Source: http://il.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.20140409_0000843.SIL.htm/qx
Timestamp: 2017-03-24 18:06:53
Document Index: 791800347

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 922', '§ 924', '§ 924', '§ 2241', '§ 2255', '§ 2241', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2241', '§ 2255', '§ 2255']

| Teague v. Walton
DAVID TEAGUE, No. 05634-040, Petitioner,v.JEFFREY S. WALTON, Respondent.
Petitioner is serving a 180-month sentence at the United States Prison at Marion, and again brings a challenge to this enhanced sentence. He entered an open plea of guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and was convicted in the Western District of Missouri ( United States v. Teague, Case No. 06-cr-3042). On September 7, 2007, he was sentenced as an armed career criminal pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1), because he had three prior qualifying felony convictions. These included two burglary convictions, which are the focus of his claim for habeas relief. His criminal record also included a robbery conviction.
In his direct appeal, petitioner argued that his prior convictions should not have been considered as "violent felonies" under § 924(e).[1] The appellate court concluded that the prior convictions for burglary and robbery were properly counted as "violent felony" offenses, noting that the pre-sentence report included a factual description (to which petitioner had not objected) that each burglary involved the unlawful entry into a commercial building with the intent to commit larceny. United States v. Teague, 301 F.Appx. 62 (8th Cir. 2009). Hence, there was no error in imposing the enhanced armed-career-criminal sentence. The Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari on May 4, 2009. Teague v. United States, 129 S.Ct. 2170 (2009).
This time, petitioner relies on Descamps v. United States, 133 S.Ct. 2276 (2013), which held that a defendant's enhanced sentence was improper where one of his previous convictions was for burglary under a California statute which criminalized conduct beyond the "generic" elements of the crime of burglary (unlawful entry into a building with the intent to commit a crime). Petitioner suggests that the sentencing court in his case did not examine the elements of the Arkansas burglary statute under which he was convicted, in order to determine whether it contained the generic burglary elements. Instead, the court relied on the findings and recommendations of the United States Probation Officer who compiled the pre-sentence report (Doc. 1, p. 7). The petition does not include any further information on the Arkansas statute itself, however. The two convictions in question date back to 1966.
Under very limited circumstances, a prisoner may employ § 2241 to challenge his federal conviction or sentence. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e) contains a "savings clause" which authorizes a federal prisoner to file a § 2241 petition where the remedy under § 2255 is "inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). See Hill v. Werlinger, 695 F.3d 644, 648 (7th Cir. 2012) ("Inadequate or ineffective' means that a legal theory that could not have been presented under § 2255 establishes the petitioner's actual innocence.'") (citing Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir. 2002). The fact that petitioner may be barred from bringing a second/successive § 2255 petition is not, in itself, sufficient to render it an inadequate remedy. In re Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 609-10 (7th Cir. 1998). Instead, a petitioner under § 2241 must demonstrate the inability of a § 2255 motion to cure the defect in the conviction. "A procedure for postconviction relief can be fairly termed inadequate when it is so configured as to deny a convicted defendant any opportunity for judicial rectification of so fundamental a defect in his conviction as having been imprisoned for a nonexistent offense." Davenport, 147 F.3d at 611.
Petitioner's argument fails to bring his claim within the savings clause. While Descamps v. United States is a statutory interpretation case, and too recent to have been available to petitioner at the time he filed his § 2255 motion, it does not represent a change in the law regarding whether a burglary conviction may qualify as a predicate felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). The Descamps opinion reiterated the "categorical approach" analysis outlined in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), which ...