Santiago v. Streeval

• Decision Date: 02 June 2022
• Docket Number: 20-2665
• Citation: 36 F.4th 700
• Parties: Marcos F. SANTIAGO, Petitioner-Appellant, v. J.C. STREEVAL, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

36 F.4th 700

Marcos F. SANTIAGO, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.J.C. STREEVAL, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 20-2665

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued November 30, 2021

Decided June 2, 2022

Zaki Anwar, Attorney, Jones Day, Columbus, OH, Jason Burnette, Attorney, Jones Day, Atlanta, GA, Erin M. McGinley, Attorney, Jones Day, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Madeleine S. Murphy, Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Chicago, IL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before Kanne, Wood, and Hamilton, Circuit Judges.

Hamilton, Circuit Judge.

This appeal takes us into the procedural intricacies of the restrictions on post-conviction relief for federal prisoners and the high substantive hurdles a prisoner must overcome for relief. The statutes and case law attempt to balance interests in finality against interests in accuracy and fairness.

Two decades ago, petitioner-appellant Marcos Santiago participated in several armed robberies in Pennsylvania. He was convicted in 2005 for interfering with interstate commerce by robbery in violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a) ; possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) ; and possessing a firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He was sentenced in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to a total of thirty-three and a half years in prison. Santiago's convictions and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal.

Santiago has sought relief from his convictions and sentence on direct appeal and in several post-conviction actions under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2255 and 2241, so far without success. In this appeal, Santiago contends that the Supreme Court's decision in Rehaif v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2191, 204 L.Ed.2d 594 (2019), requires the courts to set aside his convictions for possessing a firearm as a felon. Because relief is not available to him on a direct appeal or in a motion under § 2255, he seeks a writ of habeas corpus under § 2241. The district court denied relief under § 2241, concluding that he could not show he was actually innocent of the felon-in-possession charges. That is what Santiago would need to show to invoke the so-called saving clause in § 2255(e), which would allow him to use § 2241 to avoid the restrictions on successive § 2255 motions. Based on the narrow procedural path available to Santiago and the high standard for winning relief—he would need to show that no reasonable juror could find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—we affirm.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

A. The Robberies and Convictions

Over three weeks in 2002, Santiago participated in a string of armed robberies at hotels in Pennsylvania. When he was arrested, Santiago was holding the distinctive firearm that he and his co-defendants used in the robberies. A jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania found Santiago guilty of three Hobbs Act counts of interference with commerce by robbery, two counts of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence (robbery), and two counts of possessing a firearm as a felon. The felon-in-possession counts were based on Santiago's two prior state felony convictions for criminal trespass and retail theft.

In 2005, the district court in Pennsylvania sentenced Santiago to concurrent terms of 42 months in prison on the three Hobbs Act and two felon-in-possession counts. Under then-applicable law, Santiago also received mandatory consecutive 60-month and 300-month terms (five years and twenty-five years) for the two § 924(c) counts of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. His total prison sentence was 402 months (thirty-three and a half years). On direct appeal, the Third Circuit affirmed. United States v. Santiago , 180 F. App'x 345 (3d Cir. 2006).

B. Post-Conviction Motions and Petitions

In 2007, Santiago filed his first motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He was unsuccessful. Santiago v. United States , No. 07-253, 2008 WL 1991627 (E.D. Pa. May 8, 2008). In 2018 and 2019, Santiago also sought relief in related § 2241 and § 2255 actions, respectively, asserting that Johnson v. United States , 576 U.S. 591, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 192 L.Ed.2d 569 (2015), meant that his sentence had been enhanced improperly because Hobbs Act robbery should no longer qualify as a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). The Third Circuit granted Santiago leave to pursue a successive § 2255 motion on that issue, and his motion was pending in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania at the time of this appeal. A related § 2241 petition that he filed in the Northern District of West Virginia was dismissed. Santiago v. Coakley , No. 3:18-cv-110, 2018 WL 5569429, at *6–7 (N.D. W. Va. Oct. 4, 2018). These other post-conviction actions are not related to the issue before us, however. More recently, the Western District of Virginia dismissed another § 2241 petition raising the same Rehaif issue presented here, concluding that Santiago could not relitigate in that district the same challenge he has brought in this case. Santiago v. Warden , No. 7:20-cv-00648, 2022 WL 891970 (W.D. Va. March 25, 2022).

C. The Current § 2241 Petition

This appeal concerns Santiago's § 2241 petition filed in October 2019 in the Northern District of Illinois, where he was imprisoned at the time. Santiago seeks to vacate his felon-in-possession convictions, arguing that the government failed to prove all elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. He relies on the Supreme Court's decision in Rehaif v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2191, 204 L.Ed.2d 594 (2019), which held that "in a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) and § 924(a)(2), the Government must prove both that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and that he knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm." Id. at 2200.¹

At the time of Santiago's trial, controlling Third Circuit precedent on the elements of a § 922(g)(1) charge required the government to prove only (1) that Santiago knowingly possessed the firearm, (2) that he was a convicted felon, and (3) that the firearm had traveled in interstate commerce. The government did not need to prove that Santiago knew that he was a felon or that he had some other status that made it a federal crime for him to possess a firearm. E.g., United States v. Dodd , 225 F.3d 340, 344 (3d Cir. 2000). Santiago also did not stipulate to having known his felon status at the time of his possession. Based on these facts, Santiago asserted in his § 2241 petition that his convictions should be vacated because the government did not prove that he knew he was a felon when he possessed the firearm.²

The Illinois district court denied Santiago's § 2241 petition, reasoning that he could not satisfy the requirements of the § 2255(e) saving clause, which would be his only path to relief under § 2241. In particular, the district court found that Santiago could not prove that the error he asserted was "grave enough to be deemed a miscarriage of justice," which can be shown by establishing actual innocence.

II. Analysis

We first lay out the legal standard for applying the saving clause in § 2255(e). We then apply that standard to the facts here and conclude that they do not support a finding that Santiago was actually innocent of being a felon in possession of a firearm under the Rehaif standard. We then address Santiago's suggestion that we remand for an evidentiary hearing on his claim of actual innocence and find that such a hearing is not warranted.

A. Legal Standard

The vast majority of legal and factual challenges to a federal criminal conviction and sentence must be raised in a direct appeal. By statute, however, a federal prisoner may also seek collateral relief from his conviction or sentence. The ordinary path for collateral relief is a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 filed in the district of conviction. Webster v. Daniels , 784 F.3d 1123, 1124 (7th Cir. 2015) (en banc); Brown v. Rios , 696 F. 3d 638, 640 (7th Cir. 2012). Section 2255 imposes strict deadlines and limits most prisoners to just one motion per judgment. A narrow alternative path may be available, however, under the so-called "saving clause" in § 2255(e). That clause allows a prisoner to seek relief under the older § 2241 habeas corpus remedy in the district where he is in custody if the § 2255 remedy is "inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention." § 2255(e). We have found that the § 2255 remedy was inadequate or ineffective in a handful of cases, including Webster v. Watson , 975 F.3d 667 (7th Cir. 2020), as well as In re Davenport , 147 F.3d 605 (7th Cir. 1998), and Garza v. Lappin , 253 F.3d 918 (7th Cir. 2001). We review de novo a district court's denial of a § 2241 petition. Camacho v. English , 872 F.3d 811, 813 (7th Cir. 2017).

Relief under § 2255 is not inadequate or ineffective merely because the defendant lost or would have lost under § 2255 on the merits or on a procedural ground. Purkey v. United States , 964 F.3d 603, 615 (7th Cir. 2020) (explaining that " ‘in-adequate or ineffective,’ taken in context, must mean something more than unsuccessful"); accord, e.g., Fulks v. Watson , 4 F.4th 586, 592 (7th Cir. 2021) ("The probability that Fulks would not have prevailed on his Atkins [v. Virginia , 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002)] claim in 2008 does not mean or show that § 2255 was inadequate or ineffective."); Higgs v. Watson , 984 F.3d 1235, 1240 (7th Cir. 2021) ("That Higgs did not succeed with this request in the Fourth Circuit does not itself show that § 2255 was inadequate or ineffective.").

Section 2255 may be deemed inadequate or ineffective if it did not give the petitioner "a reasonable opportunity to obtain a reliable judicial determination of the fundamental legality of his conviction and sentence." Davenport , 147 F.3d at 609. To invoke the § 2255(e) saving clause, a petitioner must establish:

(1) that he

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