Light v. Caraway

• Decision Date: 04 August 2014
• Docket Number: No. 13–1554.,13–1554.
• Citation: 761 F.3d 809
• Parties: Augustus LIGHT, Petitioner–Appellant, v. John F. CARAWAY, Warden, Respondent–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

761 F.3d 809

Augustus LIGHT, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.John F. CARAWAY, Warden, Respondent–Appellee.

No. 13–1554.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 20, 2014.

Decided Aug. 4, 2014.

Barry Levenstam, Attorney, Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner–Appellant.

Gerald A. Coraz, Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Indianapolis, IN, for Respondent–Appellee.

Before KANNE, TINDER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

TINDER, Circuit Judge.

In 2003, Petitioner–Appellant Augustus Light was convicted in Minnesota federal district court on one count of firearm possession by a felon. The presentence investigation report (“PSR”) prepared by the probation office suggested that Light should be treated as an “armed career criminal” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) (“ACCA”), and subject to the corresponding offense level and criminal history category boosts provided by § 4B1.4 of the Sentencing Guidelines. These enhancements apply when a defendant has “three previous convictions ... for a violent felony or a serious drug offense.” ¹ The ACCA paragraph of the PSR stated that “in addition to the defendant's two qualifying juvenile acts of violence” he had “at least three prior convictions for a violent felony or serious drug offense.” One of the prior adult convictions identified in the PSR as a violent felony was a conviction for criminal vehicular operation resulting in substantial bodily harm (“criminal vehicular operation”). The ACCA paragraph also identified two other adult convictions—third-degree burglary and a third-degree controlled substances crime. In the “Criminal History” section of the PSR, the probation officer enumerated all of Light's previous criminal history, and specified that, inter alia, Light also had a felony conviction for fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle.

Following the recommendation in the PSR, the Minnesota district court concluded that Light's offense level was 33 with a criminal history category of VI, with a guideline imprisonment range of 235 to 293 months, rather than the range of 120 to 150 months that it would have been without the ACCA enhancement. In sentencing Light to 235 months' incarceration, the district court did not specify which three convictions supported the finding that Light was an armed career criminal. After an unsuccessful direct appeal of his conviction and sentence, Light challenged the ACCA enhancement in a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 petition, contending that the use of the drug offense as one of the three predicate offenses was improper. The district court denied this challenge and declined a certificate of appealability, holding that Light's “criminal history include[d] a sufficient number of other predicate offenses to support an armed career criminal status without any reliance upon the objected to offense.” In 2008, the Supreme Court decided the case of Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137, 139, 143, 128 S.Ct. 1581, 170 L.Ed.2d 490 (2008), concluding that driving under the influence of alcohol is not a “violent felony” as defined by the ACCA, because the term “violent felony” applies only to crimes within the so-called “residual clause” of the ACCA that are “roughly similar, in kind as well as degree of risk posed,” to the specific felonies enumerated in the statute. Light then sought leave from the Eighth Circuit to file successive petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, appealing the use of his criminal vehicular operation conviction as a predicate offense for the ACCA enhancement. The Eighth Circuit denied those requests.

He then filed a pro se habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the Southern District of Indiana, where he is incarcerated. (The venue requirement in § 2241 is different from the venue requirement in § 2255: while an action under the latter must be brought in the district of conviction, a petition under § 2241 must be brought in the district of incarceration.) In filing his petition, Light relied on the “savings clause,” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e), which provides that

An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.

His petition contended that in light of Begay, he was entitled to a sentence reduction because one of his predicate ACCA convictions did not qualify as a “violent felony.” The Indiana district court dismissed the habeas petition on the grounds that relief under § 2255 had been available to him and had not been “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention,” and consequently Light did not qualify for the savings clause. The district court reasoned that “the remedy afforded by § 2255 was anything but ‘unavailable’ or ineffective to test the validity” of Light's conviction. Light timely appealed. We review the denial of his habeas petition de novo, and all of the district court's factual determinations for clear error. Blake v. United States, 723 F.3d 870, 879 (7th Cir.2013).

I

We begin with the threshold question of whether Light qualifies for the savings clause. Ordinarily a federal prisoner seeking to attack his sentence or conviction collaterally must bring an action under § 2255, “the federal prisoner's substitute for habeas corpus,” in the district of conviction. Brown v. Rios, 696 F.3d 638, 640 (7th Cir.2012). The “essential function” of § 2255 “is to give a prisoner a reasonable opportunity to obtain a reliable judicial determination of the fundamental legality of his conviction and sentence.” In re Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 609 (7th Cir.1998). Only in rare circumstances where § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of the prisoner's detention” may relief be granted under the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2241, Brown v. Rios, 696 F.3d at 640 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e)), and such an action must be brought in the district of incarceration, 28 U.S.C. § 2241(a). Section 2255 provides a means by which a prisoner may bring a second, successive § 2255 petition if he invokes “a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable,” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(2), but is silent on how a prisoner can challenge his sentence based on a new and retroactive statutory decision, Davenport, 147 F.3d at 610. For this reason, our circuit allows for a § 2241 challenge based on a new statutory interpretation by the Supreme Court, provided three conditions set forth in Davenport are satisfied:

First, the prisoner must show that he relies on a “statutory-interpretation case,” rather than a “constitutional case.” Second, the prisoner must show that he relies on a retroactive decision that he could not have invoked in his first § 2255 motion. “The third condition is that [the] sentence enhancement ... have been a grave enough error to be deemed a miscarriage of justice corrigible therefore in a habeas corpus proceeding.”

Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d 583, 586 (7th Cir.2013) (quoting Brown v. Rios, 696 F.3d at 640) (internal citations omitted).

The first Davenport condition is not under contention here; we have before noted that Begay was a statutory interpretation case, and that this condition is satisfied in challenges based on Begay 's interpretation of “violent felony” under the ACCA. Brown v. Rios, 696 F.3d at 640. Nor is the third Davenport condition in dispute: we have concluded that “fundamental sentencing defect[s],” such as “a misapplication of the [then-]mandatory career offender Guideline[,] present[ ] a cognizable non-constitutional claim for initial collateral relief because the error resulted in a miscarriage of justice.” Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d at 587. We do not find, and the government does not raise, a limiting principle that would distinguish an erroneous application of a mandatory Guideline from an erroneous enhancement under the ACCA, and which would lead us to the conclusion that the erroneous application of the ACCA is not a cognizable claim for collateral relief.

We therefore review the second Davenport condition only. Light contends that the second Davenport condition is met because Begay was a retroactive decision that could not have been invoked in his first § 2255 motion. We have applied two different tests in this context. In Brown v. Rios, we simply concluded that the prisoner could not have invoked Begay because Begay hadn't been decided by the time of the petitioner's first § 2255 motion. Brown v. Rios, 696 F.3d at 640. Under this standard, Light would meet the second Davenport prong because Begay was issued almost two years after Light's initial § 2255 motion. In other cases, however, we have “employed a slightly higher standard,” requiring that the prisoner “show that his claim was ‘foreclosed by binding precedent’ at the time of his direct appeal and § 2255 motion.” Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d at 595 (quoting Hill v. Werlinger, 695 F.3d 644, 648 (7th Cir.2012)). We reasoned that “the fact that a position is novel does not allow a prisoner to bypass section 2255.... Only if the position is foreclosed (as distinct from not being supported by—from being, in other words, novel) by precedent is a § 2255 remedy inadequate.” Hill, 695 F.3d at 648 (quoting Morales v. Bezy, 499 F.3d 668, 672 (7th Cir.2007)) (internal quotation marks omitted). To satisfy this standard, the prisoner must show that “if [he] had made the argument he currently advances ... he clearly would have lost under” the precedent of the jurisdiction. Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d at 595.

Binding precedent at the time of Light's initial § 2255 motion barred his current claim that his criminal vehicular...