Court Opinion

ID: 9929459
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-02 18:01:24.270619+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:23:22.651644
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                For the Seventh Circuit
                    ____________________
No. 21-1154
IN RE: COREY J. THOMAS,
                                                           Petitioner.
                    ____________________

        Petition for a Writ of Mandamus to the United States
        District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
         No. 3:12-cv-00269-bbc — Barbara B. Crabb, Judge.
                    ____________________

                  DECIDED FEBRUARY 2, 2024
                   ____________________

    Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and WOOD and HAMILTON, Cir-
cuit Judges.
    PER CURIAM. Corey Thomas has a lengthy history of frivo-
lous collateral attacks on his 2009 conviction for bank robbery.
His persistence has twice earned him sanctions and a ﬁling
bar under Alexander v. United States, 121 F.3d 312 (7th Cir.
1997), directing the clerks of this circuit to return unﬁled any
more papers he submits attacking his conviction. Thomas
asks us to lift the bar so that he may move for compassionate
release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) based on an asserted
change in the law. We deny his request but clarify that our
Alexander order does not preclude him from moving for a sen-
tence reduction under § 3582(c)(1)(A).
2                                                    No. 21-1154

    Thomas has long maintained that he should not have been
sentenced as a career oﬀender under Sentencing Guideline
§ 4B1.1. We have repeatedly concluded that none of his many
theories for challenging this ﬁnding satisﬁes the requirements
for a successive motion to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255. In 2017 Thomas petitioned for a writ of mandamus di-
recting the district court to rule on a motion for relief from the
judgment; once again, he sought to contest his career-oﬀender
designation. No. 17-3253. We construed that petition as his
sixth request for authorization to ﬁle a successive motion to
vacate under § 2255, see Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 531
(2005), and denied that request, as we had all the others. We
went further and imposed on him a $500 sanction and a ﬁling
bar under Alexander until that sum was paid.
    Thomas paid that initial ﬁne but brought another petition
for a writ of mandamus in 2021, seeking essentially the same
relief. We thus imposed a steeper $1000 sanction and another
Alexander bar that remains in force. As relevant here, that or-
der provides that the clerks of this circuit shall return unﬁled
any papers Thomas submits “attacking” his conviction.
    Thomas now asks us to lift the sanction against him so that
he may move the district court for compassionate release on
the theory that he is serving an unusually long sentence in
light of legal developments since his sentencing. A new
amendment to the United States Sentencing Guidelines au-
thorizes such relief, in the discretion of the district court. See
U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6) (eﬀective Nov. 1, 2023). Those legal de-
velopments, we infer, are the same judicial decisions inter-
preting the career-oﬀender guideline and similar recidivist
sentencing enhancements that we have repeatedly concluded
did not justify a successive collateral attack by Thomas.
No. 21-1154                                                     3

    We see no need to change anything about our order. A mo-
tion for a sentence reduction—even one asserting a change in
sentencing law—does not qualify as an attack on the original
sentencing judgment for the purposes of an Alexander ﬁling
bar. Properly understood, a motion for a sentence reduction
under § 3582(c)(1) or (c)(2) does not attack the sentence at all.
It accepts the legal validity of the sentence imposed but asks
for modification to account for changed circumstances. So, we
have held that a defendant whose plea agreement has waived
his right to “contest … his sentence in any collateral attack”
may still move for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C.
§ 3582(c)(2) based on a retroactive amendment to the Sentenc-
ing Guidelines. United States v. Monroe, 580 F.3d 552, 556–57
(7th Cir. 2009). Such a motion does not “impugn the district
court’s rationale” for the original sentence or “claim that the
district court erred in any way.” It “simply ask[s] the district
court to consider revising his sentence in light of a develop-
ment completely external to the court’s original judgment.”
Id. at 557.
    So too with a motion for compassionate release under
§ 3582(c)(1)(A). A movant cannot rightly claim he is legally
entitled to compassionate release because the background sen-
tencing law has changed, but he may argue that he nonethe-
less deserves a sentence reduction based on that change and
other relevant factors. See United States v. Black, 999 F.3d 1071,
1075 (7th Cir. 2021); see also Concepcion v. United States, 597
U.S. 481, 500 (2022) (interpreting First Step Act of 2018, Pub.
L. 115–391, § 404(b), 132 Stat. 5194, 5222). Movants may not
always phrase their claims in a way that recognizes this dis-
tinction, but courts can and should still address these motions
as applications for discretionary relief. If a given motion for a
sentence reduction resembles too closely an impermissible
4                                                   No. 21-1154

collateral attack, then that may be one reason to deny a reduc-
tion. E.g., United States v. Von Vader, 58 F.4th 369, 371–72 (7th
Cir.), cert. denied, 144 S. Ct. 388 (2023). But unless a movant’s
effort to evade § 2255 is especially transparent and plainly in-
consistent with the law governing his motion, there is no need
to recharacterize a motion for a sentence reduction as a misla-
beled collateral attack.
    Even so, we warn Thomas that courts will not be power-
less against repetitive, frivolous, or abusive motions, even if
those motions are not collateral attacks blocked by our Alex-
ander order. Thomas identifies what appears to be a non-friv-
olous argument that he is eligible for compassionate release
under the recent guideline amendments, though we express
no opinion on that question, let alone on whether he would
deserve a favorable exercise of discretion. We conclude only
that our Alexander order permits him to ask the district court
for such a sentence reduction. Should Thomas or another per-
son in a similar situation persist in filing motions long after
his theories have been soundly rejected, a court would have
ample authority to impose sanctions targeted at curbing this
new abuse of the compassionate-release vehicle. See Alexan-
der, 121 F.3d at 316. We are cautiously optimistic that we will
not need to enter such an order against Thomas.
    With the clarification that our current Alexander order does
not prevent Thomas from filing the motion he describes, we
DENY his request to modify or rescind our sanction. The bar
will be lifted immediately on full payment of the fine. Thomas
is authorized to submit another motion to modify or rescind
the order no earlier than two years from the date of this deci-
sion.