Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-17-01110/USCOURTS-ca7-17-01110-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Stephen Susinka
Petitioner
United States of America
Respondent

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 17‐1110

STEPHEN SUSINKA,

Applicant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent.

____________________

Motion for an Order Authorizing the District Court of the Northern

District of Illinois, Eastern Division, to Entertain a Second or Successive

Motion for Collateral Review.

____________________

SUBMITTED JANUARY 17, 2017 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 9, 2017

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and EASTERBROOK,

Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Stephen Susinka has filed his third

application for permission to file a successive motion under

28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate his 20‐year sentence for participat‐

ing in a RICO conspiracy. He wants to challenge his sentence

on the authority of Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016),

which held that Florida’s sentencing procedure for capital

cases, whereby the jury delivers an advisory verdict but the

Case: 17-1110 Document: 2 Filed: 02/09/2017 Pages: 3
2 No. 17‐1110

judge decides whether to impose a death sentence, violated a

defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Id. at 620–

21. Of course the present case is not a capital case; and any‐

way Hurst was decided in January 2016—months before

Susinka filed either of his previous applications, and 28

U.S.C. § 2255(h)(2) permits a successive motion to vacate a

sentence on the basis of a new rule of constitutional law only

if the new rule was previously unavailable to the movant,

which it was not in this case.

Nor can Susinka prevail by basing his motion on newly

discovered evidence, even though 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a) pro‐

vides that “a prisoner in custody under sentence of a court

established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be re‐

leased upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in

violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or

that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sen‐

tence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum au‐

thorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack,

may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate,

set aside or correct the sentence.” For if the motion is reject‐

ed and the prisoner later files a new motion, even one based

on a valid ground, that motion must be “certified ... by a

panel of the appropriate court of appeals to contain ... newly

discovered evidence that, if proven and viewed in light of

the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by

clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder

would have found the movant guilty of the offense.” 28 U.S.C.

§ 2255(h)(1) (emphasis added).

That is a very harsh rule for a prisoner who, like Susinka,

is not challenging his guilt of the offense—in effect he is ac‐

knowledging his guilt—but only the severity of the sentence.

Case: 17-1110 Document: 2 Filed: 02/09/2017 Pages: 3
No. 17‐1110 3

For by virtue of the rule just quoted he could get nowhere

even with new facts that proved conclusively that his sen‐

tence was indeed too long—could get nowhere for having

failed to challenge an irrelevancy: his conviction, irrelevant

because he is not challenging it, but only his sentence. As

explained in Hope v. United States, 108 F.3d 119, 120 (7th Cir.

1997), “a successive motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 ... may

not be filed on the basis of newly discovered evidence unless

the motion challenges the conviction and not merely the sen‐

tence.” That is an unavoidably correct reading of 28 U.S.C.

§ 2255(h)(1), whether we like it or not.

We therefore have no alternative to dismissing Susinka’s

application.

Case: 17-1110 Document: 2 Filed: 02/09/2017 Pages: 3