United States v. Avila, 0:17-cr-00003

Marco Antonio Avila was charged and convicted in three separate federal drug conspiracy cases, involving methamphetamine and cocaine.
Avila pleaded guilty in all cases, with sentences in the first two cases (312 months) and the third case (349 months) ordered to run concurrently to each other and to an undischarged county sentence.
Avila, while serving his initial federal sentences, committed the third offense leading to the third conviction and sentence.
Avila now seeks to (1) correct what he alleges is an illegal sentence under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35, and (2) obtain retroactive jail credit, claiming the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) miscalculated his total sentence length and failed to account for prior detention time.
The Court considered both motions together because the arguments and underlying facts were largely identical across the cases.
The government opposed both motions, and the Court addressed only docket citations from the lead case for brevity.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Court authority under Rule 35	Avila's requests are untimely	Avila's sentence contains clear/illegal error	Dismissed—court lacks jurisdiction
Entitlement to jail credit	BOP properly calculated jail credit	BOP failed to give proper jail credit	Dismissed—court lacks jurisdiction
Court's ability to order BOP action	Only BOP has authority post-sentencing	Court should direct BOP to comply	Court cannot compel BOP on jail credit
Appropriate procedure for jail credit	Must exhaust BOP remedies, then file 2241	Court can intervene in computation	Must use BOP/admin/habeas process first

United States v. Wilson, 503 U.S. 329 (1992) (BOP, not the court, has authority to compute jail credit)
United States v. Pardue, 363 F.3d 695 (8th Cir. 2004) (calculation of jail credit is responsibility of BOP, not the sentencing court)
United States v. Jett, 782 F.3d 1050 (8th Cir. 2015) (Rule 35(a) allows only correction of obvious errors within 14 days)