2014 Decisions

Opinions of the United

States Court of Appeals

for the Third Circuit

1-23-2014

USA v. Carl Knight

Precedential or Non-Precedential: Non-Precedential

Docket 13-3910

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Recommended Citation

"USA v. Carl Knight" (2014). 2014 Decisions. Paper 94.

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ALD-116 NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 13-3910

___________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

CARL ANTHONY KNIGHT,

 Appellant

____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. Civil No. 1-98-cr-00003-002)

District Judge: Honorable Maurice B. Cohill, Jr.

____________________________________

Submitted for Possible Summary Action Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 27.4

and I.O.P. 10.6

January 9, 2014

Before: RENDELL, FISHER and GREENAWAY, JR., Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: January 23, 2014)

_________

OPINION

_________

PER CURIAM

Carl Anthony Knight was convicted in 1999 for conspiracy to distribute crack 

cocaine and was sentenced to life imprisonment. See United States v. Knight, No. 99-

3667, 50 F. App’x 565 (3d Cir. 2002). In 2013, he filed a motion to correct a purported 
2

clerical error in his judgment order pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 36, which provides that 

“the court may at any time correct a clerical error in a judgment . . . or correct an error in 

the record arising from oversight or omission.” Knight argued that his judgment 

correctly reflected that he was convicted for violating 21 U.S.C. § 846, but should also 

have indicated that he had been convicted of aiding and abetting in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 2. Knight did not contend that this omission had any effect on his conviction or 

sentence; rather, he argued merely that the judgment order should be “factually accurate 

upon its face.” See United States v. Guevremont, 829 F.2d 423, 425 (3d Cir. 1987) 

(clerical error “must not be one of judgment or even of misidentification, but merely of 

recitation, of the sort that a clerk or amanuensis might commit, mechanical in nature”) 

(quotation marks omitted). 

The District Court determined—and we agree—that although Knight’s codefendants may have been charged with aiding and abetting, the sole count for which 

Knight was convicted was a violation of § 846. Thus, there was no error to correct in 

Knight’s judgment, and the District Court properly denied his Rule 36 motion.1 Because 

Knight’s appeal of that denial presents no substantial question, we will summarily affirm. 

See 3d Cir. I.O.P. 10.6; see also Murray v. Bledsoe, 650 F.3d 246, 247 (3d Cir. 2011) 

(per curiam).

 

1 We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We have not established in a precedential 

opinion the standard in this Circuit for reviewing the denial of a Rule 36 motion, but we 

need not do so today because we would affirm under any available standard.