### In the 

# United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

____________________ No. 13

- 2857
P RESSE D. M ATHEWS , J R

. , Petitioner

- Appellant ,

v.

R ICARDO R IOS , Warden , Respondent

- Appellee

.

____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 1:11

- cv

- 01245

- JBM

— Joe Billy McDade , Judge

.

____________________
S UBMITTED A PRIL 21, 2014 *

— D ECIDED A UGUST 11, 2014

____________________

Before E ASTERBROOK , R IPPLE , and R OVNER , Circuit Judges

.

* After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral a rgument is unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and

rec ord. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2)(C).2 No. 13

- 2857

P ER C URIAM

. Presse D. Mathews, Jr., is in federal custody following his conviction for possession of a firearm by a fe lon. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He was sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment under the Armed Career Cr iminal Act (“ACCA”) , s ee 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) . One of the predicate state felony convictions upon which the district court relied

was a federal conviction under Illinois’s felon

- in

- p ossession statute, 720 ILCS 5/24

- 1.1. We affirmed his conviction and
sentenc e on direct appeal. We decided that the district court had construed correctly the Illinois statute and that Mr. Mathews had been convicted in state court of being a felon in possession of a knife with the intent to harm a sp ecific person. United States v. Mathews , 453 F.3d 830, 834

– 37 (7th Cir. 2006).

Mr. Mathews then brought a collateral attack on his se ntence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. See Mathews v. United States , 550 F. Supp. 2d 842 (C.D. Ill. 2007). He argued once again that the sentencing court had misc onstrued the text of the Illinois statute. Id. at 844. The district court held that this i ssue had been decided by this court and therefore was not open to further review. Id. at 845. Both the district court and this court denied certificates of appealabil ity

. The district
court also denied a successive § 2255 motion, which was not appealed.

Mr. Mathews then filed this petit ion for a writ of habeas corpus. See 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Although he cited Begay v. Uni ted States , 553 U.S. 137 (2008), he argued , once a gain , that, under a proper construction of the Illinois statute, his prior Illinois conviction for unlawful possession of a weapon b y a felon was not a conviction for a “violent felony.” In support of that view, he made essentially the same arguments that heNo. 13

- 2857 3

had made previously and that we had rejected on direct a ppeal and upon our denial of the certificate of appealability. The district court n evertheless determined that Mr. Mathews could proceed under § 2241 and held that , under Begay , a felon’s possessio n of a knife with the intent to harm a person was a violent felony under the ACCA. On this basis, the di strict court denied Mr. Mathews’s petition. After examination of the entire record, we must conclude that Mr. Mathews’s petition is blocked by 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (e) , which restricts a prisoner from applying for hab eas review where a prisoner’s § 2255 motion already has been denied and that motion was not “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” In t he distri ct court and in this court, Mr. Mathews does not argue, even in the altern ative, that, under Begay , a felon’s possession of a knife with the intent to injure a person does not constitute a crime of violence under the ACCA. Indeed, in his reply bri ef in this court, he specifically denies making such an argument. R ather, he seeks relief solely on the ground that , in our earlier encounters with this case, we misconstrued the text of the Illinois statute

— the same argument that he made to the in itial se ntencing court, to this court on appeal and to the di strict court in his motion for relief under § 2255. We decided this issue squarely on direct appeal. His citation to Begay is simply artful pleading. Nothing in that decision in any way implicates any as pect of this court’s earlier analysi s of Ill inois law.4 No. 13

- 2857

Because Mr. Mathews’s pe tition was blocked by 28 U.S.C. 2255(e), we affirm the district court’s denial of his p etition

.

AFFIRMED
NO COSTS IN THIS COURT