Montana v. CrossMontana v. Cross
In 1998, Dаrwin Montana was convicted of aiding and abetting a bank robbery in which an accomplice used a firearm, in violation of
In September 2014, Mr. Montana filed a new petition under
The road to possible postconviction reliеf for Mr. Montana is a complicated one, given his prior
I
A.
In January 1998, Mr. Montana gave James Dodd a ride to various locations in the near-west suburbs of Chicago. According to Mr. Montana, on the day of the bank robbery, he had car trouble and pulled into a Jewel-Osco parking lot in Stickney, Illinois, to check the engine. Dodd then exited the vehicle and walked to a nearby bank, where he pointed a gun at the teller and demanded money. After the teller handed him more than $2,300, Dodd walked back to Mr. Montana’s car. He got into the car and placed his weapon and the cash on the center console and instructed Mr. Montana to drive him away from the scene. Mr. Mоntana contends that it was at this moment that he learned of both the robbery and the weapon. He proceeded to follow Dodd’s instruction and speed away. Meanwhile, the teller had triggered a silent alarm alerting law enforcement. She could view Mr. Montana’s car through a window and therefore was able to give the police a description of the vehicle. The police undertook a high-speed chase for several minutes and quickly caught up. Mr. Montana lost control of the vehicle, and the officers apprehеnded both men.
B.
1.
Mr. Montana and Dodd were charged with (1) conspiracy, in violation of
Prior to trial, Dodd pleaded guilty and made a proffer to law enforcement in which he stated that he had told Mr. Montana of his intent to rob a bank and that the two had scouted locations in the days leading up to the robbery. At Mr. Montana’s trial, however, Dodd’s testimony did not reflect his proffer. Instead, he testified that Mr. Montana had no prior knowledge of his intent to rob the bank. His prior statement to law enforcеment was used to impeach his testimony. The jury also heard from a federal marshal who overheard Dodd, while in custody, demanding a bribe of $10,000 from Mr. Montana’s family, and also heard a stipulation from defense counsel that Dodd had passed a note to Mr. Montana’s mother with the same demand in exchange for favorable testimony. Mr. Montana did not testify in his own defense.
At the close of the evidence, the court instructed the jury. On the bank robbery charge, the court told the jury that it should find Mr. Montana guilty if it concluded that Dodd had robbed the bank and that there was a consрiracy between the two, or that, in the absence of conspiracy, Mr. Montana had aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, or procured the commission of the robbery. On the firearms charge, the court instructed the jury as follows:
[T]he defendant is charged [with] knowingly using and ... ear[ry]ing a firearm during and [in] relation to a crime of violence. To sustain that charge the government has to prove each of [the following] propositions beyond a reasonable doubt.
The first one is that the defendant is guilty of the charge of bank robbery in Cou[n]t 2 in either or both of the ways that I have just covered.
And the seсond one is that James Dodd knowingly used or carried a handgun during and in relation to the bank robbery.[1 ]
On two separate occasions during the deliberations, the jury sent the judge a note indicating that it believed it was deadlocked, but after a supplemental instruction to continue deliberations, see United States v. Silvern,
Mr. Montana thereafter аppealed his conviction. He contended principally that his trial counsel was ineffective because counsel unwittingly had passed the note demanding a bribe from Dodd to Mr. Mon--tana’s mother and, further, because he had called Dodd as a witness. Mr. Montana also challenged the admission of the marshal’s statement concerning’ Dodd’s request for a bribe. We affirmed, rejecting each of his arguments and specifically concluding that, although Dodd proved to be an “uncontrollable” witness, it was not ineffective assistance to have called him. Montana,
2.
In 2001, Mr. Montana filed a timely
C.
On September 19, 2014, Mr. Montana filed the present
The district court dismissed the petition during the screening phase under 'Rule 4
Mr. Montana timely appealed, and we recruited counsel to assist him.
II
We review de novo a district court’s denial of relief under
A.
We begin by placing Mr. Montanа’s arguments in context by examining the Supreme Court’s decision in Rosemond and its effect on the elements of the offense of conviction.
Prior to Rosemond’s advent in 2014, the Courts of Appeals had not spoken with a uniform voice about the interaction between the two statutes at issue in this case:
The petitioner in Rosemond had been involved in the sale side of a marijuana transaction. Shots were fired during the transaction, and there was a factual dispute about whether he or his confederate had been the shooter. He was charged with substantive drug offenses as well as under
The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed.
Applying its construction of § 2 to
An active participant in a [crime of violence] has the intent needed to aid and abet a§ 924(c) violation when he knows that one of his confederates will carry a gun. In such a case, the accomplice has decided to join in the criminаl venture, and share in its benefits, with full awareness of its scope — that the plan calls not just for a [crime of violence], but for an armed one. In so doing, he has chosen ... to align himself with the illegal scheme in its entirety — including its use of a firearm. And he has determined ... to do what he can to “make [thatscheme] succeed.” He thus becomes responsible, in the typical way of aiders and abettors, for the conduct of others. He may not have brought the gun to the [crime of violence] himself, but because he took part in that [crime of violence] knowing a confederate would do so, he intended the commission of a § 924(c) offense — i e., an armed [offense].
For all that to be true, ... the§ 924(c) defendant’s knowledge of a firearm must be advance knowledge — or otherwise said, knowledge that enables him to make the relevant legal (and indeed, moral) choice. When an' accomplice knows beforehand of a confederate’s design to carry a gun, he can attempt to alter that plan or, if unsuccessful, withdraw from the enterprise; it is deciding instead to go ahead with his role in the venture that shows his intent to aid an armed offense. But when an accomplice knows nothing of a gun until it appears at the scene, he may already hаve completed his acts of assistance; or even if not, he may at that late point have no realistic opportunity to quit the crime. And when that is so, the defendant has not shown the requisite intent to assist a crime involving a gun. As even the Government concedes, an unarmed accomplice cannot aid and abet a§ 924(c) violation unless he has “foreknowledge that his confederate will commit the offense with a firearm.” For the reasons just given, we think that means knowledge at a time the accomplice can do something with it — most notably, opt to walk away.
Rosemond,
The Court -therefore overturned Rose-mond’s conviction because the
Focusing on this now narrowed scope of liability, Mr. Montana now contends that his jury was erroneously instructed and that the Government did not establish' that he had foreknowledge of Dodd’s use of a weapon. We agree that the instruction at Mr. Montana’s trial did not conform to the rule announced in Rosemond. We therefore must determine whether thе current petition presents an avenue for relief.
B.
1.
As we noted earlier, Mr. Montana had filed a previous
The “savings clause” of
One of the petitioners in Davenport, Nichols, presented a situation sufficiently akin to the one now before us that we set it forth with some particularity. Nichols had been convicted of use of a firearm during a drug offense, in violation of
Nichols had no reasonable opportunity, either when he was convicted and appealed or later when he filed a motion for pоstconviction relief undersection 2255 , to challenge the legality of his conviction for using a firearm in connection with a drug offense on the ground that “use” does not include merely possessing. The law of the circuit was so firmly against him that we have held that in that period defendants in this circuit did not have to raise a Bailey issue in order to preserve it as a basis for collateral attack later on, when the Supreme Court overruled our decisions. It would just clog the judicial pipes to require defendants, on pain of forfeiting all right to benefit from future changes in the law, to include challenges to settled law in their briefs on appeal and in postconviction filings.
The question is whether in these circumstances, which as we said differ markedly from those of Davenport’s case, the remedy created bysection 2255 can be thought adequate to enable the prisoner to test the legality of his detention.Here, in agreement with the Third Circuit’s decision in In re Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d 245 , 251 (3d Cir. 1997), we think the answer is no. Nichols could not use a first motion under the section to obtain relief on a basis not yet established by law. He could not use a second or other successive motion to obtain that relief because the basis on which he seeks relief is neither newly discovered evidence nor a new rule of constitutional law....
A procedure for postconviction relief can fairly be termed inadequate when it is so configured as to deny a convicted defendant any opportunity for judicial rectification of so fundamental a defect in his conviction as having been imprisoned for a nonexistent offense.
Id. at 610-11 (emphasis in original) (citations omitted).
We therefore concluded that the savings clause will permit a federal prisoner “to seek habeas corpus only if he had no reasonable оpportunity to obtain earlier judicial correction of a fundamental defect in his conviction or sentence because the law changed after his first 2255 motion.” Id. at 611. In the wake of Davenport, we distilled that holding into a three-part test: a petitioner who seeks to invoke the savings clause of
2.
We now consider whether Mr. Montana’s claim satisfies this three-part test previously established in our case law. We first must ascertain the origin of the right that Mr. Montana asserts. We agree with the parties that, at bottom, this case is one of statutory interpretation. Mr. Montana’s claim is based on the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Rosemond, which interpreted the same statutes involved in Mr. Montana’s case.
Davenport’s, second condition has two components: retroactivity and prior unavailability of the challenge. The parties correctly agree that Rosemond’s holding is retroactive. Teague v. Lane,
When we examine the state of the law of this circuit at the time of his trial, direct appeal, and, indeed, at the time of the initial
It was therefore open to Mr. Montana to argue, at the time of his appeal and at the time of his initial collateral attack under
Conclusion
We conclude that our established case law interpreting the federal habeas statutes precludes Mr. Montana’s prevailing in this appeal. More precisely, because he was not precluded from arguing in his direct appeal and in his first collateral attack under
AFFIRMED
Notes
. R.17-3 at 256.
. R.17-4 at 14.
. See R.5 at 6 (citing Brown v. Caraway,
. The court expresses its appreciation to counsel and his law firm for their excellent representation of their client.
. See, e.g., United States v. Rolon-Ramos,
. See, e.g., United States v. Woods,
. See United States v. Hayman,
. The prior version of the statute stated only that "the sentencing court shall not be required to entertain a second or successive motion for similar relief on behalf of the same prisoner,” preserving the court's discretion.
. See Narvaez v. United States,
. See also Davenport,
. In Light v. Caraway,
In Brown v. Rios, [696 F.3d 638 (7th Cir. 2012)] we simply concluded that the prisoner could not have invoked [the new rule] because [the case on which it was based] hadn’t been decided by the time of the petitioner's first§ 2255 motion. Brown v. Rios,696 F.3d at 640 .... In other cases, however, we have “employed a slightly higher standard,” requiring that the prisoner “show that his claim was ‘foreclosed by binding precedent' at the time of his direct appeal and§ 2255 motion.” Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d [583,] ... 595 [(7th Cir. 2013)] (quoting Hill v. Werlinger,695 F.3d 644 , 648 (7th Cir. 2012)). We reasoned that "the fact that a position is novel does not allow a prisoner to bypasssection 2255 .... Only if the position is foreclosed (as distinct from not being supported by — from being, in other words, novel) by precedent is a§ 2255 remedy inadequate.” Hill,695 F.3d at 648 (quoting Morales v. Bezy,499 F.3d 668 , 672 (7th Cir. 2007)) (internal quotation marks omitted). To satisfy this standard, the prisoner must show that "if [he] had made the argument he currently advances ... he clearly would have lost under” the precedent of the jurisdiction.
Id. (final three alterations in original) (emphasis added).