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Parties Involved:
Daniel Singletary
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 10, 2006 Decided December 19, 2006

No. 04-3151

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

DANIEL SINGLETARY,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 00cr00410-01)

Thomas J. Saunders, appointed by the court, argued the

cause and filed the brief for appellant.

Mary Patrice Brown, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellee. With her on the brief were Kenneth L.

Wainstein, U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Roy

W. McLeese III, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: HENDERSON, ROGERS and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

USCA Case #04-3151 Document #1011934 Filed: 12/19/2006 Page 1 of 7
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1

 FED. R. APP. P. 4(b)(1)(A) provides:

In a criminal case, a defendant’s notice of appeal

must be filed in the district court within 10 days after

the later of: (i) the entry of either the judgment or the

order being appealed; or (ii) the filing of the

government’s notice of appeal.

2

 Singletary was charged in a superseding indictment with

three counts of unlawful use of a communication facility, 21 U.S.C.

§ 843(b), two counts of unlawful distribution of five grams or more of

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge: This delayed appeal from a

judgment of conviction requires the court to consider the effect

of the Supreme Court’s clarification in Eberhart v. United

States, 126 S. Ct. 403 (2005), that certain procedural rules

setting inflexible time limits are claim-processing rules that do

not affect a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction and consequently,

a defense of untimeliness may be forfeited if not properly raised.

Id. at 406-07. In Eberhart, the Court held that the government

had forfeited its objection to the timeliness of a motion for a new

trial pursuant to FED. R. CRIM. P. 33 by failing to raise that

defense until appeal, after the district court had reached the

merits. Id. at 407. Of significance here, the Court explained

that its decision in United States v. Robinson, 361 U.S. 220

(1960), holding that FED. R. CRIM. P. 37(a)(2), the precursor to

FED.R.APP.P. 4(b),1

 was “mandatory and jurisdictional,” in fact

reflected “the central point . . . that when the Government

objected to a filing untimely under Rule 37, the court’s duty to

dismiss the appeal was mandatory.” Eberhart, 126 S. Ct. at 406.

Following resentencing on April 28, 2004 pursuant to this

court’s remand,2

 Singletary filed a pro se “Notice of Delayed

USCA Case #04-3151 Document #1011934 Filed: 12/19/2006 Page 2 of 7
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cocaine base, id. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B)(iii); 18 U.S.C. § 2, one count

of unlawful distribution of fifty grams or more of cocaine base, 21

U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(A)(iii); 18 U.S.C. § 2, one count of

unlawful distribution of cocaine base within 1000 feet of a school, 21

U.S.C. § 860(a); 18 U.S.C. § 2, and one count of unlawful possession

of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C.

§ 922(g)(1). Following his conviction by a jury, the district court

sentenced Singletary to concurrent terms of 292 months’

imprisonment on three counts and 48 months’ imprisonment on three

other counts, followed by ten years’ supervised release; two counts

were vacated as lesser included offenses, and the government

dismissed the gun and ammunition count. On appeal, this court

affirmed the conviction but remanded the case for resentencing

because the total offense level had been miscalculated by the district

court. United States v. Singletary, 69 F. App’x 468, 468-69 (D.C. Cir.

2003).

Appeal” on October 21, 2004. He now contends that he is

entitled to be resentenced because the district court acted under

a “mandatory” interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines and

his appeal was pending when United States v. Booker, 543 U.S.

220 (2005), was decided. On June 23, 2005, this court granted

leave for Singletary to proceed in forma pauperis and appointed

counsel. The court also directed Singletary to respond to an

order to show cause why his appeal should not be dismissed as

untimely. Thereafter, the court directed the parties to address in

their briefs whether the court may hear the appeal given the

government’s failure to object to its untimeliness. The parties

have now done so.

Singletary filed his notice of appeal approximately four

months after it was due under FED. R. APP. P. 4(b). The

government objected to the untimeliness of the appeal for the

first time in its initial brief in this court. Singletary contends

that the government has forfeited this objection because it had

notice from the face of his “Pro Se Delayed Notice of Appeal of

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Sentence on Remand” that a timeliness issue was presented. In

his view, the question of the court’s jurisdiction to hear his

appeal is controlled by the Supreme Court’s clarification in

Eberhart of the term “jurisdictional.” See 126 S. Ct. at 404-07.

In Eberhart, the defendant filed a timely motion for a new

trial pursuant to FED.R.CRIM.P. 33 and then, months later, filed

an untimely supplemental memorandum in support of that

motion. The government opposed the memorandum on the

merits; the district court granted a new trial. On appeal the

government objected for the first time to the untimeliness of the

supplemental memorandum. The Seventh Circuit Court of

Appeals held that the time limit in FED. R. CRIM. P. 33 was

mandatory and jurisdictional and therefore the objection was not

forfeited by the government. United States v. Eberhart, 388

F.3d 1043, 1049 (7th Cir. 2004). In reversing, the Supreme

Court instructed that the “label ‘jurisdictional’ [should] not [be

used] for claim-processing rules, but only for prescriptions

delineating the classes of cases (subject-matter jurisdiction) and

persons (personal jurisdiction) falling within a court’s

adjudicatory authority.” Eberhart, 126 S. Ct. at 405 (quoting

Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 455 (2004)) (internal quotation

marks omitted). The Court concluded, in light of their structural

similarity to two Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure

construed in Kontrick, that FED. R. CRIM. P. 33 and FED. R.

CRIM. P. 45(b) are both claim-processing rules. Eberhart, 126

S. Ct. at 405. As such, they “assure relief to a party properly

raising them, but do not compel the same result if the party

forfeits them.” Id. at 407. 

Most pertinently, the Court in Eberhart acknowledged that

courts “have more than occasionally used the term

‘jurisdictional’ to describe emphatic time prescriptions in rules

of court.” Id. at 406 (quoting Kontrick, 540 U.S. at 454)

(internal quotation marks omitted). In Robinson, for example,

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the Court concluded that FED. R. CRIM. P. 37(a)(2) was

mandatory and jurisdictional, observing that “courts have

uniformly held . . . the taking of an appeal within the prescribed

time” as such. 361 U.S. at 229. Clarifying that holding, the

Eberhart Court declared:

The resulting imprecision [in the use of the word

“jurisdictional”] has obscured the central point of the

Robinson case – that when the Government objected to

a filing untimely under Rule 37, the court’s duty to

dismiss the appeal was mandatory. The net effect of

Robinson, viewed through the clarifying lens of

Kontrick, is to admonish the Government that failure to

object to untimely submission entails forfeiture of the

objection, and to admonish defendants that timeliness

is of the essence, since the Government is unlikely to

miss timeliness defects very often.

126 S. Ct. at 406-07. 

Because Singletary concedes that his notice of appeal was

untimely under FED.R. APP. P. 4(b), his view that this court has

jurisdiction to hear his appeal can succeed only if he can show

both that the rule is nonjurisdictional and that the government

forfeited its untimeliness objection. For purposes of this appeal

it suffices to hold, assuming FED. R. APP. P. 4(b) is a caseprocessing rule, that because Singletary fails to demonstrate that

the government forfeited its objection his appeal must be

dismissed as untimely.

The government correctly points out that no rule, order,

internal procedure, or published guidance from this court

required it to object to the untimeliness of the appeal under FED.

R. APP. P. 4(b) before it filed its initial brief. There is no

provision in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure or the

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Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure that requires a party to

address the untimeliness of an appeal by filing a motion to

dismiss. Nor is there such a requirement in the Circuit Rules of

the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia

Circuit. Although there is mandatory language in Circuit Rule

27(g)(1), providing that “[a]ny motion which, if granted, would

dispose of the appeal or petition for review in its entirety, or

transfer the case to another court, must be filed within 45 days

of the docketing of the case in this court,” we agree with the

Tenth Circuit that the local rule is best read as permissive,

applying only to situations in which a party chooses to make a

motion. See United States v. Clayton, 416 F.3d 1236, 1238-39

(10th Cir. 2005), cert. denied, 126 S. Ct. 1110 (2006). This

circuit’s Handbook of Practice and Internal Procedures (2006)

states only that “[p]arties are particularly encouraged to file

dispositive motions where a sound basis exists for summary

disposition.” Id. at 28. Moreover, the published Frequently

Asked Questions, United States Court of Appeals for the District

of Columbia Circuit (2006) makes the voluntary nature of filing

a motion to dismiss explicit:

[I]f the appeal of petition for review was filed out-oftime, . . . then a motion to dismiss is appropriate. If the

jurisdictional question is particularly difficult, parties

may wait and raise the question in their briefs. In other

words, a jurisdictional argument is not waived if it is

not raised in a motion within 45 days of the filing of

the appeal.

 

Id. at 34-35.

Although the court directed Singletary to respond to an

order to show cause, no response was requested from the

government, and it was under no obligation to volunteer a

response. Cf. Day v. McDonough, 126 S. Ct. 1675, 1684 (2006).

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Additionally, unlike in Eberhart and Kontrick, the government

did not address the merits of Singletary’s appeal before it filed

its brief setting forth its untimeliness objection. See Eberhart,

126 S. Ct. at 407; Kontrick, 540 U.S. at 458; see also United

States v. Robinson, 430 F.3d 537, 541-42 (2d Cir. 2005). 

Consequently, although it is obviously desirable from the

perspective of the parties and the court for untimely appeals to

be promptly dismissed, the absence of a requirement to file a

motion to dismiss prior to filing an appellate brief means that the

government did not forfeit its objection that Singletary’s appeal

was untimely by first raising this defense in its initial brief on

appeal. Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal as untimely and do

not reach the merits.

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