Court Opinion

ID: 9490273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:38:16.846944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:59.680631
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent because, in my view, the district court lacks jurisdiction to enhance Harrison’s sentence for the drug conviction that he did not challenge in this collateral appeal. Regardless of whether it “seems appropriate to put § 2255 defendants in the same position as defendants on direct appeal by permitting resentencing,” Majority Op., supra, at 137, there is simply no legal basis on which to do so at this stage of the proceedings.
Section 2255 permits a prisoner to move the district court for relief if he believes his sentence is unconstitutional and the statute expressly provides the court with authority *139to vacate, set aside, or correct “the sentence.” Thus, I agree with the majority insofar as it asserts that the district court’s power to resentence Harrison on the unchallenged conviction depends on the breadth of the term “the sentence” in section 2255. I am convinced, however, that in the context of the entire provision, the term’s meaning is clearly limited to only the sentence specifically challenged by the defendant on collateral appeal. “The sentence” is used in the statute to define the scope of a challenge under section 2255 (i.e., a prisoner’s claim “that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States”) and again, to establish the relief that the district court can afford if the claim has merit (i.e., if “the sentence imposed was not authorized by law ... the court shall vacate and set the judgment aside and shall discharge the prisoner ... or correct the sentence as may appear appropriate.”). For the statute to make sense, “the sentence” must have a constant meaning and, reading the provision as a whole, that meaning is logically limited to the sentence collaterally challenged by the prisoner. Because Harrison does not challenge either his conviction or sentence on the drug count, that sentence simply is not before the district court in this section 2255 proceeding.
Moreover, the language of section 2255 expressly provides that relief under the statute is available only to a prisoner in the custody of the United States. The only party. seeking “relief’ with respect to the drug conviction (assuming for the sake of argument that an increased drug sentence can be called “relief’ for these purposes) is the government. I agree with the observation made by Judge Eisele that, “no matter how hard one tries, one simply cannot shoehorn the United States into the class of persons who are entitled to seek relief under [section 2255].” Warner v. United States, 926 F.Supp. 1387, 1398 (E.D.Ark.1996). In fact, given that only a prisoner is entitled to relief under section 2255, I am hard-pressed to envision a circumstance in which a district court would ever use section 2255 to enhance a previously-imposed sentence. I firmly believe that if a section 2255 movant elects not to challenge any part of the total sentence imposed at trial, even if he loses on the section 2255 motion, he should be in no worse position than when he started, vis-a-vis the unchallenged sentence.
Therefore, I would reverse the district court and vacate the enhanced sentence on the count of conviction that Harrison never challenged in this section 2255 proceeding.