Opinion ID: 2758672
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rossetti's Challenge to his Sentence

Text: Rossetti seeks to modify his sentence based on his successful vacatur of a prior state conviction for breaking and entering. That state conviction was one of three prior convictions the district court considered when calculating Rossetti's sentence. See Rossetti, 2012 WL 37177, at . [A] defendant given a sentence enhanced for a prior conviction is entitled to a reduction if the earlier conviction is vacated, so long as he seeks resentencing in a timely manner. Johnson v. United States, 544 U.S. 6 Similarly, the district court did not err in denying Rossetti an evidentiary hearing on his ineffective assistance claims. The district court assumed that Rossetti would have testified as he claimed, and found that it would have added nothing by way of support for [his] withdrawal theory, which in any event was a chimerical fantasy. Rossetti, 2012 WL 37177, at . As for the conflict of interest allegation, the district court found that Chicofsky had nothing to contribute to Rossetti's defense. Id. at . See United States v. Rodriguez, 929 F.2d 747, 749-50 (1st Cir. 1991) (stating that a [section 2255] petition can be dismissed without a[n] [evidentiary] hearing if the petitioner's allegations . . . 'are contradicted by the record, inherently incredible, or conclusions rather than statements of fact') (quoting Dziurgot v. Luther, 897 F.2d 1222, 1225 (1st Cir. 1990)). -17- 295, 303 (2005); see also Daniels v. United States, 532 U.S. 374, 382 (2001) (If [a] challenge to [an] underlying conviction is successful, the defendant may then apply for reopening of his federal sentence.). At all times relevant to this opinion, the timeliness of Rossetti's petition was governed by 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f) which now (in materially unchanged structure) reads as follows: (f) A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion under this section. The limitation period shall run from the latest of-- (1) the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes final; (2) the date on which the impediment to making a motion created by governmental action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if the movant was prevented from making a motion by such governmental action; (3) the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review; or (4) the date on which the facts supporting the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence. Rossetti's judgment of conviction in his federal case became final on January 26, 2009, the day on which his petition for certiorari was denied. In re Smith, 436 F.3d 9, 10 (1st Cir. 2006). Because Rossetti's state court conviction was vacated in February 2011, he did not seek to amend his habeas petition to add an argument that his sentence should therefore be modified until -18- April 2011, so he cannot rely on § 2255(f)(1). Rossetti does not seek to rely on subsections (f)(2) or (f)(3), so that leaves him to rely on subsection (f)(4) by arguing that he could not have discovered the facts underlying his motion until after April, 2010. To satisfy subsection (f)(4)'s requirement that he could not have discovered the facts through reasonable diligence until less than a year before the petition was filed a petitioner must show that he acted with due diligence to set a prior conviction aside once he was in a position to realize that he has an interest in challenging the prior conviction. Johnson, 544 U.S. at 308-09. In Johnson, the Supreme Court ruled that such a realization triggering the duty to act with diligence occurs upon the entry of a judgment in the federal criminal proceeding. Id. The Court reasoned that when judgment is entered a defendant surely knows that the prior state court conviction may be used to justify a sentence longer than the sentence that might be imposed but for the prior conviction. Id. Rossetti's original judgment of conviction in federal court was entered on the docket on November 27, 2002.7 He did not make a filing in state court seeking to set aside his conviction until August 2008. Under Johnson, his effort to rely on § 2255(f)(4) to justify a belated motion to reopen his sentence 7 In a criminal case, a judgment includes, and therefore comes after, the plea, the jury verdict or the court's findings, the adjudication, and the sentence. Fed. R. Crim. P. 32(k)(1). -19- should therefore fail. Rossetti nevertheless raises three arguments why this should not be so in his case. First, Rossetti argues that the relevant judgment is not his original sentence, but instead the new judgment entered by the district court after we vacated his original sentence pursuant to Booker. This argument, however, is again precluded by Johnson, which considered and rejected, as delay-inducing, the argument that due diligence should not be required until a defendant's final appeal is concluded. Id. at 309. Here, Rossetti is arguing, in essence, that, whether one need diligently seek vacatur of a conviction as soon as one's federal judgment is entered remains unknown until the appeal is eventually decided, retroactively triggering such a duty only if the decision is to affirm. Such a rule cannot be squared with Johnson's desire to identify a particular time when the diligence requirement begins. Id. at 308.8 Second, Rossetti argues that, even if the diligence requirement normally would have begun at the time of his first judgment, he was not then in a position to realize that he ha[d] an interest in challenging the prior conviction, id., because, prior to Johnson, this circuit's rule was that vacatur of a conviction was not a fact under (f)(4), see Brackett v. United 8 This is not a case in which only the final judgment vested the prior conviction with materiality. -20- States, 270 F.3d 60, 68 (1st Cir. 2001). While we doubt that the logic of this argument is correct,9 the simple answer is that even if the diligence requirement did not begin until Johnson was decided in April 2005, Rossetti still waited three and a half years (until August 2008) to challenge his conviction, longer than the delay the Court found to be non-diligent in Johnson. Moreover, even if Rossetti reasonably believed that (f)(4) was not open to him at the time of judgment, at that time, and for eight years thereafter, he still had an interest in challenging the prior conviction because, if he had done so successfully within one year of his final cert petition being denied in January 2009, he would have been able to timely file a motion to vacate his sentence under § 2255(f)(1), regardless of how § 2255(f)(4) was interpreted. In this respect, any incorrect belief that (f)(4) was unavailable gave even more reason to act promptly once he was sentenced in December 2002. He therefore had an interest in challenging the prior conviction even before Johnson was decided. 9 The Supreme Court was fully aware of the interpretation that the First Circuit (and others) had made of section (f)(4) and did not suggest that the limitation period should start to run later in those circuits. See Johnson, 544 U.S. at 302 (citing Brackett, 270 F.3d at 60). The Eleventh Circuit, where Johnson brought his case, had not taken a position on whether vacatur of a conviction could be a fact under § 2255(f)(4) prior to his case, see Johnson v. United States, 340 F.3d 1219, 1222-26 (11th Cir. 2003), and yet the Court did not consider this at all when determining whether Johnson had exercised due diligence. See Johnson, 544 U.S. at 311. -21- Third, reaching again into his quiver of Strickland arguments, Rossetti argues that he raised the possibility of seeking to vacate his conviction to his counsel but that his counsel advised him he was unlikely to succeed. Johnson, however, itself rejected the argument that a defendant's lack of diligence in seeking to vacate his state conviction could be excused by the fact that he was unrepresented, reasoning that the Court had never accepted pro se representation alone or procedural ignorance as an excuse for prolonged inattention when a statute's clear policy calls for promptness. Johnson, 544 U.S. at 311. We cannot see how procedural ignorance by counsel would call for a different balance. Cf. Trapp v. Spencer, 479 F.3d 53, 60 (1st Cir. 2007) (rejecting the argument that attorney error normally justifies equitable tolling of the limitations period on habeas petitions where the error is not egregious and the sentence is not death). For these reasons we conclude that the district court correctly determined that Rossetti's petition for resentencing was untimely.