Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-04-03696/USCOURTS-ca8-04-03696-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Arnaldo Losoya Mancias
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Daniel L. Hovland, Chief Judge, United States District Court

for the District of North Dakota.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 04-3696

___________

United States of America, *

*

 Appellee, * Appeal From the United States

* District Court for the

v. * District of North Dakota.

*

Arnaldo Losoya Mancias, * [UNPUBLISHED]

*

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: November 14, 2005

Filed: November 17, 2005

___________

Before SMITH, HEANEY, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

PER CURIAM.

Arnaldo Losoya Mancias appeals the district court’s1

 denial of his motion to

vacate his criminal sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. He argues that he was

sentenced in violation of United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005), and Blakely

v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), when the district court applied a career-offender

enhancement based on his prior felony conviction for escape. Because our circuit has

conclusively held that a defendant may not collaterally attack his sentence on the

basis of Booker, we affirm.

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2

Since Never Misses A Shot, the Ninth Circuit has also held that Booker does

not apply retroactively. United States v. Cruz, 423 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 2005).

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On December 17, 2002, Mancias pled guilty to the offense of possession of

marijuana with the intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The

district court treated him as a career offender pursuant to United States Sentencing

Guidelines section 4B1.1(a), finding that Mancias’s two prior felony convictions

qualified as crimes of violence. Mancias appealed, raising four issues related to his

conviction, but did not appeal his sentence. This court affirmed. See United States

v. Mancias, 350 F.3d 800 (8th Cir. 2003). On August 2, 2004, Mancias filed a motion

to vacate his sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, based on Blakely. The district

court denied the motion initially and upon reconsideration. This appeal followed.

In this appeal, Mancias seeks to collaterally raise a Booker claim by way of a

§ 2255 motion. Recently, in Never Misses A Shot v. United States, 413 F.3d 781 (8th

Cir. 2005) (per curiam), our court considered whether such relief was available. New

procedural rules of criminal procedure, such as the one announced in Booker, only

apply retroactively when they are “watershed rules of criminal procedure.” Teague

v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 311 (1989). The court in Never Misses A Shot, siding with

“all circuit courts considering the issue to date,” held that Booker “does not apply to

criminal convictions that became final before the rule was announced, and thus does

not benefit movants in collateral proceedings.” Never Misses A Shot, 413 F.3d at

783-84 (noting that at the time of the opinion, the Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh,

Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits had reached similar results).2

Never Misses A Shot squarely forecloses Mancias’s § 2255 claim. His

conviction became final on February 26, 2004, well before Blakely and Booker were

issued, rendering his current claim a request that we apply Blakely and Booker

retroactively to grant relief. To do so, we would be required to explicitly overrule

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Never Misses A Shot, which our panel is not at liberty to do. Thus, we affirm the

district court.

______________________________

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