Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02876/USCOURTS-ca7-14-02876-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
J. F. Caraway
Appellee
Humberto Sanchez-Rengifo
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 14-2876 

HUMBERTO SANCHEZ-RENGIFO, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v.

J. F. CARAWAY, 

Respondent-Appellee. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of Indiana, Terre Haute Division. 

No. 2:14-cv-00064-WTL-WGH — William T. Lawrence, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED NOVEMBER 19, 2014 — DECIDED AUGUST 14, 2015 

____________________ 

Before RIPPLE, MANION, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges. 

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge. Humberto Sanchez-Rengifo, 

imprisoned after a conviction in the District of Columbia, 

brought a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 

U.S.C. § 2241 in the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of Indiana, the district in which he is 

serving his sentence. The district court denied the petition 

and did not address the matter of a certificate of 

appealability. Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo then filed an appeal here. 

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2 No. 14-2876 

We conclude that, for purposes of habeas corpus relief, Mr. 

Sanchez-Rengifo’s petition must be deemed as seeking relief 

from a detention “aris[ing] out of process issued by a State 

court,” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(A). A certificate of appealability 

is therefore required before he can pursue an appeal in this 

court. On review of Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s submissions, we 

conclude that a certificate of appealability cannot be granted. 

Accordingly, we dismiss Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s petition for 

lack of jurisdiction. 

I 

BACKGROUND 

A. 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo was convicted by a jury in the 

Superior Court of the District of Columbia of, among other 

crimes, three counts of first-degree child sexual abuse while 

armed and one count of second-degree child sexual abuse 

while armed. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals 

described the factual basis for those convictions accordingly: 

The offenses occurred on June 16, 1997, the 

fifteenth birthday of N.V., the complaining 

witness. N.V. testified that on that afternoon, 

she was in her family’s apartment with one of 

her friends when she went to the door in 

response to a knock. She observed a man, 

whom she identified later as Sanchez-Rengifo, 

wearing a paint-splattered blue and white 

striped shirt and blue pants, an orange and 

white “Home Depot” hat, and brown paintsplattered boots. She testified that the man told 

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No. 14-2876 3

her that he was there to make repairs in the 

apartment and assured her that her mother 

knew about the work. N.V. admitted SanchezRengifo into the apartment where he looked 

around the apartment, including her mother's 

bedroom. N.V. pointed out a problem with the 

bars on her bedroom window. SanchezRengifo told N.V. that he would return, and 

left the apartment. Soon afterwards, N.V.’s 

friend left the apartment. 

Within minutes, Sanchez-Rengifo returned, 

and N.V. let him in. N.V. was talking on the 

telephone at the time, and Sanchez-Rengifo 

asked her to end the conversation so that they 

could talk about the repairs. N.V. complied, 

walked into her mother’s bedroom, and as she 

turned around, she saw that Sanchez-Rengifo 

was holding a knife. He warned her that he 

would kill her if she made any noise. He then 

ordered her to sit on her mother's bed and to 

remove her clothes, which she did. For the next 

two hours approximately, Sanchez-Rengifo 

forced N.V. to engage in various sexual acts. 

Sanchez-Rengifo v. United States, 815 A.2d 351, 353 (D.C. 

2002). Following his conviction, Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo was 

sentenced to life without parole on the first-degree child 

sexual abuse counts and to shorter sentences on the 

remaining counts of conviction, with all of the sentences to 

be served concurrently. 

While his direct appeal was pending, he challenged his 

convictions under District of Columbia Code § 23-110, 

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arguing that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective 

for, among other reasons, failing to call an independent 

DNA expert. The trial court denied his motion for postconviction relief. 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo appealed his convictions and 

sentences, as well as the denial of his post-conviction 

motion. On appeal, he argued “that his convictions for first 

and second-degree child sexual abuse while armed merge 

because the criminal conduct involved constitutes one 

continuous sexual assault,” and, therefore, his convictions 

for these offenses violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the 

Constitution. Sanchez-Rengifo, 815 A.2d at 353. He 

maintained that the trial court erred in denying his post-trial 

motion. In this respect, he maintained that “his trial 

counsel[] was ineffective because he (1) failed to call or 

consult an independent DNA expert, and (2) failed to 

consult an independent fingerprint expert.” Id. at 359. The 

District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s conviction and sentence and also 

upheld the denial of his motion to vacate under § 23-110. See 

id. at 362. 

B. 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo was assigned to serve his sentence 

in the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, and, in 

2014, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 

U.S.C. § 2241 in the Southern District of Indiana. In his 

petition, he argued that he was entitled to relief because the 

prosecution had adduced insufficient evidence of his guilt at 

trial; specifically, there was no DNA evidence to corroborate 

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No. 14-2876 5

the victim’s identification of him as the perpetrator. 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo maintained that he therefore was 

actually innocent of the crimes charged. 

The district court denied the petition. The district court 

explained that “[a] 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion is the 

presumptive means by which a federal prisoner can 

challenge his conviction or sentence, although § 2241 also 

supplies a basis for collateral relief under limited 

circumstances,”1

 such as when a federal prisoner establishes 

that § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of 

his detention,” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo, 

however, “ha[d] not met that burden even after he was 

invited to do so.”2

 Consequently, because it determined that 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s petition was legally insufficient on its 

face, the district court denied the petition. 

Following its denial of relief, the district court did not 

indicate whether a certificate of appealability should issue, 

and Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo never applied for a certificate of 

appealability in this court. 

II 

DISCUSSION 

A. 

The Supreme Court recently has reaffirmed “that the 

failure to obtain a [certificate of appealability]” when one is 

 1 R.7 at 2 (citation omitted). 

2 Id. at 3. 

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statutorily required “is jurisdictional.” Gonzalez v. Thaler, 132 

S. Ct. 641, 649 (2012). Section 2253 of Title 28 makes clear that 

a certificate of appealability is required when the petitioner 

challenges a detention that “arises out of process issued by a 

State court.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(A). Despite Mr. SanchezRengifo’s incarceration in a federal penitentiary, he is not a 

federal prisoner. He was convicted of his crimes in the 

Superior Court of the District of Columbia and is considered 

a “state” prisoner for purposes of federal habeas review. See 

Madley v. United States Parole Comm'n, 278 F.3d 1306, 1309 

(D.C. Cir. 2002); Eldridge v. Berkebile, No. 15-1053, 2015 WL 

3953701, at *3 (10th Cir. June 30, 2015). Before he may appeal 

the denial of relief by the district court, therefore, he must 

obtain a certificate of appealability. See Evans v. Circuit Court 

of Cook Cty., 569 F.3d 665, 666 (7th Cir. 2009) (citing 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2253(c)(1)(A)).3

If a certificate of appealability has not been issued by the 

district court, and the petitioner has not sought one in this 

court, we may treat a notice of appeal as a request for a 

certificate of appealability. See Fed. R. App. P. 22(b)(2) (“If no 

express request for a certificate is filed, the notice of appeal

constitutes a request addressed to the judges of the court of 

 3 The district court, it appears, mistakenly believed that a certificate of 

appealability was not necessary in this case because it considered 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo to be a federal prisoner attempting to bring his 

habeas claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Unlike federal prisoners proceeding 

under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, federal prisoners proceeding under § 2241 need 

not obtain a certificate of appealability, see 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1). 

However, in order to proceed under § 2241, a federal prisoner must first 

show that § 2255 is inadequate or ineffective to test his detention. Mr. 

Sanchez-Rengifo’s failure to make this showing was the basis for the 

district court’s dismissal of his petition. See supra Part I.B. 

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No. 14-2876 7

appeals.”). Moreover, when we have the benefit of briefing 

by a pro se petitioner, we may look to his submissions to 

inform our decision on whether a certificate of appealability 

should issue. Cf. Lavin v. Rednour, 641 F.3d 830, 832 (7th Cir. 

2011) (“When a prisoner on collateral review files a pro se 

brief containing non-certified claims, we will construe the 

brief as an implicit request for certification.”). Consequently, 

we turn to Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s brief to determine whether 

the statutory standard for issuing a certificate of 

appealability has been met. 

B. 

As we have noted earlier, “[a] court may grant a 

certificate if the applicant makes a ‘substantial showing of 

the denial of a constitutional right.’” Arredondo v. Huibregtse, 

542 F.3d 1155, 1165 (7th Cir. 2008) (quoting 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2253(c)(2)). We have explained that “[a]n applicant has 

made a ‘substantial showing’ where ‘reasonable jurists could 

debate whether (or, for that matter, agree that) the petition 

should have been resolved in a different manner or that the 

issues presented were “adequate to deserve encouragement 

to proceed further.”’” Id. (quoting Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 

473, 484 (2000)). With this standard in mind, we turn to 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s claims of error. 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo first argues that D.C. Code § 23-110 

was not an adequate or effective avenue for challenging his 

conviction. If a District of Columbia petitioner has been 

denied relief under § 23-110, he may proceed on a federal 

habeas claim only if he establishes that the § 23-110 remedy 

“is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his 

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detention.” D.C. Code § 23-110(g). The district court did not 

assess whether Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo had met this 

requirement, but instead evaluated Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s 

petition according to the statutory standard for petitions 

filed by federal prisoners seeking to invoke § 2241—whether 

28 U.S.C. § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the 

legality of his detention.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e).4 There is no 

question, therefore, that the district court misapprehended 

the statutory standard that provides the procedural 

mechanism for asserting a constitutional violation. 

However, such an error, standing alone, does not 

constitute “a substantial showing of the denial of a 

constitutional right” required for issuance of a certificate of 

appealability. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). Although a court may 

include a question of procedure within a certificate of 

appealability, there also must be a substantial constitutional 

question on which the certificate is premised. See West v. 

Schneiter, 485 F.3d 393, 395 (7th Cir. 2009) (citing Slack, 529 

U.S. at 483–85). The fact that the district court applied the 

incorrect statutory standard in determining whether Mr. 

Sanchez-Rengifo could pursue his federal habeas claim, 

without more, does not satisfy this requirement. 

When we turn to Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s substantive 

contentions in his brief, we cannot find a substantial 

constitutional question upon which to premise the grant of a 

certificate of appealability. He argues that his conviction 

violated the Due Process Clause because there was no DNA 

evidence to corroborate the victim’s unreliable identification 

of him as the perpetrator. We have held, however, that 

 4 See supra note 3. 

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“[c]redible testimony of one identification witness is 

sufficient to support a conviction.” United States ex rel.

Wandick v. Chrans, 869 F.2d 1084, 1089 (7th Cir. 1989). The 

jury was entitled to believe the victim even in the absence of 

conclusive physical evidence. 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo also takes issue with the victim’s 

identification of him as the perpetrator. An identification 

card with Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo’s picture on it was found in 

the victim’s mother’s bedroom, where the rape occurred. 

According to Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo, 

[o]fficers then displayed the card to the 

victim and inquired if that was her assailant. 

The victim gave a vague and inconclusive 

response. However, by the time of the jury 

trial, the victim’s story had changed to the 

extent that she was now certain that Humberto 

Sanchez-Rengifo was the same person as the 

one depicted in the expired picture 

identification card.[5]

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo does not identify any portions of the 

state-court record to support his assertion that the officers 

displayed the identification card to the victim. Moreover, the 

excerpts of the trial transcript appended to Mr. SanchezRengifo’s brief do not substantiate his claim. Instead, the 

victim testified that her mother was the person who both 

found the identification card and asked her if the man 

pictured on the identification card was her attacker. There is 

 5 Appellant’s Br. 27–28. 

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no basis, therefore, for the assertion that the police 

participated in a suggestive “show up” procedure. 

When law enforcement have not arranged for the 

suggestive circumstances resulting in the identification, due 

process usually is satisfied by the “safeguards built into our 

adversary system that caution juries against placing undue 

weight on eyewitness testimony of questionable reliability.” 

Perry v. New Hampshire, 132 S. Ct. 716, 728 (2012). There is no 

evidence in the record that these safeguards were not 

adequate here; indeed, the transcript pages suggest that the 

victim was cross-examined regarding her identification at 

multiple points during the trial. See id. (identifying the “right 

to confront the eyewitness” as one of the safeguards of the 

adversary system). 

Finally, Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo contends “that it violated 

the Double Jeopardy Clause to convict and sentence him for 

multiple offenses that were committed during one 

continuous act of rape.”6 “Multiplicity is the charging of a 

single offense in separate counts of an indictment. This 

exposes a defendant to the threat of receiving multiple 

punishment[s] for the same offense.” United States v. 

Allender, 62 F.3d 909, 912 (7th Cir. 1995) (citation omitted). 

However, “the Double Jeopardy Clause does not preclude 

the imposition of multiple punishments for the same offense, 

so long as the legislature has authorized cumulative 

punishment.” McCloud v. Deppisch, 409 F.3d 869, 873 (7th Cir. 

2005). “In order to determine whether a given indictment 

contains multiplicitous counts, we look to the applicable 

criminal statute to see what the allowable ‘unit’ of 

 6 Id. at 32. 

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No. 14-2876 11

prosecution is—the minimum amount of activity for which 

criminal liability attaches.” Allender, 62 F.3d at 912; see also, 

e.g., United States v. Pires, 642 F.3d 1, 15 (1st Cir. 2011) 

(“When an indictment includes multiple counts charging a 

violation of the same statutory provision and a claim of 

multiplicity is raised, an inquiring court must determine 

whether the facts undergirding each count can be treated as 

a distinct unit of prosecution.”). In short, “the question of 

what punishments are constitutionally permissible is not 

different from the question of what punishments the 

Legislative Branch intended to be imposed.” Albernaz v. 

United States, 450 U.S. 333, 344 (1981). Where the legislature 

intended “to impose multiple punishments, imposition of 

such sentences does not violate the Constitution.” Id. “Thus, 

determining the permissibility of imposing multiple 

punishments for one course of conduct is a matter of 

discerning the legislature’s intent.” United States v. Patel, 370 

F.3d 108, 114 (1st Cir. 2004). The same rule applies to 

sentences imposed for violations of state law. See Missouri v. 

Hunter, 459 U.S. 359, 368–69 (1983). 

In this case, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals 

recounted the various forms of sexual abuse that 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo inflicted upon his victim.7 Mr. Sanchez-

 7 The court stated: 

After threatening N.V. while armed with the knife, 

Sanchez-Rengifo ordered her to sit on the bed and 

remove her shirt and bra. He sat beside her and began 

licking her breasts. He then told her to remove her pants, 

shoes and panties. Sanchez-Rengifo unzipped his pants 

and rubbed his penis back and forth before instructing 

N.V. to lay on her back. When he inserted his penis into 

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Rengifo was charged with three separate counts of firstdegree child sexual abuse under D.C. Code §§ 22-4108 and 

22-4101(8)8—each relating to a distinct, prohibited, sexual 

act—and one count of second-degree child sexual abuse 

 

her vulva, she screamed in pain, and he told her to shut 

up and again threatened to kill her. Sanchez-Rengifo 

then licked her breasts again before forcing the child to 

perform fellatio. He also attempted to have anal 

intercourse with her, and when he was not successful, he 

ordered her to change positions so he could try vaginal 

penetration again. He then “stopped” and “started 

licking [her] vagina.” After another failed attempt to 

penetrate her anus with his penis, he penetrated her 

vulva again. N.V. testified that he held the knife toward 

her during each of the assaults and threatened 

repeatedly to kill her. 

Sanchez-Rengifo v. United States, 815 A.2d 351, 356–57 (D.C. 2002). 

8 D.C. Code § 22-4108 (1981) provided: 

Whoever, being at least 4 years older than a child, 

engages in a sexual act with that child or causes that 

child to engage in a sexual act shall be imprisoned for 

any term of years or for life and, in addition, may be 

fined an amount not to exceed $250,000. 

A “[s]exual act” was defined as 

(A) The penetration, however slight, of the anus or vulva 

of another by a penis; (B) Contact between the mouth 

and the penis, the mouth and the vulva, or the mouth 

and the anus; or (C) The penetration, however slight, of 

the anus or vulva by a hand or finger or by any object, 

with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or 

arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person. 

D.C. Code § 22-4101(8) (1981). 

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No. 14-2876 13

under D.C. Code §§ 22-4109 and 22-4101(9),9

 based upon 

other sexual contact. See Sanchez-Rengifo, 815 A.2d at 355 n.6. 

As explained by the D.C. Court of Appeals, both the 

language of the statute, as well as the legislative history, lead 

to the conclusion that the legislature meant to punish each of 

these acts separately: 

These statutory provisions enumerate 

separate and discrete sex acts punishable when 

perpetrated upon a minor child. The legislative 

history indicates that in recommending the 

enactment of the “Anti-Sexual Abuse Act of 

1994,” which includes these provisions, the 

Council of the District of Columbia intended to 

“make the laws governing sexually abusive 

conduct more inclusive, flexible and reflective 

of the broad range of abusive conduct which 

does in fact occur....” Council Of The District 

Of Columbia, Report Of The Committee On 

The Judiciary, Bill 10-87, The “Anti-Sexual 

Abuse Act of 1994,” p. 1 (1994). These discrete 

acts of abusive conduct include, as charged 

here, and as the evidence shows: (1) “sexual 

 9 D.C. Code § 22-4109 (1981) provided: “Whoever, being at least 4 years 

older than a child, engages in sexual contact with that child or causes 

that child to engage in sexual contact shall be imprisoned for not more 

than 10 years and, in addition, may be fined in an amount not to exceed 

$100,000.” “Sexual contact” was defined as “the touching with any 

clothed or unclothed body part or any object, either directly or through 

the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks 

of any person with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or 

arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.” D.C. Code § 22-4101(9) 

(1981). 

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14 No. 14-2876 

contact,” consisting of Sanchez-Rengifo placing 

his mouth on N.V.’s breast, see D.C. Code § 22-

4101(9); (2) “sexual acts,” consisting of the 

penetration of the vulva of another by a penis, 

see D.C. Code 22-4101(8)(A) and “[c]ontact 

between the mouth and the penis [and] “the 

mouth and the vulva...,” see D.C. Code § 22-

4101(8)(B). For each of these acts, different 

interests are protected; different acts are made 

criminal; and, some different elements of proof 

are required. Thus, it appears that the 

legislature, at least, viewed each of these 

methods of committing first and second-degree 

child sexual abuse as different in nature and 

character. 

Id. at 357 (alterations in original). Because the legislature 

defined the unit of punishment as each act of child sexual 

abuse, Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo did not suffer multiple 

punishments for the same crime, and, consequently, his 

sentences did not run afoul of the Double Jeopardy Clause. 

Put simply, he raises no substantial constitutional question 

that can serve as a predicate for a certificate of appealability, 

and we can take no further action in this matter.10

 10 If a substantial constitutional question were presented and we could 

issue a certificate of appealability, the proper course would be to vacate 

the judgment of the district court and remand the case to the district 

court to determine whether the conditions for filing an action under 28 

U.S.C. § 2254 were met. We have no occasion in this case to determine 

whether all those prerequisites have been met. See Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 

U.S. 426, 442 (2004) (“The plain language of the habeas statute thus 

confirms the general rule that for core habeas petitions challenging 

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No. 14-2876 15

Conclusion 

Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo has not raised a substantial 

showing that his due process rights or his protections 

against double jeopardy were violated. Consequently, we 

deny Mr. Sanchez-Rengifo a certificate of appealability and 

dismiss his appeal for want of jurisdiction. 

APPEAL DISMISSED 

 

present physical confinement, jurisdiction lies in only one district: the 

district of confinement.”); Stokes v. United States Parole Comm’n, 374 F.3d 

1235, 1239 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“That Stokes had been arrested and convicted 

in D.C. in 1987 and that he served a portion of his prison term in a D.C. 

correctional facility are of no moment under the immediate custodian 

rule.”). The district court also would be required to determine whether 

the provisions of D.C. Code § 23-110 were “inadequate or ineffective to 

test the legality of his detention.” D.C. Code § 23-110(g). 

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