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Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Ronald Wiggins
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted March 26, 2020*

Decided March 26, 2020 

Before 

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge 

No. 19-2529 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

RONALD WIGGINS, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois. 

No. 2:03-cr-20032-JES 

 

James E. Shadid, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Ronald Wiggins, a federal prisoner, appeals the denial of his motion to vacate an 

order of restitution that was imposed as part of a criminal judgment in 2004. Because 

the district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain Wiggins’s motion, we modify the 

judgment and affirm as modified. 

*

 We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument because the briefs 

and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would 

not significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

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No. 19-2529 Page 2 

 Wiggins was convicted of bank robbery by intimidation, 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a). 

At sentencing in 2004, the district court found that Wiggins was a career offender under 

the then-mandatory guidelines, U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1, and sentenced him to the statutory 

maximum of 20 years in prison. The court also ordered that he pay restitution 

(amounting to $19,430), as required by 18 U.S.C. § 3663A and U.S.S.G. § 5E1.1. 

Over the next decade and a half, Wiggins repeatedly sought to overturn the 

judgment. He filed a direct appeal that we dismissed as frivolous, 138 F. App’x 842 (7th 

Cir. 2005); in that appeal, Wiggins did not object to the restitution order, either through 

counsel or in his response to counsel’s motion to withdraw. Wiggins then 

unsuccessfully moved to vacate his conviction and sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and 

we denied leave to appeal. No. 08-1100 (7th Cir. Apr. 8, 2008). He next filed two 

unauthorized successive § 2255 motions, which the district court properly dismissed for 

lack of jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244(b), 2255(h). See No. 13-1366 (7th Cir. Oct. 8, 

2013) (denying certificate of appealability); No. 14-2203 (Nov. 14, 2014) (same). Then, 

Wiggins twice applied for our leave to file a successive § 2255 motion to challenge his 

career-offender designation, and we denied both applications. No. 16-2142 (7th Cir. 

June 14, 2016); No. 16-3417 (Sept. 20, 2016). Finally, in June 2019, Wiggins filed another 

unauthorized § 2255 motion in the district court, this time challenging only the 

restitution order. The district court dismissed the motion, explaining that challenges to 

restitution orders are not cognizable in a § 2255 action, see United States v. Bania, 787 

F.3d 1168, 1172 (7th Cir. 2015), and that, even if they were, Wiggins did not have leave 

to file a successive collateral attack. He did not appeal. 

Instead, a few weeks later, Wiggins filed a “motion to vacate restitution order 

nunc pro tunc” in his criminal case. He argued that the order is unconstitutional 

because it was imposed under U.S.S.G. § 5E1.1 during the mandatory-guidelines era, 

and because § 5E1.1 cross-references 18 U.S.C. § 3663A, which mandates restitution for 

victims of a “crime of violence.” In Wiggins’s view, the district court was wrong to rely 

on this statute after Cross v. United States, 892 F.3d 288 (7th Cir. 2018), in which we 

invalidated the once-mandatory career-offender guideline’s residual definition of a 

“crime of violence,” U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(2) (pre-2016), on vagueness grounds. See 892 

F.3d at 304–06. The district court summarily denied the motion. 

Wiggins challenges that decision on appeal. Yet, as the government correctly 

points out, the district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain Wiggins’s motion to vacate 

the restitution order. Once a district court imposes a criminal sentence, its authority to 

revisit that sentence is limited, and must be founded on a specific statute or rule. See 

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United States v. Johnson, 571 F.3d 716, 717 (7th Cir. 2009); see also United States v. Hook, 471 

F.3d 766, 771 n.1 (7th Cir. 2006) (noting restitution is part of original sentence). Though 

Wiggins cited 18 U.S.C. § 3663A in his motion, “nothing in [that statute] permits the 

[district] court to revisit the restitution order” after it was entered. Bania, 787 F.3d at 

1172. And it is too late for him to take advantage of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 

35, which permits a district court to correct a clear error in a defendant’s sentence only 

within 14 days after sentencing. See id. That time limit is jurisdictional, see id., and had 

long expired by the time Wiggins moved to vacate the restitution order (nearly 15 years 

after the sentence became final). We see no other statute or rule that grants the district 

court authority to entertain such a motion, and Wiggins points to none. Thus, we 

modify the judgment to reflect that the motion is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. 

As modified, the judgment is AFFIRMED. 

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