Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01253/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01253-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Antoine Hill
Petitioner
United States of America
Respondent

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-1253

ANTOINE HILL,

Petitioner,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent.

____________________

On Motion Seeking an Order that the District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Entertain a

Second or Successive Motion for Collateral Review.

____________________

SUBMITTED FEBRUARY 8, 2016;

INITIAL DECISION FEBRUARY 29, 2016;

ON RECONSIDERATION — JUNE 27, 2016

____________________

Before BAUER, POSNER, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. In 2003 Antoine Hill was convicted in a federal district court of several drug offenses, see 21 

U.S.C. §§ 843(b), 846, and sentenced as a career offender, initially to 360 months, which was within his guidelines range

of 360 months to life. But his sentence was reduced to 226 

months when the sentencing guidelines were held in United 

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2 No. 16-1253

States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), not to be mandatory. See 

also United States v. Paladino, 401 F.3d 471 (7th Cir. 2005).

Hill had the status of career offender because of two earlier convictions, both under Illinois law. One was attempted 

murder (which took the form of shooting at a car and 

wounding two of its occupants), in violation of what is now

720 ILCS 5/8-4(a) (“a person commits the offense of attempt 

when, with intent to commit a specific offense, he or she 

does any act that constitutes a substantial step toward the 

commission of that offense”). The other offense was aggravated discharge of a firearm (on that occasion he had shot at 

a person rather than a car), in violation of 720 ILCS 5/24-

1.2(a) (“a person commits aggravated discharge of a firearm 

when he or she knowingly or intentionally discharges a firearm ... in the direction of another person or in the direction 

of a vehicle he or she knows or reasonably should know to 

be occupied by a person”).

Both offenses were “crimes of violence” within the 

meaning of the federal Sentencing Guidelines, which in

U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(1) define a crime of violence as “any offense under federal or state law, punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, that has as an element 

the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force 

against the person of another”—an exact description of the 

two offenses that Hill had committed with a firearm. The offenses marked him as a career offender, see U.S.S.G. 

§ 4B1.1(a)(3), raising the top of his guidelines sentencing 

range and thereby providing an additional ground for a long 

sentence.

On February 8 of this year he filed a motion in our court

under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A), which provides that “before 

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No. 16-1253 3

a second or successive application permitted by this section 

is filed in the district court, the applicant shall move in the 

appropriate court of appeals for an order authorizing the 

district court to consider the application.” Hill sought our

permission to file a successive motion in the district court to 

vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a), which so far as 

relates to this case entitles a federal prisoner to be released if 

his imprisonment violates his constitutional rights. The basis 

of the motion was Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551, 

2556 (2015), which held unconstitutionally vague the “residual clause” of the Armed Career Criminal Act, a catch-all 

provision (mirrored in U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(2)) that deems any 

crime that “otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another” a “crime of 

violence.”

We (the same panel as in the present phase of the case) 

had refused in a brief order. See Hill v. United States, No. 16-

1253 (7th Cir. Feb. 29, 2016). That might have been expected 

to end the case, in view of the unequivocal language of 28 

U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E): “the grant or denial of an authorization by a court of appeals to file a second or successive application shall not be appealable and shall not be the subject 

of a petition for rehearing or for a writ of certiorari.” But 

there is no bar to a court of appeals’ deciding on its own initiative to rehear a case. See, e.g., Cooper v. Woodford, 358 F.3d 

1117, 1118 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc); In re Byrd, 269 F.3d 585, 

585–86 (6th Cir. 2001) (en banc); Triestman v. United States, 

124 F.3d 361, 367 (2d Cir. 1997); cf. United States v. Holcomb, 

657 F.3d 445 (7th Cir. 2011); United States v. Melendez, 60 F.3d 

41, 44 (2d Cir. 1995), vacated in part on other grounds, 516 

U.S. 1105 (1996).

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4 No. 16-1253

Application note 1 to U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(1) says that a 

“‘crime of violence’ include[s] the offenses of aiding and 

abetting, conspiring, and attempting to commit such”

crimes, and Illinois law makes the sentencing range for attempt depend on the crime that was attempted (not necessarily committed), 720 ILCS 5/8-4(c), which in this case was 

murder and so subjected Hill to punishment for murder 

even though his attempt to commit it failed. The district 

judge who sentenced Hill, and we the judges of the appellate 

panel, therefore know with certainty that Hill committed 

two crimes of violence and that his sentence—amplified by 

those crimes—for the federal drug offenses of which he was 

convicted was light, considering the circumstances: it was 11 

years below the bottom of the applicable guidelines range

(360 months). Because his sentence is proper, to extend this 

litigation (which began in 2002) to enable him to make a futile plea of mercy in the district court wouldn’t make sense.

Our February 29 denial of permission to Hill to file another 

collateral attack on his sentence shall therefore stand.

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