Court Opinion

ID: 9930012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-05 22:01:21.333411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:58:29.197017
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-11565    Document: 54-1     Date Filed: 02/05/2024   Page: 1 of 5

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 21-11565
                          ____________________

       SEAN P. REILLY,
                                                   Petitioner-Appellant,
       versus
       SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT
       OF CORRECTIONS,

                                                  Respondent-Appellee.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Florida
                  D.C. Docket No. 4:20-cv-00145-TKW-EMT
                          ____________________
USCA11 Case: 21-11565         Document: 54-1        Date Filed: 02/05/2024         Page: 2 of 5

       2                         Opinion of the Court                       21-11565

       Before JORDAN, BRASHER, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Sean Reilly’s 2020 habeas corpus petition, see 28 U.S.C.
       § 2254, sought to challenge a 2009 Florida conviction and judgment
       for criminal use of identiﬁcation. The district court dismissed the
       petition for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction on two alternative
       grounds. First, it ruled that the petition was an unauthorized sec-
       ond or successive application. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3). Second,
       it concluded that Mr. Reilly was not “in custody” on the 2009 judg-
       ment when he ﬁled the petition. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2241(c)(3),
       2254(a). Following oral argument and a review of the record, we
       aﬃrm.1
              The 2009 Judgment. For the 2009 criminal use of identiﬁ-
       cation conviction, the state court sentenced Mr. Reilly on Count 1
       to 11 months and 29 days of imprisonment, followed by two years
       of community control and two years of probation. As to Count 5,
       the state court sentenced him to two years of community control
       followed by two years of probation, to run consecutive to the in-
       carcerative portion of the sentence on Count 1 but concurrent with
       the supervisory portions of the sentence on Count 1.

       1 As we write for the parties, we set out only what is necessary to explain our

       decision. For a fuller procedural summary of Mr. Reilly’s judgments and ha-
       beas corpus petitions, see Reilly v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 2023 WL 7179321
       (11th Cir. Nov. 1, 2023). Most of the facts are taken from our summary in that
       case.
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       21-11565               Opinion of the Court                          3

              The 2010 Conviction and VOP Judgment. In March of
       2010, Mr. Reilly was convicted of witness tampering, and in De-
       cember of 2010, he was found to have violated the conditions of
       his supervision/probation for the 2009 judgment. The state court
       imposed a sentence of 60 months’ imprisonment as to Count 1 of
       the 2009 conviction and a split sentence of two years of community
       control followed by two years of probation as to Count 5 of the
       2009 conviction.
              The 2015 Conviction and VOP Judgment. In April of 2015,
       while he was serving the supervisory portion of the sentence from
       the 2010 violation judgment, Mr. Reilly was convicted of aggra-
       vated stalking and found to have violated the conditions of his pro-
       bation/supervision on that judgment. The state court imposed a
       sentence of ﬁve years’ imprisonment for the aggravated stalking
       conviction and ﬁve years’ imprisonment for the violation of proba-
       tion, to be served consecutively.
               To satisfy the “in custody” requirement, a “habeas petitioner
       [must] be in custody under the conviction or sentence under attack
       at the time his petition is ﬁled.” Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488, 490−91
       (1989) (holding that a petitioner was not in custody on a decades-
       old conviction, for which he had served the entirety of the sen-
       tence, just because that conviction was used to enhance his sen-
       tence) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In Lacka-
       wanna County District Attorney v. Coss, the Supreme Court held that:
              [O]nce a state conviction is no longer open to direct
              or collateral attack in its own right because the
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                  21-11565

              defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they
              were available (or because the defendant did so un-
              successfully), the conviction may be regarded as con-
              clusively valid. If that conviction is later used to en-
              hance a criminal sentence, the defendant generally
              may not challenge the enhanced sentence through a
              petition under § 2254 on the ground that the prior
              conviction was unconstitutionally obtained.
       532 U.S. 394, 403−04 (2001) (citation omitted). And in Garlotte v.
       Fordice, 515 U.S. 39, 41 (1995), the Court held that a state prisoner
       incarcerated under consecutive sentences may apply for federal ha-
       beas relief from the conviction that ran ﬁrst in the series even
       though he had already served that sentence and was serving the
       next in the series.
              In his 2020 petition, Mr. Reilly sought to challenge the initial
       2009 judgment. At the time he ﬁled that petition, however, he had
       served the imprisonment portion of that judgment (i.e., the 11
       months and 29 days initially imposed, and the ﬁve years imposed in
       the 2010 VOP judgment). He was serving the ﬁve-year sentence
       imposed in the 2015 aggravated stalking conviction and had not
       begun to serve the consecutive ﬁve-year sentence imposed in the
       2015 VOP judgment. He was therefore “in custody” under Garlotte
       for purposes of both the 2015 conviction and 2015 VOP adjudica-
       tion. But that does not help him because the 2020 petition did not
       challenge the 2015 conviction or the 2015 VOP adjudication in any
       way. See Reilly, 2023 WL 7179321, at *2 (explaining that the 2015
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       21-11565                  Opinion of the Court                            5

       VOP adjudication was challenged in a diﬀerent petition ﬁled in
       2021). As noted earlier, the judgment under attack in the 2020 pe-
       tition was the 2009 judgment.
               We conclude that Mr. Reilly was not “in custody” on the
       2009 judgment when he ﬁled the 2020 habeas corpus petition. The
       district court’s dismissal of that petition for lack of subject-matter
       jurisdiction is therefore aﬃrmed. See Clement v. Florida, 59 F.4th
       1204, 1209 (11th Cir. 2023) (“in custody” requirement of § 2254(a)
       is jurisdictional).2
              AFFIRMED.

       2 Given our resolution of the appeal, we need not and do not address whether

       the 2020 petition was “second or successive.”