U.S. v. Poole

• Decision Date: 20 June 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07-4220.,07-4220.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jason Conrad POOLE, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

531 F.3d 263

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jason Conrad POOLE, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 07-4220.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: March 21, 2008.

Decided: June 20, 2008.

ARGUED: Michele Walls Sartori, Office of the United States Attorney, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellant. Robert Whelen Biddle, Nathans & Biddle, L.L.P., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland; Barbara S. Skalla, Office of the United States Attorney, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellant.

Before MOTZ, TRAXLER, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

Reversed and remanded with instructions by published opinion. Judge DUNCAN wrote the opinion, in which Judge MOTZ and Judge TRAXLER joined.

OPINION

DUNCAN, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the issue of whether a temporary custody arrangement can form the basis of a district court's jurisdiction over a habeas petition filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c)(3). For the reasons that follow, we conclude that it does not, and that the measures taken by the district court to secure jurisdiction here were improper. We therefore reverse and remand with instructions to reinstate the original sentence.

A brief overview of this procedurally convoluted case is warranted. After a jury trial, Jason Conrad Poole ("Poole") was found guilty in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland ("Maryland federal district court") of possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Designated a career offender under the United States Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines"), U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1 (1995), Poole was sentenced to 262 months' imprisonment and sent to federal prison in Cumberland, Kentucky to serve out his sentence.

Unable to obtain relief after a direct appeal, three habeas corpus petitions (two under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and one under 28 U.S.C. § 2241), and a number of pro se motions seeking collateral review of his sentence, Poole retained counsel. His counsel secured Poole's appearance before the original federal sentencing judge to testify regarding an outstanding post-conviction motion. Once there, however, Poole abandoned that motion and instead asked to remain in Maryland long enough to file another habeas corpus petition under § 2241(c)(3). In contrast to a § 2255 habeas petition, which is filed with the original sentencing court, a § 2241 habeas petition can only be filed in the district in which a prisoner is confined. The district court acquiesced in Poole's proposal, keeping him in Maryland for several months and short-circuiting Poole's return to his Kentucky cell, in an express attempt to create the requisite confinement for purposes of obtaining jurisdiction over the forthcoming request. Poole eventually filed the § 2241(c)(3) petition, seeking reduction in his sentence on the ground that the career-offender enhancement was improperly applied to him because a state court judgment had amended one of his prior convictions. The district court granted the petition and resentenced Poole to 135 months' imprisonment. Having already served the majority of that sentence, Poole was released over the government's objections.

The government now appeals, arguing, inter alia, that the district court did not have jurisdiction to consider Poole's § 2241(c)(3) motion because Poole was not "in custody" in Maryland. We agree.

I.

A.

We begin with a detailed explication of the complicated factual and procedural history underlying this appeal. Poole was convicted on February 6, 1997 in the Maryland federal district court of possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). He faced designation as a career offender based on two prior convictions in Maryland state court: a 1989 robbery conviction and a 1991 possession-with-intent-to-distribute-cocaine conviction.¹ Such an enhancement would increase his Guidelines sentencing range, from a range of 151 months to 188 months, to a range of 360 months to life imprisonment.²

Prior to sentencing, in an effort to avoid the career-offender enhancement, Poole sought modification of the 1991 conviction by filing a motion in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, Maryland ("Maryland state court"). In the motion, Poole requested a hearing to reduce the 1991 felony possession-with-intent-to-distribute conviction to a misdemeanor conviction for simple possession, explaining that he "was never advised at the time of his entry of his plea [to the 1991 drug crime] that its effect might be to characterize him as a career offender for Federal sentencing guidelines purposes and expose him to such an extreme penalty for a case involving a small amount of drugs." J.A. 21. Poole attached to the request a proposed order granting both the motion for a hearing and the underlying relief sought—that "the Court's judgment of conviction entered on November 1, 1991, being and is hereby revised such that the conviction for possession with intent to distribute cocaine is stricken in favor of a judgment of conviction for possession of cocaine." J.A. 23.

On April 21, 1997, Prince George's County Judge Darlene Perry signed and dated the proposed order granting the hearing and the underlying sentence modification (the "April 21 order").³ On the same day that the order was filed, however the underlying matter was also set for a future hearing before Judge Perry. The hearing was held on June 6, 1997, after which Judge Perry entered an order denying Poole's substantive motion and leaving his felony drug conviction intact (the "June 6 order"), in direct contradiction to her April 21 order. Judge Perry made no reference to the April 21 order nor to her ostensible modification of the sentence.

Poole returned to federal court shortly thereafter for a sentencing hearing regarding his 1997 federal drug conviction. Judge Perry's April 21 order was never mentioned during this hearing, and Poole did not otherwise challenge the application of the career-offender enhancement. Indeed, the presentence report ("PSR") calculated Poole's Guidelines range assuming the applicability of the career-offender enhancement, recommending a sentence of 360 months to life imprisonment. The district court departed downwards, finding that the Guidelines overstated Poole's criminal history, and sentenced him to 262 months' imprisonment. Poole was sent, at his request, to the federal prison in Cumberland, Kentucky to serve out his sentence.

B.

In the years that followed, Poole pursued a number of unsuccessful appeals and collateral attacks to his conviction and sentence, including a failed direct appeal and a failed § 2255 petition arguing ineffective assistance of counsel.

Having exhausted the usual avenues for federal relief, Poole filed a pro se motion in 2002 with the Maryland state court seeking reconsideration of Judge Perry's June 6, 1997 order denying him a modification of his sentence for the 1991 drug crime. A law clerk from the Maryland state court responded to Poole, informing him of Judge Perry's April 21 order that appeared to have reclassified his 1991 drug conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor. Poole's subsequent efforts to leverage the April 21 order to reduce his federal sentence form the crux of this appeal.

Poole began by filing pro se another § 2255 petition, his second, challenging the career-offender enhancement in the Maryland federal district court for the first time. Poole argued that, in light of Judge Perry's April 21 order, he had only one eligible prior felony at the time of his 1997 sentencing and therefore should not have been subjected to the career-offender enhancement. The Maryland federal district court denied the motion as successive, instructing Poole to first obtain authorization from this court.⁴ This court subsequently denied Poole's request for leave to file a successive habeas corpus motion.

Poole also sought relief in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky (the "Kentucky federal district court"), the jurisdiction in which he was confined, by filing a third petition for habeas corpus, this time under § 2241 (his first § 2241 petition).⁵ We discuss Poole's first § 2241 petition in some detail because the matter on appeal today, his second § 2241 petition, closely tracks the arguments Poole made before the Kentucky federal district court.

In the petition, Poole argued there that he was unlawfully sentenced as a career offender because his 1991 drug conviction could no longer support the career-offender enhancement. Though recognizing that habeas petitions of this sort must generally proceed under § 2255, Poole contended that relief under § 2241 was available to him via the so-called "savings clause" of § 2255(e).⁶

The Kentucky federal district court denied the motion, holding that Poole's petition did not fall within the ambit of the savings clause of § 2255 because Poole had failed to demonstrate that § 2255 was "inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention," § 2255(e). Relying on Sixth Circuit precedent, the court explained that the savings clause only preserves claims in which a petitioner claims actual innocence of his conviction, not just "innocence" of a sentencing factor. See Poole v. Barron, No. 04-CV-095-KKC, slip op. at 6 (E.D.Ky. May 26, 2004) (citing Charles v. Chandler, 180 F.3d 753 (6th Cir.1999)).⁷ The court found this result harmonious with the principle that sentencing errors should generally be addressed by the sentencing court under § 2255, and that only "in very limited circumstances" can a distant federal court entertain a challenge to another district court's actions. Id. at 4. Poole did not appeal.

Concurrent with his first § 2241 motion in Kentucky, Poole had also filed a pro se motion in the Maryland federal district court seeking to amend the 1997 judgment against him.⁸ Shortly after the Kentucky district court...