Grzegorczyk v. United States

• Decision Date: 30 June 2022
• Docket Number: 21-5967
• Citation: 142 S.Ct. 2580 (Mem)
• Parties: Zenon GRZEGORCZYK v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

142 S.Ct. 2580 (Mem)

Zenon GRZEGORCZYK

v.UNITED STATES

No. 21-5967

Supreme Court of the United States.

Decided June 30, 2022

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

Statement of Justice KAVANAUGH, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, Justice THOMAS, Justice ALITO, and Justice BARRETT join, respecting the denial of certiorari.

The defendant in this case wanted to murder six people whom he blamed for his divorce and for the loss of custody of his child. He hired and paid hitmen. And he told the hitmen to burn the six intended victims alive. So that he would have a good alibi, the defendant planned to be in Poland when the murders occurred. It turned out, however, that the would-be hitmen were undercover law enforcement officers. So the defendant was arrested and federally charged with murder for hire and a firearms violation.

The United States then negotiated a plea deal with the defendant. The plea agreement was unconditional. Among other things, the defendant waived any right to challenge his murder-for-hire and firearms convictions. Consistent with that plea agreement, the defendant was sentenced to almost 18 years of imprisonment.

A couple of years later, the defendant filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 collaterally challenging his firearms conviction. Because of the defendant's unconditional guilty plea, the District Court denied the motion, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed. Based on the Government's current view of certain cases decided after the defendant's guilty plea, the Government now asks this Court to vacate the Seventh Circuit's judgment and to order the Seventh Circuit to reconsider the defendant's § 2255 motion. Because the Seventh Circuit correctly concluded that the defendant's unconditional guilty plea precluded any argument based on the new caselaw, this Court has no appropriate legal basis to vacate the Seventh Circuit's judgment.

That said, the Constitution affords the Executive Branch authority to unilaterally provide relief to the defendant, if the Executive wishes to do so. The Framers of the Constitution contemplated that a federal criminal conviction or sentence might later be questioned by the Executive. And Article II of the Constitution grants the President broad unilateral authority to pardon federal defendants and to commute federal sentences. Art. II, § 2, cl. 1. Presidents regularly exercise that power.

In order to provide relief to the defendant in this case, the Executive Branch therefore has no need to enlist the Judiciary, or to ask the Judiciary to depart from standard practices and procedures. To the extent that the Department of Justice has concluded that this defendant's conviction should be vacated or that his sentence should be reduced, the Attorney General may recommend a pardon or commutation to the President, and the President may pardon the defendant or commute the sentence.

Justice SOTOMAYOR, with whom Justice BREYER, Justice KAGAN, and Justice GORSUCH join, dissenting from the denial of a grant, vacate, and remand order.

Neither the Federal Government nor federal courts are immune from making mistakes. Accordingly, on rare occasions, after the Government prevails in a case in a court of appeals, the Solicitor General asks this Court to grant a petition for certiorari, vacate the judgment below, and remand (GVR) in light of an error or an intervening development. Such requests occur in only a handful of the several thousand cases this Court considers every Term on its certiorari docket. When they are made, however, they are often of enormous consequence to the nongovernmental party. They may affect a petitioner's deportation, the length of a petitioner's prison sentence, or even a petitioner's eligibility for the death penalty.

Today marks the second instance this Term in which this Court has refused to issue a GVR order, notwithstanding the Solicitor General's confession of error, in a criminal case with great stakes for the individual petitioner. See Coonce v. United States , 595 U. S. ––––, 142 S.Ct. 25, 211 L.Ed.2d 267 (2021) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting). Through these cases, the Court appears to be quietly constricting its GVR practice. Here, it deprives petitioner Zenon Grzegorczyk of an opportunity to remedy an unlawful 7½-year component of his prison sentence, despite the Government's support. Nothing in precedent or history supports such a cramped conception of the Court's GVR practice, which forces individuals like Grzegorczyk to bear the brutal cost of others’ errors and denies them the benefit of a readily available, and potentially life-altering, procedural mechanism to correct those errors.

I

In 2014, Grzegorczyk pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of knowingly using a facility of interstate commerce with intent that a murder be committed, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1958(a), and one count of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a "crime of violence," in violation of § 924(c)(1)(a). Grzegorczyk's § 924(c) conviction was expressly premised on his § 1958(a) conviction as the predicate "crime of violence." Brief for United States 4. The District Court sentenced Grzegorczyk to a total of 17 years and 7 months’ incarceration, 5 years of which were for the § 924(c) charge. In his plea agreement, Grzegorczyk waived his right to appeal except as to the validity of his plea and the sentence imposed.

This Court subsequently held the residual clause of § 924(e), defining "violent felony" for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act, unconstitutionally vague. See Johnson v. United States , 576 U.S. 591, 597, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 192 L.Ed.2d 569 (2015). Grzegorczyk filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, arguing that the similarly worded residual clause defining "crime of violence" in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B) was unconstitutionally vague, that his § 1958(a) conviction did not independently qualify as a "crime of violence" under the elements clause of § 924(c)(3)(A), and that his § 924(c) conviction was therefore invalid. While the motion was pending, this Court struck down § 924(c)(3)(B) as unconstitutionally vague. See United States v. Davis , 588 U. S. ––––, ––––, 139 S.Ct. 2319, 2336, 204 L.Ed.2d 757 (2019).

The District Court denied Grzegorczyk's motion based on his waiver of appellate rights. Grzegorczyk appealed, arguing that his claim was cognizable. The Government responded that although § 924(c)(3)(B) was indeed unconstitutional, Grzegorczyk's § 1958(a) conviction nevertheless constituted a "crime of violence" under the elements clause of § 924(c)(3)(A), so his § 924(c) conviction remained valid. The Government also chose to invoke Grzegorczyk's appeal waiver as a procedural bar to his claims. The Seventh Circuit sided with the Government solely as to Grzegorczyk's waiver of rights.

Grzegorczyk petitioned for certiorari. The Government responded by asking this Court to issue a GVR order. See Brief for United States 7–8. The Government explains that "its usual practice is to waive any applicable procedural defenses on collateral review" where it "determines that a defendant's conviction under Section 924(c) is invalid and no other grounds support the defendant's overall sentence." Id. , at 10–11. Below, the Government did not follow this practice, and instead invoked Grzegorczyk's waiver, because it mistakenly believed § 1958(a) to be a "crime of violence" under the elements clause of § 924(c)(3)(A). Now, however, the Government has determined, in view of § 1958(a) ’s elements, that the offense does not satisfy the requirements of § 924(c)(3)(A) and therefore does not constitute a "crime of violence." As a result, the Government "agrees ... that [Grzegorczyk's] Section 924(c) conviction is ... invalid," and it asks this Court to issue a GVR order to "allow the district court to reevaluate [Grzegorczyk's] sentence." Id. , at 10, 11.

The Government adds that GVR would permit correction of an additional error in Grzegorczyk's sentence: The parties had erroneously agreed that his § 1958(a) conviction (for which the District Court imposed a sentence of 12 years and 7 months’ incarceration) had a statutory maximum punishment of 20 years, when in fact the relevant statutory maximum was 10 years. Between the 2 years and 7 months of extrastatutory punishment imposed on the § 1958(a) conviction and the 5 years imposed on the concededly invalid § 924(c) conviction, then, over 7½ years of unlawful incarceration hang in the balance.

Nonetheless, this Court denies certiorari.

II

Grzegorczyk's case falls comfortably within this Court's longstanding GVR practice, as codified in statute and applied in precedent. The authority for this practice stems from 28 U.S.C. § 2106, which provides that "[t]he Supreme Court ... may ... vacate, set aside or reverse any judgment, decree, or order of a court lawfully brought before it for review, and may remand the cause and ... require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances."

This Court has historically exercised this broad grant of authority to issue GVR orders in many circumstances, including, as relevant here, "in light of the position asserted by the Solicitor General" (e.g. , where the Solicitor General confesses error). The Court has entered GVR orders on the Government's motion, without undertaking any express analysis of the merits, for well over a century. See, e.g. , De Baca v. United States , 189 U.S. 505, 23 S.Ct. 849, 47 L.Ed. 921 (1903) (per curiam ) ("Error being confessed by the appellees, judgment reversed, and cause remanded with directions to proceed therein according to law"); Ballin v. Magone , 140 U.S. 670, 11 S.Ct. 1015, 35 L.Ed. 602 (1891) (per curiam ) ("Judgment reversed, with costs, by consent of [the Attorney General], who confessed error, and cause remanded to be proceeded in according to law and justice, on motion of Mr Assistant Attorney General Maury for defendant in error").¹

In the modern era, the Court has explained that a GVR order may be appropriate even where the...