Criminal Law and Procedure Decisions: Daniels v. United States</titl <body>  <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/wss-lp.js"></script> <script language="javascript1.1" src="http://images.findlaw.com/tracking/hbx-0250.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://ehg-findlaw.hitbox.com/HG?hc=we76&cd=1&hv=6&ce=u&hb=DM531216MLSZ&n=LP&vcon=NO+JAVASCRIPT&vpc=HBX0250u" border="0" width="1" height="1"> </noscript>  <div id="main"> <div id="doc3" class="pro"> <div id="bd"> <div class="yui-g" id="header"> <div id="header_sub_center"> <h1 id="logo"><a href="http://lp.findlaw.com"><b>FindLaw | Find a Lawyer. Find Answers.</b></a></h1> <div id="question"> <h3><a href="http://www.findlaw.com/" class="c_4">Non-Professional? 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United States</h5><p align="center"><b>Habeas Corpus – Validity of Prior Convictions Under 28 U.S.C. § 2255</b></p><p><b>Case: <a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/99-9136.html">Daniels v. United States</a></b></p><p><b>Issue</b>: Can an incarcerated federal prisoner challenge his federal sentence, pursuant to <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/28/parts/vi/chapters/153/sections/section_2255.html">28 U.S.C. § 2255</a>, on the ground that the prior convictions used to enhance that sentence were unconstitutionally obtained?</p><p><b>Facts</b>: In 1994, Petitioner Earthy Daniels was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/18/parts/i/chapters/44/sections/section_922.html">18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)</a>. The government sought to enhance his sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”), which imposes a mandatory minimum 15 year term on anyone who violates § 922(g)(1) and who has at least three prior convictions for a violent or drug-related crime. Daniels had been convicted in California in 1978 and 1981 for robbery and in 1977 and 1979 for first degree burglary. The United States District Court found Daniels to be an armed career criminal within the meaning of the ACCA and sentenced him to 176 months, 56 months more than the maximum sentence Daniels would have received had he not been adjudged a career criminal. On direct appeal, Daniels unsuccessfully argued that the two prior burglary convictions did not qualify as predicate offenses under the ACCA.</p><p>Daniels filed a motion to set aside or correct his sentence, under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Section 2255 provides a post-conviction remedy to federal prisoners by permitting the prisoner in custody under a federal sentence to move the court that imposed the sentence to vacate or correct the sentence on the ground that the sentence violates the Constitution or laws of the United States. Daniels claimed that his current federal sentence violated the Constitution because it was based in part on his 1978 and 1981 robbery convictions. Those convictions, Daniels alleged, were themselves unconstitutional because they were both based on guilty pleas that were not knowing or voluntary, and because the 1981 conviction was the result of ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment. Petitioner did not contend that § 2255 relief was appropriate because his current sentence was imposed in violation of the ACCA itself. The District Court denied the motion and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.</p><p><b>Holding</b>: “If ... a prior conviction used to enhance a federal sentence is no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they were available (or because the defendant did so unsuccessfully) that defendant is without recourse” under § 2255. “A defendant may challenge a prior conviction as the product of a [<a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/372/335.html">Gideon v. Wainright</a>, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), right to counsel] violation in a [§] 2255 motion, but generally only if he raised that claim at his federal sentencing proceeding.” There may be “rare cases in which no channel of review was actually available to a defendant, with respect to a prior conviction, through no fault of his own. The circumstances of this case do not require us to determine whether a defendant could use a motion under [§] 2255 to challenge a federal sentence based on such a conviction.”</p><p><b>Reasoning</b>: In <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=U10401">Custis v. United States</a>, 511 U.S. 485 (1994), the Supreme Court had held that a federal defendant had no right <u>in a federal sentencing hearing</u> to collaterally attack prior state convictions which were used to enhance his federal sentence under the ACCA. Two considerations supported that ruling: ease of judicial administration and the interest in promoting judicial finality. Writing for the Court in the instant case, Justice O’Connor found that the <u>Custis</u> rule and its underlying reasoning extended to § 2255 proceedings.</p><p>With respect to judicial finality, the Court reasoned that the state retains a strong interest in preserving convictions it has obtained. States impose a wide range of disabilities on those who have been convicted of crimes, even after their release, including enhanced sentences for recidivist offenders. Rejecting Daniel’s argument that invalidating his prior convictions for purposes of their use under the ACCA would affect the federal sentencing proceeding only, the Court noted that “if a state conviction were determined to be sufficiently unreliable that it could not be used to enhance a federal sentence, the State’s ability to use that judgment subsequently for its own purposes would be, at the very least, greatly undermined.”</p><p>With respect to ease of judicial administration, the Court stressed that “[o]ur system affords a defendant convicted in state court numerous opportunities to challenge the constitutionality of his conviction,” but that these vehicles to review a past conviction are not available indefinitely and without limitation. Procedural barriers, such as statutes of limitations and rules concerning procedural default, operate to limit access to review on the merits of constitutional claims. “One of the principles vindicated by these limitations is a presumption deeply rooted in our jurisprudence: the presumption of regularity that attaches to final judgments, even when the question is waiver of constitutional rights.” If a prior conviction used to enhance a federal statute “is no longer open to direct or collateral attacks in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they were available (or because the defendant did so unsuccessfully), then that defendant is without recourse.” To allow defendants to collaterally attack prior convictions through a § 2255 motion “would effectively permit challenges far too stale to be brought in their own right, and sanction an end run around statutes of limitations and other procedural barriers that would preclude the movant from attacking the prior conviction directly.”</p><p>The Court, however, recognized one circumstance involving prior convictions where a § 2255 review <u>would</u> be allowed - to wit, a claim that a petitioner had been denied the right to counsel in connection with a prior conviction. The Court also recognized that other circumstances <u>might</u> be cause for an exception to the general rule it was enunciating, for example, where the channels of review had been closed to a petitioner “due to no fault of his own.” But under the factual circumstances of the case before it, the Court concluded that “the goals of easy administration and finality have ample horsepower to justify foreclosing relief under [§] 2255.”</p><p><b>Other Opinions</b>: Justice Scalia, in concurrence, departed from the majority’s statement that § 2255 may provide post-conviction relief where avenues of review have been closed to the petitioner “due to no fault of his own.” Noting that the authority to award a writ of habeas corpus may come from written law only, Scalia concluded that the text of § 2255 simply is “not broad enough cover a claim that an enhanced federal sentence violates due process... if the enhancement is based on prior convictions.” Scalia noted that § 2255 “authorizes a challenge by ‘[a] prisoner under <u>sentence of a </u>court <u>established by an Act of Congress</u> claiming the right to be released upon the ground that <u>the sentence was imposed</u> in violation of the Constitution or laws, of the United States.’ (Emphasis added).” Since the Court had determined in <u>Custis</u> that a sentencing judge did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution by imposing a sentence enhanced by allegedly tainted prior convictions, unless the taint resulted from a <u>Gideon</u> violation, “[i]t follows ineluctably that [§] 2255 does not establish any right to challenge federal sentences based on their enhancement by stale, non-<u>Gideon</u>-tainted, convictions.”</p><p>Rejecting the majority’s rationales of ease of judicial administration and judicial finality, Justice Souter, joined by Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, wrote in dissent that § 2255 was broad enough to include claims that prior convictions, used anew to mandate sentence enhancement under the ACCA, were obtained unconstitutionally, thus making the new sentence in violation of both the ACCA and the Constitution itself.</p><p>Whatever force the majority’s rationales might have when alternative channels of review are available, “they do not even come close to the horsepower needed to rule out the application of [§] 2255 when the choice is relief under [§] 2255 or no relief at all.” Souter wondered “[w]hy should it be easy to subject a person to a higher sentencing range and commit him for nearly nine extra years (as here) when the prisoner has a colorable claim that the extended commitment rests on a conviction the Constitution would condemn? . . . Why should a prisoner like Daniels suddenly be barred from returning to challenge the validity of a conviction, when the Government is free to reach back to it to impose extended imprisonment under a sentence enhancement law unheard of at the time of the earlier convictions (1978 and 1981 in this case)?”</p><p>The dissent also argued that the majority’s position inhibited judicial efficiency by creating an incentive for defendants to file appeals when such appeals are not worth it. A defendant “may well have forgone direct challenge because the penalty was not practically worth challenging, and may well have passed up collateral attack because he had no counsel to appeal for him. But when faced with the ACCA’s 15-year mandatory minimum, the old conviction is suddenly well worth challenging and counsel may be available under <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/18/parts/ii/chapters/201/sections/section_3006A.html">18 U.S.C. § 3006A(a)(2)(B)</a>. In denying him any right to attack convictions later when attacks are worth the trouble, the Court adopts a policy of promoting challenges earlier when they may not justify the effort and perhaps never will. This is a very odd incentive for a court to create, and the eccentricity is hardly softened by the likelihood that most defendants will not notice before it is too late.”</p><p>In a separate dissent, Justice Breyer noted his belief that silences in federal sentencing statutes permitted defendants to challenge prior sentence-enhancing convictions at the time of sentencing, a practice typically followed by lower courts before <u>Custis</u>. Having rejected this procedural route in <u>Custis</u>, the Court in Daniels’ case reviewed the alternative procedural route and rejected it as well. The majority’s ruling, Breyer predicts, will prove unduly restrictive and will operate to create delay, litigation complexity, and legal inflexibility. For this reason, Breyer urged the Court to reconsider and overrule <u>Custis</u>.</p></div> </div>       <div id="fl_container3"> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <script language="javascript">fl_legal_645x52();</script> <div id="fl_label">Ads by FindLaw</div> </div> <script> hide_box('fl_container3'); </script>  </div> </div> <div class="nav_right rn_inner">  <div class="sections yui-g"> <h2 class="right" style="color:#666666;">Welcome Legal Professionals</h2> <p>FindLaw provides the resources to help you practice law. 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