Source: http://openjurist.org/374/f3d/1068/howard-v-united-states
Timestamp: 2013-12-11 09:48:44
Document Index: 64049510

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2241', '§ 2255', '§ 2241', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255']

374 F3d 1068 Howard v. United States | OpenJurist
374 F. 3d 1068 - Howard v. United States	Home374 f3d 1068 howard v. united states
374 F3d 1068 Howard v. United States 374 F.3d 1068
Ronnie Maurice HOWARD, Petitioner-Appellant,v.UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.
No. 03-11919.
Ronnie Maurice Howard appeals from the denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion as time-barred. The district court concluded that the Supreme Court's ruling in Alabama v. Shelton, 535 U.S. 654, 122 S.Ct. 1764, 152 L.Ed.2d 888 (2002), did not recognize a "new" right and therefore did not restart the running of the one-year period of limitation under § 2255 ¶ 6(3). The district court's conclusion is not an unreasonable one, but we are obligated to exercise de novo review, Castro v. United States, 290 F.3d 1270, 1272 (11th Cir.2002), and doing so we reach the opposite conclusion.
On November 6, 2002, more than a year after final judgment but within a year of the Supreme Court's May 20, 2002 Shelton decision, Howard filed in the district court what he styled as a 28 U.S.C. § 2241 federal habeas petition. The district court correctly construed the petition as a motion to vacate pursuant to § 2255. See Medberry v. Crosby, 351 F.3d 1049, 1056-59 (11th Cir.2003) (explaining the relationship between § 2241 and § 2255). Relying on Shelton, Howard claimed that the sentencing court had violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel by considering the two uncounseled state court convictions in calculating his criminal history category. Believing that Shelton did not recognize a new right, the district court denied Howard's motion as time-barred. It did grant him a certificate of appealability which, coupled with a notice of appeal, brought the case to us.
We have noted that a jurisdictional defect cannot be waived or procedurally defaulted and that a defendant need not show cause and prejudice to justify his failure to raise one. McCoy v. United States, 266 F.3d 1245, 1249 (11th Cir.2001). Relying on language from Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), and its progeny, Howard contends that, in the words of the Supreme Court, the " `failure to appoint counsel for an indigent [is] a unique constitutional defect ... ris[ing] to the level of a jurisdictional defect.'" Lackawanna County Dist. Attorney v. Coss, 532 U.S. 394, 404, 121 S.Ct. 1567, 1574, 149 L.Ed.2d 608 (2001) (quoting Custis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485, 496, 114 S.Ct. 1732, 1738, 128 L.Ed.2d 517 (1994)). He maintains that because his sentencing was tainted by a defect that rose to the level of a jurisdictional defect, he can bring up that defect for the first time in this collateral proceeding. The legal premise for Howard's position is based upon language wrenched from its context in the Lackawanna and Custis opinions.
Lackawanna held that because of its special status a Gideon-type defect in a prior conviction may be raised collaterally in a sentence proceeding where that prior conviction is offered as a basis for enhancement. 532 U.S. at 404-05, 121 S.Ct. at 1574. But the Supreme Court did not decide in Lackawanna or any other case that procedural defenses do not apply to claims of Gideon-type errors. Just the opposite. The Court said in Lackawanna that: "As with any § 2254 petition, the petitioner must satisfy the procedural prerequisites for relief including ... exhaustion of remedies." Id. at 404, 121 S.Ct. at 1574.
Compliance with contemporaneous objection rules is a procedural prerequisite for relief on Gideon-related grounds in a § 2255 proceeding, just as it is in a § 2254 proceeding. That much is clear from the Supreme Court's opinion in Daniels v. United States, 532 U.S. 374, 121 S.Ct. 1578, 149 L.Ed.2d 590 (2001). There the Court said:
A defendant may challenge a prior conviction as the product of a Gideon violation in a § 2255 motion, but generally only if he raised that claim at his federal sentencing proceeding. See United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 167-68, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982) (holding that procedural default rules developed in the habeas corpus context apply in § 2255 cases); see also Reed v. Farley, 512 U.S. 339, 354-55, 114 S.Ct. 2291, 129 L.Ed.2d 277 (1994).
Id. at 382-83, 121 S.Ct. at 1583-84. The use of the qualifier "generally" in the quoted passage recognizes the possibility of an exception where "a habeas petition directed at the enhanced sentence may effectively be the first and only forum available for review of the prior conviction." Lackawanna, 532 U.S. at 406, 121 S.Ct. at 1575. That is not the situation in the vast majority of cases, like this one, where the defendant could have raised the claim about the prior conviction in the sentencing proceeding in which that conviction was used against him.
It is true that Supreme Court decisions from the time of Gideon to the present day have reflected "a theme that failure to appoint counsel for an indigent defendant was a unique constitutional defect." Custis, 511 U.S. at 496, 114 S.Ct. at 1738. That theme has been manifested in a willingness to allow the defect to be raised collaterally in a sentence proceeding in which the conviction in question is being offered for use. It has not, however, been manifested in a willingness to disregard applicable procedural defenses, one of which arises from the failure to raise the claim in the sentence proceeding.
It is true that the language of jurisdiction was used in some early opinions to describe this type of error and claim. See id. (citing Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 468, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1024-25, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938)). But the Supreme Court dealt with and minimized the significance of that language in Custis. There the Court explained that at the time that jurisdiction language was first used, "the underlying habeas statute was construed to allow collateral attacks on final judgments of conviction only where the rendering court lacked `jurisdiction' — albeit a somewhat expansive notion of `jurisdiction.'" Id. at 494, 114 S.Ct. at 1737 (citing Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86, 43 S.Ct. 265, 67 L.Ed. 543 (1923)). Saying that a Gideon error was "jurisdictional" meant no more than that habeas relief could be granted based upon it. See id.
This does not mean that there are no exceptions to procedural bar defenses. There are. "A habeas petitioner can escape the procedural default doctrine either through showing cause for the default and prejudice, or establishing a fundamental miscarriage of justice." Bailey v. Nagle, 172 F.3d 1299, 1306 (11th Cir.1999) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In order to show the type of "miscarriage of justice" that will excuse a procedural bar, a petitioner must make "a colorable showing of actual innocence." Id. Howard has not attempted to do that. We don't need to address prejudice, because he has not established cause.
In Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 16, 104 S.Ct. 2901, 2910, 82 L.Ed.2d 1 (1984), the Supreme Court held "that where a constitutional claim is so novel that its legal basis is not reasonably available to counsel, a defendant has cause for his failure to raise the claim in accordance with acceptable state procedures." In order to establish the novelty of a constitutional claim sufficient to provide cause, a defendant must initially demonstrate that his situation is one where a court has "articulated a constitutional principle that has not been previously recognized but which has been held to have retroactive application." Id. at 17, 104 S.Ct. at 2911.... A new retroactive decision must be a sufficiently "clear break with the past," so that an attorney representing the defendant would not reasonably have had the tools for presenting the claim in the state courts. [Id. at 16-17, 104 S.Ct. at 2910-11.]
Hargrave v. Dugger, 832 F.2d 1528, 1530-31 (11th Cir.1987). Where a number of others had raised the claim before the petitioner failed to do so, the claim is not sufficiently novel to meet the cause requirement. See Turner v. Crosby, 339 F.3d 1247, 1282 (11th Cir.2003) (citing Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 622-23, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 1611, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998)).
Here, the legal basis for the right later recognized in Shelton was readily available at the time of Howard's federal sentencing hearing. Th