Opinion ID: 153819
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Colorado conspiracy and CCE

Text: 24 We first consider the argument concerning the Colorado conspiracy and CCE convictions. At sentencing, the district court merged the two charges and imposed no sentence for the conspiracy conviction other than a fifty-dollar special assessment. However, the court did not vacate the conspiracy conviction itself. Rec. vol. 1, doc. 58, at 2. Mr. Hernandez correctly points out that under United States v. Stallings, 810 F.2d 973, 975-76 (10th Cir.1987), double jeopardy concerns mandate that when a defendant has been convicted and sentenced for CCE, that defendant's conviction (as well as his sentence) for the same conspiracy under § 846 must be vacated because the latter is a lesser included offense of the former. 25 However, whereas Stallings came before us on direct appeal from a criminal conviction, our jurisdiction in collateral appeals is more circumscribed. 4 Our jurisdiction here is invoked under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which in relevant part permits [a] prisoner in custody under sentence of a [federal] court ... claiming the right to be released ... [to] move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence. 28 U.S.C. § 2255. A collateral challenge under § 2255 is available only to attack a federal sentence under which the defendant is in custody at the time of initiating the petition or ... a federal sentence that has been ordered to run consecutively to ... another sentence under which the defendant is in custody at the time of filing the challenge. United States v. Bustillos, 31 F.3d 931, 933 (10th Cir.1994). Because Mr. Hernandez received no sentence (other than the fifty-dollar assessment) for his Colorado conspiracy conviction, he was not in custody under a sentence for that conviction, and therefore the district court lacked jurisdiction under § 2255. 5 The district court therefore should have dismissed this claim because it lacked jurisdiction to vacate the Colorado conspiracy conviction. See Bustillos, 31 F.3d at 934 (dismissing, for lack of jurisdiction, an appeal from the denial of a § 2255 motion where the petitioner did not meet his burden of persuading the court that he was attacking a sentence under which he was in custody at the time of initiating the petition). Because we conclude that this claim should have been dismissed, the district court's failure to rule on this issue does not alter our holding that it was proper to deny Mr. Hernandez's § 2255 motion.