under section 2255 in the Southern District of Illinois, this 

time challenging his CCE conviction. 

The district court dismissed Kramer’s petition, concluding that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over Kramer’s 

claim. It characterized Kramer’s motion as successive and 

thus barred by section 2255’s prohibition of subsequent petitions. The district court issued a certificate of appealability 

on the question of whether Kramer’s motion is properly 

characterized as successive. We affirm the district court’s 

dismissal of Kramer’s petition. 

A. Kramer’s Trial and Conviction 

The government believed that between 1982 and 1986, 

Kramer and several associates imported large quantities of 

marijuana into the United States. On January 26, 1988, it indicted Kramer and several codefendants on multiple counts. 

Count 1 charged him with conducting a CCE, in violation of 

21 U.S.C. § 848. Subsection (b) of that statute imposed a penalty of life imprisonment, if certain conditions were met. 21 

U.S.C. § 848(b). Kramer was charged under subsection (b). 

Count 2 charged him with conspiring to distribute marijuana 

in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 3

The version of section 848 in effect at the time of Kramer’s offense defined a continuing criminal enterprise as follows: 

[A] person is engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise if— 

(1) he violates any provision of this subchapter or 

subchapter II of this chapter the punishment for 

which is a felony, and 

(2) Such violation is a part of a continuing series of 

violations of this subchapter or subchapter II of this 

chapter— 

(A) which are undertaken by such person in 

concert with five or more other persons with respect to whom such person occupies a position 

of organizer, a supervisory position, or any other position of management, and 

(B) from which such person obtains substantial 

income or resources.

21 U.S.C. § 848(c) (1988) (amended 2006). 

So, in addition to the other statutory requirements, to 

convict Kramer of the CCE charge, the government had to 

prove that Kramer committed the requisite underlying felonies. See 21 U.S.C. § 848(c). The government was not required to seek or obtain convictions for those underlying offenses—indeed, Kramer could not have been charged with 

them, since the applicable statutes of limitation had already 

run. See United States v. Kramer, 955 F.2d 479, 487 (7th Cir. 

1992) (citing United States v. Young, 745 F.2d 733, 747 (2d Cir. 

1984) (holding “in order to support a § 848 charge, the government is not required to ... obtain convictions on, any of 

the eligible predicate offenses, ...”)). The government 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
4 No. 14-3049 

claimed that Kramer had committed a variety of eligible felonies: the indictment listed fourteen drug offenses allegedly 

committed by Kramer.1 

The case went to jury trial in the Southern District of Illinois between June and October of 1988. The government 

presented evidence, including witness testimony, of the drug 

violations alleged in the indictment. Over Kramer’s objection, one witness provided evidence of additional drug offenses that were not enumerated in the indictment. 

Following the presentation of evidence, the district court 

instructed the jury to engage in a two-step process to determine whether the government had proven its CCE charge. 

First, the court stated, the jury had to determine whether 

Kramer had committed any eligible offense. If the jury concluded that Kramer had committed one such violation, it 

should proceed to the second step. 

In the second step, the jury had to determine whether the 

offense that it found in step one was “part of a continuing 

series of violations,” as required by subsection (c)(2). See 21 

U.S.C. § 848(c)(2). The court instructed the jury that a “continuing series” meant “three or more violations.” So, in addition to the violation it had found in step one, the jury had to 

conclude that Kramer had committed two additional eligible 

felonies. The court did not limit the jury to considering the 

section 846 charge and the fourteen violations listed in the 

indictment. The court told the jury that it could consider 

 

1 The indictment lists eighteen offenses, but four of those appear to apply 

only to one of Kramer’s codefendants. 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 5

“any additional violations” of which the government produced evidence at trial. 

Kramer raised a number of objections to the district 

court’s jury instructions. As relevant here, Kramer requested 

that the court instruct the jury that it could consider only offenses alleged in the indictment. Additionally, he asked that 

the court instruct the jurors that they must unanimously 

agree on the same three acts as forming the predicates for 

the CCE charge. And finally, Kramer requested that the court 

use a special verdict form to record the verdict. The court 

denied all of these requests. 

After five reported deadlocks, the jury convicted Kramer 

on both counts. He was sentenced to a forty-year prison term 

for the section 846 conviction, and he was sentenced to life 

without parole for the section 848(b) conviction. 

B. Kramer’s Appeals, Habeas Petitions, and Relevant Case Law 

Kramer’s subsequent procedural history is intertwined 

with a series of cases decided by this court and the United 

States Supreme Court. We present both together, in an attempt to provide a clear and concise explanation of this 

case’s twenty-seven year history. 

1. Kramer’s Direct Appeal 

Kramer filed his direct appeal in May 1989. As relevant 

here, that appeal alleged two errors requiring reversal. Kramer argued that the district court erred in (1) refusing to require juror unanimity as to the three predicate violations required for the “continuing series” element of the CCE count; 

and (2) allowing the jury to consider the section 846 charge 

as one of the predicate offenses of the CCE, because it actualCase: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
6 No. 14-3049 

ly constituted a lesser-included offense (and was therefore 

barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause). 

Before we ruled on Kramer’s appeal, we decided United 

States v. Baker, 905 F.2d 1100 (7th Cir. 1990). In that case, we 

concluded that a section 846 offense could not be counted as 

one of the section 848 “continuing series of acts,” because a 

section 846 conspiracy was subsumed within the “concert 

aspect” of section 848(c). Id. at 104. In light of that determination, we allowed the parties to submit supplemental briefing 

on the issue. 

In January 1992, we affirmed Kramer’s convictions. United States v. Kramer, 955 F.2d 479, 492 (7th Cir. 1992). First, we 

concluded that the court was not required to instruct the jury 

that it must unanimously agree on the same three section 

848 predicate offenses. We acknowledged, however, that a 

circuit split existed on that issue. Second, we acknowledged 

that our decision in Baker made clear that a section 846 

charge could not be counted as one of the section 848 “continuing series” offenses. But we held that any error in allowing the jury to consider the section 846 count was harmless, 

because Kramer had been charged with many additional 

drug offenses. We concluded that “[t]hese offenses were 

more than adequate to meet the continuing series requirement of the CCE charge.” Id. at 486. 

2. The Supreme Court’s Decision in Rutledge 

The Supreme Court decided Rutledge v. United States in 

1996, four years after we affirmed Kramer’s conviction on 

direct appeal. 517 U.S. 292 (1996). Defendant Tommy 

Rutledge was convicted in the Central District of Illinois of 

one count of violating section 846 and of one count of violatCase: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 7

ing section 848. Id. at 294. He was sentenced to life without 

parole on each count. Id. at 295. Rutledge challenged those 

convictions and sentences, arguing that they punished him 

twice for the same offense, in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Id. at 296. We affirmed his convictions, finding 

no double-jeopardy violation. Id. The Supreme Court reversed. Id. at 307. 

Applying the Blockburger test, the Court determined that 

the conspiracy defined in section 846 contained the same elements as the CCE offense defined in section 848. Id. at 300. 

As such, the two statutes constituted the same offense for 

purposes of double jeopardy: the section 846 conspiracy was 

a lesser-included offense of the section 848 CCE. Id. The 

Court then concluded that Congress had not clearly authorized punishment for both offenses. Id. at 302–07. Therefore, 

the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibited multiple punishment 

for sections 846 and 848. Id. at 307. 

3. Kramer’s 1997 § 2255 Motion

Having exhausted his direct-appeal remedies, on April 

22, 1997, Kramer filed a section 2255 motion in the Southern 

District of Illinois, seeking a writ of habeas corpus. Of the 

several arguments Kramer advanced for vacating his convictions, the three relevant ones for this inquiry are: (1) in light 

of Rutledge, his separate convictions and punishments for 

violations of sections 846 and 848 violated the Double Jeopardy Clause; (2) the court’s jury instructions on his section 

848 count violated due process and the Double Jeopardy 

Clause; and (3) his appellate counsel was ineffective for having failed to effectively raise that issue on direct appeal. 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
8 No. 14-3049 

On March 5, 1998, the district court issued its memorandum opinion and order. See Kramer v. United States, No. 97-

Civ-4117-JLF (Mar. 5, 1998, S.D. Ill.). It agreed that, in light of 

Rutledge, one of Kramer’s convictions must be vacated. The 

court vacated his conviction and sentence on the section 846 

count, subject to reinstatement in the event that Kramer’s 

section 848 conviction were later overturned. 

The court rejected Kramer’s second argument, that the jury instructions on his section 848 count violated due process 

and the Double Jeopardy Clause. To begin, the court concluded that it “was not entirely clear whether [Kramer] 

raised this precise issue on direct appeal.” Id. at *3–4. If 

Kramer had not already raised the issue, he would have 

been required to show (1) good cause for failing to raise it, 

plus actual prejudice arising from that failure; or (2) that the 

court’s refusal to address the claims would result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice. If Kramer had raised the 

claim on direct appeal, he would have been required to 

show changed circumstances in order to raise the issue 

again. The court concluded that Kramer did not meet either 

set of requirements for raising the issue in his motion. The 

court also rejected Kramer’s argument that his counsel was 

ineffective for having failed to raise the issue at trial. 

The following day, the district court issued its judgment. 

It vacated Kramer’s section 846 conviction and sentence, and 

it denied his motion in all other respects. The district court 

denied Kramer’s motion for a certificate of appealability on 

the other claims, and we did the same. 

 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 9

4. The Supreme Court’s Opinion in Richardson 

In 1999, the Supreme Court decided Richardson v. United 

States, yet another case on appeal from this court regarding a 

section 848 CCE conviction. 526 U.S. 813 (1999). The relevant 

facts in that case were virtually identical to those in Kramer’s: at trial, “the judge rejected Richardson’s proposal to 

instruct the jury that it must unanimously agree on which 

three acts constituted the series of violations. Instead, the 

judge instructed the jurors that they must unanimously 

agree that the defendant committed at least three federal 

narcotics offenses.” Id. at 816 (internal quotations omitted). 

Richardson challenged that jury instruction. On appeal we 

held, on one side of a circuit split, that the judge’s instruction 

was proper. 

The Supreme Court reversed. It held that “a jury in a federal criminal case brought under § 848 must unanimously 

agree not only that the defendant committed some ‘continuing series of violations’ but also that the defendant committed each of the individual ‘violations’ necessary to make up 

that ‘continuing series.’” Id. at 815. In other words, each underlying violation in the continuing series constitutes an element of the CCE offense. 

5. Kramer’s 1999 Section 2241 and Section 2255 Motions 

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Richardson, 

Kramer filed a petition in September of 1999 for a writ of habeas corpus in the Southern District of Illinois, seeking relief 

under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, or alternatively, 28 U.S.C. § 2255. 

The district court ruled on Kramer’s petition in July 2002. 

See Kramer v. United States, No. 99-Civ-0684-JLF (Jul. 25, 2002, 

S.D. Ill.). The court concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
10 No. 14-3049 

Kramer’s section 2241 motion. At the time that Kramer filed 

his petition, he was incarcerated in a federal detention facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. As such, the court held that Kramer should have filed his motion in the Southern District of 

Indiana. 

The court found that it lacked jurisdiction under section 

2255, as well. A petitioner is required to seek authorization 

from the court of appeals to file a “second or successive” section 2255 motion. See 28 U.S.C. § 2255, ¶ 8. Without that authorization, the district court lacks jurisdiction over the petition. The district court concluded that Kramer had already 

pursued one section 2255 motion (the 1997 petition that resulted in the vacatur of his section 846 conviction). Therefore, Kramer was required to obtain permission from this 

court before pursuing another section 2255 motion. Without 

that permission, the court concluded, it lacked subject matter 

jurisdiction over the section 2255 claim. The court dismissed 

both motions without prejudice. 

On December 20, 2002, Kramer refiled his petition, again 

under both sections 2241 and 2255, in the Southern District 

of Indiana. See Kramer v. Olson, No. 2:02-cv-00317 (Apr. 21, 

2003, S.D. Ind.). That court concluded, as had the district 

court in the Southern District of Illinois, that Kramer’s petition was successive under the language of the statute: Kramer had filed a previous section 2255 motion, and the district court had (in addition to the vacatur) denied him relief 

on his remaining claims. The district court then concluded 

that, under the two routes available to him, Kramer did not 

establish that the statute permitted him to file a successive 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 11

section 2255 motion.2 Therefore, the district court concluded 

that it did not have jurisdiction over Kramer’s motion. 

Kramer appealed the district court’s dismissal, and we affirmed. See Kramer v. Olson, 347 F.3d 214 (7th Cir. 2003) (per 

curiam). 

6. Magwood and Suggs 

In 2010, the Supreme Court decided Magwood v. Patterson,

the case that forms the basis of Kramer’s current section 2255 

motion. 561 U.S. 320 (2010). 

Billy Joe Magwood was convicted in Alabama state court 

of killing the Sheriff of Coffee County, and he was sentenced 

to death. Having exhausted his state remedies, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under section 2254 in the 

Middle District of Alabama. The district court upheld Magwood’s conviction but vacated his death sentence. The Court 

of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. 

The state trial court then held a resentencing hearing, and 

it again imposed the death penalty. After again exhausting 

his state court remedies, Magwood filed a section 2254 petition for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging his new death 

sentence. He argued that his death sentence was unconstitutional, because “he did not have fair warning at the time of 

 

2 See 28 U.S.C. § 2255, ¶ 5 (permitting a petitioner to bring a successive 

motion when the petitioner meets one of two listed criteria); see also In re 

Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 611 (7th Cir. 1998) (establishing circumstances 

under which the petitioner could invoke section 2255’s “savings clause,” 

permitting a motion under section 2241); Garza v. Lappin, 253 F.3d 918, 

922 (7th Cir. 2001) (same); Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832 (7th Cir. 2002) 

(same). 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
12 No. 14-3049 

his offense that his conduct would be sufficient to warrant a 

death sentence under Alabama law.” Id. at 328. 

Under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), a petitioner is required 

to seek authorization from the court of appeals to file a “second or successive” section 2254 motion.3 Without such authorization, the district court lacks jurisdiction over the petition. The district court, sua sponte, considered whether Magwood’s motion was “second or successive” under section 2244(b)(3)(A). The court concluded that the petition was 

not successive, and it conditionally granted the motion. The 

court of appeals disagreed, concluding that Magwood’s petition was successive, and therefore that the district court did 

not have jurisdiction to entertain the claim. The Supreme 

Court reversed. 

On appeal, the government argued that the question of 

whether a petition was “second or successive” was “claimfocused”. Id. at 331 (internal quotations omitted) (emphasis 

added). According to the government, “the phrase should be 

read to reflect a principle that a prisoner is entitled to one, 

but only one, full and fair opportunity to wage a collateral 

attack.” Id. The government argued that Magwood’s fairwarning challenge had been available to him from the start: 

both when he was sentenced to death the first time and during his subsequent collateral review. Magwood failed to 

raise it then, and the government argued that this failure 

rendered his petition successive. 

 

3 The same requirements apply to motions under both section 2254 and 

section 2255. 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 13

The Court rejected the government’s reading of section 2244(b)(3)(A). Noting that “second or successive” is a 

term of art in the habeas context, the Court turned to the 

phrase’s statutory context to interpret it. It concluded that 

“second or successive” refers to the state court judgment being challenged. And in Magwood’s case, he was challenging 

a judgment that had not been the subject of his first 2254 motion. His first death sentence, the subject of his prior section 2254 motion, had been vacated. The judgment that he 

now challenged was the death sentence that had been subsequently imposed, after a new sentencing hearing. Therefore, the Court concluded, Magwood’s petition was not successive. 

Just prior to concluding its opinion, the Court stated the 

following: 

The State objects that our reading of § 2244(b) 

would allow a petitioner who obtains a conditional 

writ as to his sentence to file a subsequent application challenging not only his resulting, new sentence, but also his original, undisturbed conviction. 

The State believes this result follows because a sentence and conviction form a single “judgment” for 

purposes of habeas review. This case gives us no 

occasion to address that question, because Magwood has not attempted to challenge his underlying conviction. We base our conclusion on the text, 

and that text is not altered by consequences the 

State speculates will follow in another case. 

Id. at 342 (emphasis in original). This language would be critical to our application of Magwood in Suggs v. United States, 

705 F.3d 279 (7th Cir. 2013). 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
14 No. 14-3049 

In Suggs, defendant Alonzo Suggs was convicted of a 

federal drug offense and sentenced to 300 months in prison. 

Under section 2255, Suggs challenged his sentence, arguing 

that he received ineffective assistance of counsel regarding 

his sentencing guideline calculations. He succeeded: his sentence was vacated, and he was subsequently resentenced to 

240 months in prison. 

After his resentencing, Suggs obtained new information 

that he claimed established his innocence. He requested 

permission from this court to bring a second section 2255 

motion, so that he could challenge his conviction in light of 

the newly-discovered evidence. We denied his request. He 

then filed a new motion under section 2255 in the district 

court. He argued that his motion “should not be barred as 

‘second or successive’ because his resentencing imposed a 

new judgment such that his new motion under section 2255 

should not be barred.” Id. at 281. 

So, the Suggs facts seemed to present precisely the question that the Supreme Court noted, without deciding, in 

Magwood: Suggs sought to challenge his underlying conviction, which had been undisturbed by the vacatur of his prior 

sentence and his resentencing. Did this constitute a “new 

judgment” under Magwood? If so, his section 2255 motion 

would be not be considered successive. 

Prior to Magwood, our circuit precedent had established 

that “such motions after resentencing are not second or successive when they allege errors made during the resentencing, but they are second or successive when they challenge 

the underlying conviction. Id. at 282 (citing Dahler v. United 

States, 259 F.3d 763 (7th Cir. 2001)). Suggs argued, however, 

that the reasoning upon which Dahler was based could not 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 15

have survived Magwood. He contended that he should be 

permitted to challenge his underlying conviction as a first section 2255 motion. 

We disagreed. We concluded that “because Magwood expressly declined to extend its holding to the facts before us 

here, it did not disturb our circuit’s precedent, Dahler, which 

applies to Suggs’ motion and required the district court to 

dismiss it as second or successive.” Suggs, 705 F.3d at 282–83. 

We held that “Magwood’s application to these facts is not sufficiently clear for us to abandon principles of stare decisis 

based on what the Supreme Court itself called ‘speculation’ 

about how the Court would rule on an issue it expressly 

chose not to decide.” Id. at 284. Judge Sykes dissented from 

this holding, stating that, in her view, “the Supreme Court’s 

decision in Magwood v. Patterson ... has displaced our decision in Dahler v. United States.” Id. at 285 (Sykes, J., dissenting). 

7. Kramer’s Current Petition 

On June 12, 2014, Kramer filed a section 2255 motion in 

the Southern District of Illinois, seeking to vacate his section 848 conviction. The district court concluded, applying 

Suggs, that Kramer’s motion was “second or successive.” See 

Kramer v. United States, No. 14-cv-678 (Aug. 8, 2014, S.D. Ill.). 

It dismissed Kramer’s petition for lack of jurisdiction, but it 

granted a certificate of appealability on the issue of whether 

“Kramer’s pending motion was an unauthorized successive 

petition under Magwood.” Kramer appealed. 

II. ANALYSIS

Underlying Kramer’s current section 2255 motions is the 

Supreme Court’s holding in Richardson. It is beyond dispute 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
16 No. 14-3049 

that, in Richardson, the Supreme Court invalidated the very 

jury instruction that was employed in Kramer’s case. If Kramer were tried today, the jury would be required to unanimously agree on the three predicate felonies used to make 

up the “continuing series” of CCE violations. There is no 

question that this requirement was not imposed on the jury 

that convicted Kramer in 1988. Kramer argues that it is fundamentally unfair to detain him, in light of Richardson’s holding that his jury instructions were infirm. 

But Kramer faces a procedural hurdle imposed by section 

2255 itself. There is no doubt that, on the merits, Richardson 

speaks to the very issue Kramer has raised throughout his 

confinement, on both direct and collateral review. But, based 

on the procedural requirements imposed by the statute, we 

cannot address the merits of Kramer’s claim until we have 

established that we have jurisdiction. 

Kramer is barred from bringing a successive section 2255 

motion, unless his petition falls into one of the narrow exceptions permitted (noted above) for a subsequent motion.4

Kramer argues, however, that his petition should be considered a first, non-successive motion. Acknowledging that our 

prior holding in Suggs would foreclose his claim if it applied, 

Kramer argues that Suggs should not be expanded to cover 

 

4 See 28 U.S.C. § 2255, ¶ 5 (permitting a petitioner to bring a successive 

motion when the petitioner meets one of two listed criteria); see also In re 

Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 611 (7th Cir. 1998) (establishing circumstances 

under which the petitioner could invoke section 2255’s “savings clause,” 

permitting a motion under section 2241); Garza v. Lappin, 253 F.3d 918, 

922 (7th Cir. 2001) (same); Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832 (7th Cir. 2002) 

(same). 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 17

the circumstances of his claim. Kramer argues that Magwood’s reasoning dictates the conclusion that his claim is not 

successive. We disagree. 

Kramer argues that Suggs is inapplicable to his case, because Suggs involved only the vacatur of a sentence and not 

an underlying conviction. Kramer’s successful section 2255 

motion resulted in the vacatur of a conviction. That difference, Kramer argues, renders Suggs distinguishable and his 

judgment “new” under Magwood. 

Kramer is correct in stating that Suggs did not involve the 

prior vacatur of a conviction. But Kramer does not explain 

why that distinction is meaningful for the purposes of a Magwood analysis. Both Suggs and Kramer employed later section 2255 motions to challenge convictions that were undisturbed by their prior motions and judgments. In Kramer’s 

case, the court expressly denied Kramer’s requested relief on 

the section 848 conviction that is the subject of Kramer’s current petition. 

Indeed, Suggs had an arguably stronger claim than Kramer that, under Magwood, his motion should be considered 

non-successive. The conviction that Suggs sought to challenge was the very one that resulted in both the vacated and 

new sentences. In Kramer’s case, he is seeking to challenge 

an entirely separate conviction. Only Kramer’s section 846 

conviction and sentence were implicated by his successful 

section 2255 motion. Both his sentence and his conviction for 

the section 848 were entirely undisturbed. 

Moreover, underlying our decision in Suggs was the 

weight of stare decisis. The Supreme Court expressly declined 

to weigh in on the result in a case where a petitioner who 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
18 No. 14-3049 

had raised a successful sentencing challenge under section 

2255 and then later raised another 2255 claim challenging the 

underlying conviction. In light of that uncertainty, we concluded we were bound to continue to follow our own established precedent. This is no less true under Kramer’s facts 

than under those presented in Suggs. 

Finally, we acknowledge, as the district court did in 

granting Kramer’s certificate of appealability, that “jurists of 

reason, like Judge Sykes in her Suggs dissent, would find debatable the issue of whether Kramer’s pending motion was 

an unauthorized successive petition after Magwood.” Kramer, 

No. 14-cv-678 at *3. Judge Sykes’s well-reasoned dissent 

thoroughly presented why Magwood could be read to have 

displaced our prior precedent in Dahler. Suggs, 705 F.3d at 

285 (Sykes, J., dissenting). Indeed, as Judge Sykes pointed 

out, our opinion in that case reflected a circuit split on the 

Suggs issue that continues to the present time. See Insignares 

v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 755 F.3d 1273, 1281 (11th Cir. 2014) 

(per curiam) (holding that petitioner’s challenge of underlying conviction following resentencing was not successive); 

Wentzell v. Neven, 674 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir. 2012) (same); Johnson v. United States, 623 F.3d 41 (2d Cir. 2010) (same); see also, 

In re Lampton, 667 F.3d 585, 589–90 (5th Cir. 2012) (holding, in 

circumstances almost identical to Kramer’s, that petitioner’s 

section 2255 challenge of section 848 conviction after the vacatur of an 846 conviction constituted a successive petition). 

In our view, the real disagreement lies with Suggs, and 

Kramer does not ask us to revisit our opinion in that case. In 

addition, Kramer does not address what we see as the fundamental question underlying the circuit split: what constitutes the petitioner’s “judgment”? The Eleventh Circuit conCase: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19
No. 14-3049 19

cluded, for example, that “[h]aving reviewed Magwood and 

the cases of other circuits, we return to the basic proposition 

[that] ... there is only one judgment, and it is comprised of 

both the sentence and the conviction.” Insignares, 755 F.3d at 

1281. Having concluded that a conviction and sentence comprised one judgment, the Eleventh Circuit necessarily held 

that a resentencing results in an entirely new judgment. As 

such, the underlying conviction may then be challenged by a 

first—not successive—section 2255 motion. 

So, we view Suggs as controlling the outcome here. We 

conclude that the district court properly characterized Kramer’s section 2255 motion as successive, and the district 

court correctly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over 

Kramer’s motion. 

Finally, Kramer raised several other arguments in his 

briefs to this court. We decline to reach them for two reasons. 

First, we confine our review to the question specifically certified by the district court on appeal. And second, at oral argument, Kramer withdrew his final two arguments. 

III. CONCLUSION

For the reasons above, we AFFIRM the judgment of the 

district court. 

Case: 14-3049 Document: 28 Filed: 08/17/2015 Pages: 19