Source: http://openjurist.org/155/f3d/582
Timestamp: 2013-06-19 21:04:30
Document Index: 150252173

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 106', '§ 2244', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255']

155 F3d 582 Adams v. United States | OpenJurist
155 F. 3d 582 - Adams v. United States	Home155 f3d 582 adams v. united states
155 F3d 582 Adams v. United States 155 F.3d 582
Eric ADAMS, Petitioner-Appellant,v.UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.
Docket No. 97-2263.
Second Circuit.Submitted Oct. 15, 1997.Decided Aug. 20, 1998.
Eric Adams was convicted of various crimes in 1995, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment for life, plus 65 years. We affirmed his conviction. United States v. Adams, 101 F.3d 684, 1996 WL 281356 (2d Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 261, 136 L.Ed.2d 186 (1996). Acting pro se, Adams filed an application dated February 24, 1997, invoking Fed.R.Crim.P. 12(b)(2), and styled a "Motion to Dismiss All Counts of Charged Indictment Due to United States Lack of Territorial Jurisdiction." Adams explained his belief that Rule 12 authorized such a motion:
A motion contesting the District Court's geographical jurisdiction (the place w[h]ere the crime was committed) ... can be raised at anytime. Rule 12(b)(2) Fed. Rules Crim. Proc. 18 U.S.C.A.
On March 28, 1997, the district court's pro se office received Adams's application "to withdraw motion of Lack of Territorial Jurisdiction of the United States." In this application, Adams explained that he was planning to present all his habeas claims in a single later motion that might be barred as successive, within the meaning of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") § 106, 28 U.S.C. § 2244, if his Rule 12(b)(2) motion were deemed filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The district court denied this application as moot:
Prior to the enactment of AEDPA, district courts routinely converted post-conviction motions of prisoners who unsuccessfully sought relief under some other provision of law into motions made under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and proceeded to determine whether the prisoner was entitled to relief under that statute. This was done most frequently in the cases of pro se litigants who sought relief under a statute or rule that accorded no relief--often Fed.R.Crim.P. 35--in order to determine whether they might be entitled to relief under § 2255, without obligating them to replead their motions. In order to relax formalities that might needlessly frustrate pro se petitioners and because the practice was harmless, we affirmed that practice. See, e.g., United States v. Detrich, 940 F.2d 37, 38 (2d Cir.1991) (treating motion nominally brought under Fed.R.Crim.P. 35(a) as motion pursuant to § 2255). The district court followed that well-established practice in this case.
At least until it is decided whether such a conversion or recharacterization can affect the movant's right to bring a future habeas petition, district courts should not recharacterize a motion purportedly made under some other rule as a motion made under § 2255 unless (a) the movant, with knowledge of the potential adverse consequences of such recharacterization, agrees to have the motion so recharacterized, or (b) the court finds that, notwithstanding its designation, the motion should be considered as made under § 2255 because of the nature of the relief sought, and offers the movant the opportunity to withdraw the motion rather than have it so recharacterized. Because the district court neither ruled, based on the content of Adams's motion, that it was properly deemed a motion under § 2255, nor obtained Adams's informed consent that the motion should be deemed as made under § 2255, we hold that the district court should not have recharacterized Adams's motion, made under Rule 12(b)(2), as one made under § 2255. We therefore vacate the court's order and remand for further proceedings.2
We do not suggest it would be appropriate for a later court to deem the earlier motion as one filed under § 2255 solely because the earlier court so labelled it. We ruled in Chambers v. United States, 106 F.3d 472, 474-75 (2d Cir.1997) that whether a motion was made under § 2255 should be determined by reference to the relief sought in the motion rather than what label the movant used. We think this would be so for labels applied by the court as well, at least where an application that is not a § 2255 motion is erroneously deemed to be one
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