United States v. Brye

Citation935 F.Supp.2d 1319
Decision Date28 March 2013
Docket NumberCase No. 8:07–cr–292–T–26TGW.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America v. Carlton D. BRYE.
CourtUnited States District Courts. 11th Circuit. United States District Court of Middle District of Florida

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Rachelle Desvaux Bedke, U.S. Attorney's Office, Tampa, FL, for United States of America.

Mara Allison Guagliardo, Mary A. Mills, Federal Public Defender's Office, Tampa, FL, for Carlton D. Brye.

ORDER

RICHARD A. LAZZARA, District Judge.

Defendant, through appointed counsel, has filed a Motion for Reconsideration and Request for Leave to Submit Supplemental Briefing. In the motion, Defendant requests that the Court reconsider its previous order rendered March 7, 2013, and filed at docket 87, in which the Court declined to follow the directive of an order entered by a United States District Court Judge in the Southern District of Georgia (the Georgia court), where Defendant is incarcerated, granting Defendant's petition for writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 and directing that he be returned to the Middle District of Florida to be resentenced by this Court. Defendant also requests leave to file a supplemental brief by April 12, 2013, and to present oral argument. Although the Government has yet to respond to the motion, the Court questions whether it will respond in opposition in view of its concessions in the § 2241 proceedings before the Georgia court that Defendant was entitled to a granting of his petition and an order directing that he be returned to the Middle District of Florida for resentencing. For the reasons that follow, Defendant's motion is due to be denied without the necessity of further briefing and oral argument.1

The issue of how a federal district court of incarceration deals procedurally and substantively with a § 2241 petition challenging a judgment of conviction and sentence suffered in another federal district court has, as will be explained later, bedeviled and vexed district courts throughout the country over the past several years under similar circumstances presented by this case. Within the context of this case, the critical issue before this Court is whether the Georgia court had the jurisdictional authority to direct this Court to resentence Defendant even though this Court and the Georgia court are coequal in terms of their jurisdiction.

A classic case confronting this issue, the reasoning of which the Court finds extremely persuasive, is Marshall v. Yost, 2010 WL 5053920 (W.D.Pa.2010). In that case, the petitioner filed a § 2241 proceeding in the United States District for the Western District of Pennsylvania where he was incarcerated alleging that based on changed circumstances he was serving a sentence of imprisonment imposed by the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia which now constituted a miscarriage of justice because he no longer qualified as a career offender for sentencing enhancement purposes. Although the court dismissed the petition without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction because petitioner had failed to demonstrate that a motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 was inadequate or ineffective or that a miscarriage of justice had occurred, 2010 WL 5053920, at *10, the court specifically determined that [t]his Court does not have the power to order the sentencing court to re-sentence Petitioner.” Id., at *9 (footnote omitted). In support of this determination, the court in Marshall quoted this instructive passage from the case of Sedivy v. Richardson, 485 F.2d 1115, 1122 n. 10 (3d Cir.1973): “American courts are heirs to a long standing principle of the common law which finds its historical foundation in the forbearance through which courts exercising coordinate jurisdiction in the name of a single sovereign refrained from interfering with the process of one another and, thereby, direct conflicts with each other were avoided. The utility produced by this concord was alone sufficient justification for its continued existence.” (Quoting Jennings v. Boenning & Co., 482 F.2d 1128, 1131–32 (3d Cir.1973)).

Another case confronting this issue is McClain v. Owens, 2010 WL 1418266 (D.S.C.2010). There, the petitioner filed a § 2241 petition in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina where he was incarcerated challenging the validity of the conviction and resulting sentence imposed by a United States District Court Judge in the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division, for violating the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) on the basis that he was actually now innocent of that crime by virtue of two intervening Supreme Court opinions which changed the statutory interpretation of § 924(c)(1).2 The court in McClain likewise expressed concern over its authority to vacate a judgment order issued by another court. 2010 WL 1418266, at *2 (citing Fort v. Deboo, 2008 WL 4371398 (N.D.W.Va.2008)). The court in McClain also recognized that pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) it could not simply transfer the § 2241 proceeding to the court of conviction, the Middle District of Florida, as other district courts of incarceration had done under similar circumstances. 2010 WL 1418266, at *3 (examining Conley v. Crabtree, 14 F.Supp.2d 1203 (D.Or.1998) and Alamin v. Gerlinski, 30 F.Supp.2d 464 (M.D.Pa.1998) in which the district courts of incarceration, despite the fact that § 1404(a) limits the transfer of a § 2241 petition, nevertheless transferred those petitions to the district courts of conviction and sentencing); see also Short v. Schultz, 2008 WL 305594, at *3 (D.N.J.2008) (transferring § 2241 petition pursuant to § 1404(a) to the United States District Court for the District of Virginia where petitioner was convicted and sentenced).3

Instead, the McClain court opted to treat the § 2241 petition as a Petition for Writ of Error Coram Nobis under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a), and to transfer it for resolution to the Jacksonville Division of the Middle District of Florida. 2010 WL 1418266, at *3. In doing so, the McClain court relied in part on precedent from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals which tended to support the proposition that a Petition for Writ of Error Coram Nobis was the appropriate procedural mechanism for McClain to seek relief in the court of conviction. Id. (citing and quoting In re Nwanze, 242 F.3d 521, 526 (3d Cir.2001); 4see also Key v. O'Brien, 2011 WL 3648238, at *7 (N.D.W.Va.2011) (Report and Recommendation of United States Magistrate Judge recommending to the United States District Court Judge that the § 2241 petition be treated as a Petition for Writ of Error Coram Nobis and transferred to the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia where petitioner was convicted and sentenced, which recommendation was affirmed in an order entered in Key v. O'Brien, case number 5:11cv11, docket 24 (N.D.W.Va.)).

After the case was transferred to the Jacksonville Division of the Middle District of Florida, the assigned district judge, Senior United States District Judge Howell Melton, on motion of the Government, dismissed McClain's petition. Importantly, the primary reason recited by Judge Melton for dismissing the petition was that [t]he law of the Eleventh Circuit is clear that a federal prisoner in custody may not challenge an underlying federal conviction by writ of error coram nobis.” See McClain v. Owens, case number 3:10–cv–291–J–12MCR, docket 22, pg. 2) (citing and quoting United States v. Garcia, 181 F.3d 1274 (11th Cir.1999) and United States v. Brown, 117 F.3d 471, 475 (11th Cir.1997)). It appears, therefore, that the law of the Eleventh Circuit may conflict with the law of the Third Circuit, and perhaps the law of the Fourth Circuit if the Third Circuit's “plausible argument” was correct with respect to the Fourth Circuit's jurisdictional jurisprudence under the All Writs Act, with regard to the availability of coram nobis relief to a federal prisoner still in custody.5

Finally, the Court notes that there is one district court reported opinion that would support the proposition that the Georgia court had the jurisdictional authority to resentence Defendant. In Little v. United States, 2002 WL 1424581, at *4 (D.Mass.2002), a United States District Court Judge in the District of Massachusetts granted Little's § 2241 petition with regard to a judgment of conviction and sentence suffered in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado and scheduled a resentencing hearing. A review of that Court's docket from the PACER system reflects that the Massachusetts district court, in conjunction with a joint motion from Little's attorney and the Government, corrected the Colorado district court's sentence to forty-eight months and ordered Little's immediate release. SeeCiv. No. 01–40077–RWZ;but see Marshall v. Yost, 2010 WL 5053920, at *9 (W.D.Pa.2010) (commenting that “it is highly questionable whether this Court has the power to resentence Petitioner for a crime committed outside of the territorial jurisdiction of this Court) (emphasis in original) (citations and footnote omitted). Whether the Georgia court will follow this opinion, consistent with 28 U.S.C. § 2243's mandate to “dispose of the matter as law and justice requires[,] is for that court to decide.6 For now, however, this Court continues to adhere to its legal position, supported by Marshall, and McClain, as well as the general observations of the courts in Jennings and Sedivy with regard to courts exercising coordinate jurisdiction in the name of a single sovereign refrain[ing] from interfering with the process of one another[,] that the Georgia court had no jurisdictional authority to direct this Court, “exercising coordinate jurisdiction in the name of a single sovereign” as the Georgia court, to resentence Defendant in this case.7

ACCORDINGLY, for the reasons expressed, it is ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that Defendant's Motion for Reconsideration and Request for Leave to Submit Supplemental...

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3 cases
  • Duffy v. Bragg
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina
    • July 15, 2014
    ...was incarcerated in South Carolina at the time he filed his petition. See Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 426; see also United States v. Brye, 935 F. Supp. 2d 1319, 1332 n.3 (M.D. Fla. 2013) ("[A] district court sitting in the . . . Eleventh Circuit where the petitioner is not incarcerated would not hav......
  • Boone v. Quintana
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky
    • June 27, 2016
    ...rare circumstances, guidance on implementing a remedy is rather scarce and, regrettably, contradictory. United States v. Brye, 935 F. Supp. 2d 1319, 1320-21 (M.D. Fla. 2013) ("The issue of how a federal district court of incarceration deals procedurally and substantively with a § 2241 petit......
  • United States v. Rhodes, Case No. CR-01-202-R
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Western District of Oklahoma
    • December 19, 2019
    ...of equal dignity as to the matters concurrently cognizable, neither having supervisory power over the other."); United States v. Brye, 935 F. Supp. 2d 1319 (M.D. Fla. 2013)(concluding that a federal district court in Georgia lacked jurisdictional authority to order the Florida court to rese......

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