Young v. Quintana
| Decision Date | 12 July 2018 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 5: 18-125-JMH |
| Parties | DAZZLE YOUNG, Petitioner, v. FRANCISCO QUINTANA, Warden, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky |
Dazzle Young is a prisoner confined at the Federal Medical Center ("FMC")-Lexington in Lexington, Kentucky. Proceeding without a lawyer, Young has filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241. [R. 1] This matter is before the Court to conduct the initial screening of the petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2243. Alexander v. Northern Bureau of Prisons, 419 F. App'x 544, 545 (6th Cir. 2011).
On February 8, 2012, a jury in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio found Young guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Prior to trial, the United States filed a notice pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) that, if Young was found guilty, he would be subject to an enhanced sentence pursuant to the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), as Young has at least three prior convictions for a "violent felony" or "serious drug offense," or both, committed on separate occasions. The convictions upon which the United States indicated that it would rely for the sentencing enhancement included the following:
United States v. Young, No. 5:11-cr-328-JG-1 (2011) at R. 51.
Prior to sentencing, Young objected to the determination that he is an armed career criminal. Id. at R. 80. However, at sentencing, the trial court found that "there is more than sufficient evidence to support the finding that he comes under the armed career criminal classification," and found that each of his prior convictions were qualifying offenses, thus subjecting Young to the 15-year (180-month) mandatory minimum sentence under § 924(e)(1). [Id. at R. 112, p. 5]
However, rather than sentence Young to the 180-month mandatory minimum sentence under § 924(e)(1), the trial courtconsidered Young's recommended sentence under the United States Sentencing Guidelines. For purposes of Young's Sentencing Guidelines calculation, the trial court set Young's offense level at 33 and his Criminal History Category at IV, with a recommended Guideline range of 188 to 235 months. [Id. at p. 7, 9] The trial court considered the factors under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and sentenced Young to "a guideline sentence, but at the low end" of 188-months imprisonment. [Id. at p. 11; R. 83]
The Sixth Circuit affirmed Young's conviction and sentence on direct appeal. United States v. Young, No. 12-3645 (6th Cir. Jan. 31, 2014). Young filed a habeas petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, arguing that he was entitled to relief from his conviction on ineffective assistance of counsel grounds, but this motion was denied. United States v. Young, No. 5:11-cr-328-JG-1 (2011) at R. 116, 141.
In his current § 2241 petition, Young seeks relief from his sentence on the grounds that: 1) he is "actually innocent" of the crime for which he was convicted; and 2) he was sentenced as an ACCA offender based on prior convictions that do not qualify as predicate offenses under the ACCA. [R. 1 at p. 2] However, Young's petition fails to establish viable grounds for relief on either of these claims and will, therefore, be denied.
The Court conducts an initial review of habeas corpus petitions. 28 U.S.C. § 2243; Alexander v. Northern Bureau of Prisons, 419 F. App'x 544, 545 (6th Cir. 2011). A petition will be denied "if it plainly appears from the petition and any attached exhibits that the petitioner is not entitled to relief." Rule 4 of the Rules Governing § 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts (applicable to § 2241 petitions pursuant to Rule 1(b)). The Court evaluates Young's petition under a more lenient standard because he is not represented by an attorney. Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007). At this stage of the proceedings, the Court accepts the petitioner's factual allegations as true and construes all legal claims in his favor. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555-56 (2007).
Young's claims raised in his § 2241 petition are simply not the kind which may be pursued under § 2241. A § 2241 petition may typically only be used as a vehicle for challenges to actions taken by prison officials that affect the manner in which the prisoner's sentence is being carried out, such as computing sentence credits or determining parole eligibility. Terrell v. United States, 564 F.3d 442, 447 (6th Cir. 2009). A federal prisoner who instead wishes to challenge the legality of his conviction or sentence must file a motion under § 2255. United States v. Peterman, 249 F.3d 458, 461 (6th Cir. 2001) (). A § 2241 petition may notbe used for this purpose because it does not function as an additional or alternative remedy to the one available under § 2255. Hernandez v. Lamanna, 16 F. App'x 317, 320 (6th Cir. 2001).
The "savings clause" of 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e) creates an extraordinarily narrow exception to this prohibition if the remedy afforded by § 2255 is "inadequate or ineffective" to test the legality of the prisoner's detention. Truss v. Davis, 115 F. App'x 772, 773-74 (6th Cir. 2004). See also Peterman, 249 F.3d at 461. A motion under § 2255 is not "inadequate or ineffective" simply because the prisoner's time to file a § 2255 motion has passed; he did not file a § 2255 motion; or he did file such a motion and was denied relief. Copeland v. Hemingway, 36 F. App'x 793, 795 (6th Cir. 2002); Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir. 2002) (). In other words, prisoners cannot use a habeas petition under § 2241 as yet another "bite at the apple." Hernandez, 16 F. App'x at 360.
Rather, to properly invoke the savings clause, the petitioner must assert a claim that he is "actual innocent" of the underlying offense by showing that, after the petitioner's conviction became final, the Supreme Court re-interpreted the substantive terms of the criminal statute under which he was convicted in a manner that establishes that his conduct did not violate the statute. Wootenv. Cauley, 677 F.3d 303, 307-08 (6th Cir. 2012) (citing Peterman, 249 F.3d at 461-62); Hayes v. Holland, 473 F. App'x 501, 501-02 (6th Cir. 2012) (). The Supreme Court's newly-announced interpretation must, of course, be retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review. Wooten, 677 F.3d at 308. The general rule is that new decisions are not retroactive "unless the new decision provides a criminal rule of procedure that is of 'watershed' importance or is a substantive change in the law that imposes a new burden on the states or federal government." Id. (citing Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989)).
Young argues that he is "actually innocent" of the crime for which he was convicted because the use of fabricated evidence and perjured testimony during his jury trial and the grand jury proceedings violated his right to due process of law. [R. 1-1 at p. 8] He also questions his counsel's trial strategy with respect to filing a motion to exclude certain evidence at trial. [R. 1-1 at p. 13-14] However, Young's "actual innocence" claims are not the type of claims that may be pursued in a § 2241 petition via the savings clause of § 2255(e).
First, Young's "actual innocence" claims do not rely on a Supreme Court decision announcing a new, retroactively applicablerule of statutory construction. Rather, to the extent that Young asserts that his due process rights were violated, he presents a constitutional, not statutory, claim that may only be pursued in a second or successive motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Moreover, Young's claims of fabricated evidence, perjured testimony, and ineffective assistance of counsel are all claims of ordinary trial error which also could have and must have been pursued on direct appeal or in an initial motion under § 2255. Cf. Mallard v. United States, 82 F. App'x 151, 153 (6th Cir.2003); Jameson v. Samuels, 555 F. App'x 743, 746 (10th Cir. 2014). Indeed, Young's ineffective assistance of counsel claim has already been presented in a § 2255 petition and rejected by the trial court. United States v. Young, No. 5:11-cr-328-JG-1 (2011) at R. 116, 141.
Turning to Young's argument that his sentence was improperly enhanced, the decidedly narrow scope of relief under § 2241 applies with particular force to challenges not to convictions, but to the sentence imposed. Peterman, 249 F.3d at 462; Hayes, 473 F. App'x at 502 (). In Hill v. Masters, 836 F. 3d 591 (6th Cir. 2016), the Sixth Circuit articulated a very narrow exception to this general rule, permitting a challenge to a sentence to be asserted in a § 2241 petition, but only where (1) the petitioner's sentence was imposed when the Sentencing...
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