Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02741/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02741-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Christopher H. McCoy
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-2741

CHRISTOPHER H. MCCOY,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Illinois.

No. 13-cv-1318-DRH — David R. Herndon, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 3, 2015 — DECIDED MARCH 2, 2016

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge, 

and BRUCE, District Judge.*

BRUCE, District Judge. Christopher H. McCoy, appeals the 

dismissal of his motion to vacate, set aside, or correct sentence under 28 U.S.C. §2255. On appeal, McCoy argues that 

the magistrate judge who accepted his felony guilty plea ex-

 * Of the Central District of Illinois, sitting by designation.

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ceeded his authority under the Federal Magistrates Act (28 

U.S.C. §636) and Article III of the U.S. Constitution. This argument was neither raised on direct appeal or in the §2255 

proceedings before the district court. Rather, it is raised for 

the first time in this court on this appeal. Because McCoy did 

not demonstrate sufficient cause for his failure to present 

this claim in the earlier proceedings, we affirm the district 

court’s dismissal of his §2255 motion.

I.

Christopher H. McCoy was indicted on May 18, 2011, in 

the Southern District of Illinois on five felony child pornography charges: (1) enticement of a minor in violation of 18 

U.S.C. §2422(b); (2) distribution of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. §2252(a)(2); (3) transfer of obscene material to a minor in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1470; (4) receipt of 

child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. §2252(a)(2); and 

(5) possession of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§2252(a)(4)(B). 

On September 19, 2011, McCoy pled guilty to all of the 

enumerated counts before U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald G. 

Wilkerson. McCoy consented to having the magistrate judge 

perform his plea colloquy under Federal Rule of Criminal 

Procedure 11 and to having the magistrate judge accept his 

guilty plea. At the time of McCoy’s plea, Local Rule 

72.1(b)(2) for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District 

of Illinois authorized magistrate judges to accept guilty pleas 

in felony cases with the consent of the parties. This was a full 

acceptance by a magistrate judge of a felony guilty plea, and 

not a situation where a magistrate judge made a report and 

recommendation to the district court judge, with the district 

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No. 14-2741 3

court judge having final say over whether to approve the report and recommendation and accept the guilty plea. 

On January 27, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge David R. 

Herndon sentenced McCoy to 327 months in prison.

McCoy filed a direct appeal to this court, arguing that his 

sentence was unreasonable and that the district court improperly weighed the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s factors 

for sentencing. On August 15, 2012, this court issued an order rejecting McCoy’s arguments and affirming his sentence. 

See United States v. McCoy, 493 Fed. Appx. 767, 771 (7th Cir. 

2012). The U.S. Supreme Court denied McCoy’s petition for 

a writ of certiorari on January 22, 2013.

On December 19, 2013, McCoy filed a pro se motion to vacate, set aside, or correct sentence under 28 U.S.C. §2255, arguing that he received ineffective assistance of counsel and 

that an insufficient factual basis existed to support his conviction on the enticement count under 18 U.S.C. §2422(b). 

McCoy was appointed counsel. 

On March 25, 2014, with the help of counsel, McCoy filed 

an amended §2255 motion. The amended motion raised 

three grounds: (1) ineffective assistance of counsel in advising McCoy to plead guilty to the enticement count; (2) insufficient factual basis to support a conviction under §2422(b) 

(enticement); and (3) ineffective assistance of counsel for 

failure to file a motion to suppress the enticement count. 

Following a hearing on July 31, 2014, the district court 

denied McCoy’s §2255 motion. On August 6, 2014, McCoy 

filed a notice of appeal and moved to proceed on appeal in 

forma pauperis. The district court denied McCoy’s motion, 

finding the appeal was taken in bad faith. On August 20, 

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2014, the district court declined to issue McCoy a certificate 

of appealability. 

Upon learning of this court’s decision in United States v. 

Harden, 758 F.3d 886 (7th Cir. 2014), McCoy filed a “motion 

to vacate appeal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction” with 

this court. In Harden, this court held that magistrate judges 

do not have authority under the Federal Magistrates Act to 

accept felony guilty pleas, and that neither the defendant’s 

consent nor lack of apparent harm to the defendant precluded reversal. Harden, 758 F.3d at 890–91. The court declined to 

reach the defendant’s constitutional claim that alleged the 

magistrate judge’s acceptance of a felony guilty plea violated 

the structural guarantees of Article III. Harden, 758 F.3d at 

891. 

McCoy argued that, based on Harden, the magistrate 

judge unlawfully accepted his felony guilty plea. We construed McCoy’s motion as an application for a certificate of 

appealability. On October 21, 2014, we entered an order 

granting McCoy a certificate of appealability and instructing 

counsel to brief the following issues: (1) has McCoy defaulted any claim regarding the acceptance of his pleas by a magistrate judge; and (2) if the claim is not defaulted, is McCoy 

entitled to any relief, and if so, what relief is appropriate?

II.

McCoy argues that his procedural default for not raising 

the issue on direct appeal or in his §2255 motion before the 

district court can be excused. He argues that the unavailability of the Harden decision provides sufficient cause for procedural default and that, because a magistrate judge’s acceptance of a felony guilty plea is so fundamental as to conCase: 14-2741 Document: 42 Filed: 03/02/2016 Pages: 7
No. 14-2741 5

stitute structural error, he need not demonstrate prejudice. If 

procedural default is excused, McCoy argues the magistrate 

judge exceeded his authority under the Federal Magistrates 

Act and Article III when he accepted McCoy’s guilty plea, 

and that the only appropriate relief is to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea.

A claim cannot be raised for the first time in a §2255 motion if it could have been raised at trial or on direct appeal. 

Sandoval v. United States, 574 F.3d 847, 850 (7th Cir. 2009). 

Likewise, a §2255 appellant cannot raise for the first time on 

appeal a claim not presented to the district court in the §2255 

proceedings below. Pierce v. United States, 976 F.2d 369, 371 

(7th Cir. 1992). A federal prisoner cannot bring defaulted 

claims on collateral attack unless he shows both cause and 

prejudice for the default. Hale v. United States, 710 F.3d 711, 

713 (7th Cir. 2013); Gant v. United States, 627 F.3d 677, 683 

(7th Cir. 2010). Absent a showing of both cause and prejudice, procedural default will only be excused if the prisoner 

can demonstrate that he is “actually innocent” of the crimes 

of which he was convicted. Torzala v. United States, 545 F.3d 

517, 522 (7th Cir. 2008). McCoy has made no argument that 

he is actually innocent of the offenses to which he pled 

guilty. Therefore, his failure to raise the magistrate judge 

claim will only be excused if he can demonstrate cause and 

prejudice for the default.

McCoy argues that he can show cause because his argument “was not reasonably available on either direct appeal 

or during his §2255 proceedings with the district court.” 

Specifically, McCoy claims that he is basing his argument on 

this court’s decision in Harden, a case that conflicts with all 

prior federal circuit court precedent and was not issued until 

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July 14, 2014. Therefore, he had cause for not raising this argument before now.

In support of his argument, McCoy cites to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 104 S.Ct. 

2091, 82 L.Ed.2d 1 (1984), where the Court held “where a 

constitutional claim is so novel that its legal basis is not reasonably available to counsel, a defendant has cause for his 

failure to raise the claim in accordance with applicable state 

procedures.” Reed, 468 U.S. at 16. The Court then articulated 

three examples of when a claim is not “reasonably available” 

so as to be considered novel: (1) the obvious case where a 

Supreme Court decision explicitly overrules prior precedent; 

(2) where a decision overturns longstanding and widespread 

practice to which the Supreme Court has not spoken, but 

which a near-unanimous body of lower court authority has 

expressly approved, a claim based on that decision would 

not have been reasonably available before then; and (3) a 

claim may not have been reasonably available at earlier 

stages of the litigation if based on a new decision disapproving of a practice which the Supreme Court had previously 

sanctioned. Boyer, 55 F.3d at 298, citing Reed, 468 U.S. at 17.

McCoy argues the second Reed exception applies to his 

case, because, before Harden, the only federal courts to have 

considered the issue all found that a magistrate’s acceptance 

of a felony guilty plea did not violate Article III or the Federal Magistrates Act. See United States v. Benton, 523 F.3d 424, 

431–32 (4th Cir. 2008); United States v. Woodard, 387 F.3d 

1329, 1332–33 (11th Cir. 2004); United States v. Ciapponi, 77 

F.3d 1247, 1250–52 (10th Cir. 1996). Thus, he claims, the argument was so novel that its legal basis was not reasonably 

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available to him at the time of direct appeal or his §2255 proceeding. 

We find McCoy’s argument to be unavailing. First, the 

Harden decision on which McCoy bases his claim was issued 

a full two weeks before the hearing in the district court on 

his §2255 motion. Harden was not an obscure, unpublished 

order dealing with a minor legal matter in a distant district. 

Rather, it was a published decision of this court that originated from the same district and even the same judge as 

McCoy’s case. Further, Harden concerned an important legal 

matter implicating procedures that were, from what this 

court can tell, exclusive to the Southern District of Illinois. 

Harden obligated courts in the Southern District to change 

their longstanding practice of allowing magistrate judges to 

accept felony guilty pleas. There can be no doubt that the 

decision, from the moment it was issued on July 14, 2014, 

made an immediate impact on criminal practice in the federal courts in the Southern District. In this context and under 

these facts, we find that an argument based on Harden would 

have been fully available to McCoy to amend his §2255 motion by the time of the July 31, 2014, hearing.

By not presenting his argument based on Harden to the 

district court, McCoy procedurally defaulted such an argument in this court. See Pierce, 976 F.2d at 371. Having found 

that the Harden decision was available to McCoy during the 

pendency of his §2255 motion, McCoy cannot show cause for 

his procedural default. See Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 

614, 623, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 1611, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998). Therefore, the decision of the district court dismissing his §2255 

motion is affirmed. 

AFFIRMED.

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