Chagoya v. United States
| Decision Date | 02 December 2022 |
| Docket Number | 22-CV-356-JPS |
| Parties | MARIO CHAGOYA, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Wisconsin |
J. P Stadtmueller U.S. District Judge
On March 21, 2022, Petitioner Mario Chagoya (“Chagoya”) filed a motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C § 2255 to vacate, modify, or correct his sentence. ECF No. 1. On May 24, 2022, this Court issued a screening order allowing his § 2255 motion to proceed on three ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claims and disallowing two other claims due to procedural default. ECF No. 2. The Court then ordered the United States to respond to Chagoya's IAC claims with either an answer or a motion. Id. at 4-5. The United States responded on June 2 2022 with a motion asking the Court to find Chagoya had waived his attorney-client privilege for communications related to his IAC claims. ECF No. 3.
Subsequently, Chagoya (1) moved the Court to reconsider its dismissal of the two defaulted claims, ECF No. 4; (2) requested that he be allowed to supplement his original petition with two new grounds for relief, ECF No. 8; (3) filed motions to compel his prior defense counsel, Jeffrey W. Jensen (“Attorney Jensen”), to turn over his client file, ECF Nos. 6 and 9; and (4) objected to the United States' motion for waiver, ECF Nos. 7 and 13. The Court denied the motion to reconsider, denied without prejudice the motion to supplement the petition, granted Chagoya leave to amend his petition to bring all his claims in one place, and deferred ruling on the motion for waiver and motions to compel. ECF No. 14.
Chagoya filed an amended § 2255 motion on September 20, 2022. ECF No. 15. Alongside the amended petition, Chagoya filed a “motion for relief,” once again challenging the Court's prior rejection of two of his claimed grounds for habeas relief. ECF No. 16. The Court will grant the motion for relief for the reasons stated below, and accordingly will vacate the prior screening order and the order denying his prior motion for reconsideration to the extent it affirmed the dismissal of two of his claims at screening for procedural default. This Order then turns to screen Chagoya's amended § 2255 motion and lays out the claims on which his motion may proceed.
Relatedly, the United States' motion to find waiver of attorney-client privilege, which is fully briefed, ECF Nos. 3, 7, 13, will be granted, and the scope of that waiver will be defined relative to the claims on which Chagoya may proceed. Finally, Chagoya's motions to compel Attorney Jensen to turn over his client file to him, and Chagoya's related discovery requests, will be denied.
1. CHAGOYA'S MOTION FOR RELIEF
Chagoya moves pursuant to Federal Rule 60(b) for “relief from judgment on [the Court's] last two orders”-the screening order that disallowed him from proceeding on two of his claimed grounds for relief, ECF No. 2, and order denying his motion for reconsideration on dismissal of those two claims, ECF No. 14. ECF No. 16 at 1. Those two grounds for relief, as the Court described them in its first screening order, were that “the parties and the Court applied incorrect Guidelines to his sentence” and “that United States Sentencing Guideline § 1B1.3 is unconstitutional-as-applied.” ECF No. 2 at 3. The Court dismissed these claims for procedural default because Chagoya failed to directly appeal these claims and did not explain the cause for this failure nor how the alleged errors prejudiced him while his prosecution was pending. Id.
Chagoya argues generally that the Court's dismissal of these grounds for relief and further denial of his motion for reconsideration were improper because he was not afforded “a notice [the Court] intended to summarily dismiss grounds two and three,” in violation of the Due Process Clause. ECF No. 16 at 3-5. With respect to the specific claims he believes should not have been dismissed: first, he argues that it was legal error for the Court to dismiss at screening the claim as to the constitutionality of United States Sentencing Guideline § 1B1.3 because, under § 2255(a), he was entitled to “raise a constitutional attack against a guideline rule” for the first time on a habeas motion. Id. at 7. Second, he argues that the claim as to the application of the incorrect Guidelines to his sentence was actually an ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claim and the Court's misapprehension of this claim led to its improper dismissal on procedural default grounds. Id. at 8.
The Court will grant Chagoya's motion for relief for the reasons stated below. To this end, the Court's prior screening order, ECF No. 2, will be vacated in full, and the prior order, ECF No. 14, vacated in part to the extent it denied his motion for reconsideration on his disallowed claims on the basis of procedural default. The Court screens Petitioner's amended § 2255 motion in Section 2 infra.
1.1 Legal Standard
A threshold question is what standard applies to Petitioner's motion for relief, ECF No. 16. Chagoya brings his motion pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), which applies to final judgments, orders, and proceedings. Neither of the Court's prior two orders is technically a final order or judgment because neither adjudicates all the claims or the rights and liabilities of all parties, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b). Chagoya was allowed to proceed on some claims after the initial screening order, and remained so after the Court's denial of his first motion for reconsideration. In this respect, his motion is properly considered under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b).
On the other hand, the Seventh Circuit has held that dismissals of § 2254 petitions for failure to exhaust state remedies are “final, appealable judgment[s]” even if the dismissal operates without prejudice. Lauderdale-El v. Ind. Parole Bd., 35 F.4th 572, 580 (7th Cir. 2022). Chagoya's case, of course, presents a different context, since the issue is procedural default (which is distinct from but related to the failure-to-exhaust doctrine) of some but not all claims in a § 2255 motion. Here, the Court never specified whether the dismissal of the two claims due to procedural default operated with or without prejudice (i.e., whether Chagoya could still attempt to directly appeal those claims, or explain his failure to appeal them)-but the Court was effectively “done” with these two claims when it disallowed Chagoya's § 2255 motion from proceeding on them. See id. at 575 (). This posture would counsel in favor of review under the Rule 60(b) standard.
In any event, the distinction is largely academic, because the 54(b) and 60(b) () standards share much in common. The Court lays out each potentially applicable standard here, and will examine Chagoya's arguments for relief in turn under the appropriate standard(s).[1]
“Courts in the Seventh Circuit . . . generally apply the standards of Rule 59(e) or Rule 60(b)” to motions such as Chagoya's. Gladney v. Pollard, No. 21-CV-606-PP, 2022 WL 957966, at *1 (E.D. Wis. Mar. 30, 2022). “Altering or amending a judgment under Rule 59(e) is permissible when there is newly discovered evidence or there has been a manifest error of law or of fact.” Harrington v. City of Chicago, 433 F.3d 542, 546 (7th Cir. 2006). “A ‘manifest error' is not demonstrated by the disappointment of the losing party [but rather] the ‘wholesale disregard, misapplication, or failure to recognize controlling precedent.'” Oto v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 224 F.3d 601, 606 (7th Cir. 2000) (quoting Sedrak v. Callahan, 987 F.Supp. 1063, 1069 (N.D. Ill. 1997)).
Rule 60(b) allows a party to seek relief from an “order” for any of six enumerated reasons, including mistake, newly discovered evidence, fraud, a void judgment, a satisfied judgment, or “any other reason that justifies relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b). Rule 60(b)(1) allows relief where a judge has committed legal error. Kemp v. United States, 596 U.S. __(2022). “Rule 60(b)(4),” authorizing reconsideration where a judgment is void, “applies only in the rare instance where a judgment is premised either on a certain type of jurisdictional error or on a violation of due process that deprives a party of notice or the opportunity to be heard.” United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, 559 U.S. 260, 271 (2010). Rule 60(b)(6)'s residual catchall provision justifies relief only where the rule's other reasons do not apply and where the movant demonstrates extraordinary circumstances justifying relief. Pearson v. Target Corp., 893 F.3d 980, 984 (7th Cir. 2018). “Such circumstances will rarely occur in the habeas context.” Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 535 (2005).
Similarly, motions for reconsideration under Rule 54(b) of orders that adjudicate fewer than all the claims or the rights and liabilities of all parties are appropriate in very few contexts. The motions may be brought where the Court has “patently misunderstood a party,” “has made an error not of reasoning but of apprehension,” or where there has been a “controlling or significant change in the law or facts since the submission of the issue to the Court.” Bank of Waunakee v. Rochester Cheese Sales, Inc., 906 F.2d 1185, 1191 (7th Cir. 1990). Reconsideration is “not an appropriate forum for rehashing previously rejected arguments or arguing matters that could have been heard during the pendency of the previous motion.” Caisse Nationale de Credit Agricole v. CBI Indus., 90 F.3d 1264, 1270 (7th Cir. 1996).
1.2 Due Process and Rule 60(b)(4)
Chagoya first argues that he did not get sufficient notice of nor an adequate opportunity to...
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