Opinion ID: 615197
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: Mr. Geiner failed to raise his sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim on direct appeal. As we held in United States v. Allen, a “defendant who fails to present an issue on direct appeal is barred from raising the issue in a § 2255 motion, unless he can show cause for his procedural default and actual prejudice resulting from the alleged errors, or can show that a fundamental miscarriage of justice will occur if his claim is not addressed.” 16 F.3d 377, 378 (10th Cir. 1994). The fact that Mr. Geiner challenges the interstate-commerce element of § 2252A does not change the analysis under Allen because when a defendant pleads guilty to the jurisdictional element in a federal crime it “is not jurisdictional in the sense that it affects a court’s subject matter jurisdiction.” United States v. Tush, 287 F.3d 1294, 1297 (10th Cir. 2002) (quoting United States v. Prentiss, 256 F.3d 971, 982 (10th Cir. 2001) (en banc)) (internal quotation marks omitted); see id. (holding that in the § 2255 context, a defendant relieves the “government of its burden of proving the interstate commerce element . . . by twice explicitly stipulating [to] a sufficient [interstate-commerce] nexus and independently by pleading guilty.”). We agree with the district court that Mr. Geiner’s sufficiency-of-the-evidence 5 (...continued) ineffective assistance of counsel, (2) unconstitutional imprisonment, and (3) lack of subject matter jurisdiction due to insufficient evidence regarding the interstatecommerce element. See COA Appl. at 3. We have reorganized Mr. Geiner’s issues—to reflect two claims—solely in the interest of analytical clarity. 7 claim is procedurally barred on the merits because it was not raised on direct appeal and, for the reasons noted below, there is no cause to relieve him of this bar. 6