[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

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No. 15-15280

Non-Argument Calendar

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D.C. Docket Nos. 6:12-cv-00641-JA-DAB,

6:08-cr-00176-JA-GJK-1

FRANK L. AMODEO, 

 Petitioner-Appellant,

 versus

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Respondent-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Florida

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(January 22, 2020)

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, GRANT and LUCK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Frank Louis Amodeo, a federal prisoner, appeals the denial of his third 

motion to vacate as untimely. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f). The district court ruled that 

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Amodeo’s third motion, which he filed after the expiration of the one-year statute 

of limitation, id., was “a new case rather than a continuation or amendment” and 

could not relate back to his previous timely-filed motions that were dismissed 

without prejudice. The district court also ruled that Amodeo was not entitled to 

equitable tolling because his litigiousness evidenced that his “mental health [did 

not] prevent[] him from timely filing a § 2255 motion.” We affirm.

In 2009, the district court sentenced Amodeo to 270 months of imprisonment 

following his pleas of guilty to one count of conspiring to defraud the United 

States, 18 U.S.C. § 371, one count of obstructing an agency investigation, id.

§ 1505, and three counts of failing to remit payroll taxes, 26 U.S.C. § 7202. 

Amodeo appealed and argued that the district court failed to ensure that he was 

competent to plead guilty. United States v. Amodeo, 387 F. App’x 953 (11th Cir. 

2010). We rejected Amodeo’s argument as “belied by” evidence that he stipulated 

to his competency and that the district court considered testimony from Amodeo’s 

doctor about his competency and questioned Amodeo extensively during the 

change of plea hearing to determine his competency. Id. at 954.

Amodeo inundated the courts with postconviction filings. In June 2011, a 

month before we affirmed Amodeo’s conviction, he filed a motion to vacate that 

the district court dismissed without prejudice after he disobeyed three orders to 

amend the contents of his motion. See 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Amodeo then petitioned 

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unsuccessfully for a certificate of appealability and for a writ of certiorari in the 

Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in November 2011, Amodeo filed a second motion to 

vacate that the district court dismissed after he refused to comply with several 

orders to reduce the length of his motion. Amodeo moved to vacate the order of 

dismissal, and when that proved unsuccessful, he applied for a certificate of 

appealability, which both the district court and this Court denied. And Amodeo 

moved six times for the district court to reopen or reconsider its order of dismissal 

after he filed his third motion to vacate that is the subject of this appeal.

We review the denial of Amodeo’s motion under a mixed standard of review. 

We review the factual findings of the district court for clear error and the 

application of the statute of limitation and doctrine of equitable tolling to those 

facts de novo. Lawrence v. Fla., 421 F.3d 1221, 1224 (11th Cir. 2005), aff’d, 549 

U.S. 327 (2007). Amodeo bears the burden of proving that his filing warrants

equitable tolling of the limitation period. See id. at 1226.

The district court correctly determined that Amodeo’s third motion to vacate 

could not be timely filed through relation back to his previously dismissed

motions. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 allows a party to relate back “[a]n 

amendment to a pleading” pending before a district court. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c).

Amodeo filed separate motions to vacate that were assigned different case 

numbers. Because the district court had already dismissed Amodeo’s two earlier 

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motions to vacate, there was no pleading pending in the district court when

Amodeo filed his third motion. So Amodeo’s third motion to vacate had “nothing 

. . . to relate back to.” Nyland v. Moore, 216 F.3d 1264, 1266 (11th Cir. 2000).

Amodeo argues that his third motion to vacate relates back based on our 

precedent in Mederos v. United States, 218 F.3d 1252 (11th Cir. 2000), but that 

decision is distinguishable. In Mederos, the district court dismissed the prisoner’s 

motion to vacate without prejudice because it was not signed under penalty of 

perjury, and it then dismissed as untimely a second, identical motion filed 16 days 

later with a proper signature. Id. at 1253. We vacated the second order of dismissal 

because the “interests of justice” required treating Mederos’s second motion—filed 

promptly and before a responsive pleading—“as an amendment that cured the 

initial § 2255 motion’s technical deficiency, and [that] related back to the date of 

filing of the original motion for statute of limitations purposes.” Id. at 1254. Unlike 

the movant in Mederos, Amodeo disregarded several orders to correct his first two

motions to vacate, and after dismissal of his second motion, he waited six months 

to file his third motion to vacate. Amodeo is not entitled to the “special 

consideration” accorded to the movant in Mederos. See id.

The district court did not clearly err in finding that Amodeo’s mental 

conditions did not amount to an “extraordinary circumstance” that entitled him to

equitable tolling. See Lawrence, 421 F.3d at 1226. “[M]ental impairment is not per 

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se a reason to toll a statute of limitations”; the mental condition must affect the

movant’s “ability to file a timely petition.” Hunter v. Ferrell, 587 F.3d 1304, 1308 

(11th Cir. 2009); see Lawrence, 421 F.3d at 1226. Amodeo’s conduct belies his 

argument that his mental impairments hampered him from timely pursuing

postconviction relief. Amodeo timely filed two motions to vacate with a plethora of 

exhibits, challenged the dismissal of those motions in this Court and the Supreme 

Court, and continued to protest the dismissal of his second motion by filing several

postjudgment motions. And Amodeo knew about his impairments and notified the 

district court that his bipolar disorder caused mood swings and avoidant behavior 

and that he had enlisted another person to assist him. Amodeo proved capable of

timely litigating on his behalf.

We AFFIRM the denial of Amodeo’s third motion to vacate as untimely.

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