United States v. Darrell Peterman, United States of America v. Craig Forest, United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellant/cross-Appellee v. Robert Bell, Defendant-Appellee/cross-AppellantUnited States v. Darrell Peterman, United States of America v. Craig Forest, United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellant/cross-Appellee v. Robert Bell, Defendant-Appellee/cross-Appellant
ALAN E. NORRIS, Circuit Judge.
Darrell Peterman, Craig Forest, and Robert Bell pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess and distribute cocaine, in violаtion of
I.
Defendants were part of a large cocaine conspiracy in Youngstown, Ohio, which operated from September 19, 1989, to January 19, 1990. Peterman, Forest, and Bell pleaded guilty in November 1990 to drug conspiracy charges, and the district court sentenced them based on the entire 50 to 150 kilograms of cocaine involved in theconspiracy. Peterman and Bell were sentenced to 151 months, and Forest to 121 months. The evidence at sentencing indicated that these defendants did not join the conspiracy until December 1989.
Bell and Peterman appealed their sentences in 1991. Bell alleged that he was not accountable for the whole amount of cocaine and that the government had not met its burden of proof on the drug amount attributed to him. Peterman argued that the full drug amount was not rеasonably foreseeable in his case. This court affirmed their sentences. United States v. Bell, Nos. 91-3210, 91-3211, 1991 WL 276274 (6th Cir. Dec. 20, 1991). Bell and Peterman each proceeded to file several collateral attacks on their sentences, whiсh the district court treated as motions under
In the meantime, another conspirator in the same drug ring, Victor Milledge, achieved a sentence reduction in 1997 from his original sentence of 151 months for the conspiracy charge. The district court allowed him to take а late appeal from his 1991 conviction and sentence since the court had not informed Milledge of his right to appeal after the initial sentencing1.
When Peterman, Forest, and Bell learned of their coconspirator‘s rеsentencing, they filed the instant § 2241 petitions. They argued that there had been an intervening change in the law and that § 2255 (whose statute of limitations and restrictions on successive petitions barred their claims) was inadequate and ineffective to redress the wrong. The district court granted the petitions. It found that the law had changed since the original sentencing to require individualized findings for drug conspirators’ sentences. To deny a writ of habeas corpus in such circumstances, concluded the court, “would be a miscarriage of justice in that [defendants have] a due process right to be sentenced on accurate information.“Peterman v. Lamanna, No. 1:98CV0851, slip op. at 5 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 11, 1998), Forest v. Lamanna, No. 1:98CV0850, slip op. at 5 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 11, 1998), Bell v. Lamanna, No. 1:98CV0852, slip op. at 5 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 11, 1998). The court ordered a hearing on these defendants’ participation in the cоnspiracy, and the three were resentenced based on lesser amounts. Bell received 60 months, Peterman 63 months, and Forest 46 months, and each was also sentenced to five years of supervised release, with credit for time served. They are currently on supervised release.
The government appeals from the grants of habeas relief, arguing that the district court did not have jurisdiction over the § 2241 petitions because prisoners must seek collateral relief under
II.
We review a district court‘s legal conclusions in a habeas corpus decision de novo. Charles v. Chandler, 180 F.3d 753, 755 (6th Cir. 1999) (pеr curiam). Section 2255 is the primary avenue for relief for federal prisoners protesting the legality of their sentence, while § 2241 is appropriate for claims challenging the execution or manner in which the sentence is served. However, a federal prisoner may also challenge the validity of his conviction or sentence under § 2241 if § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention,” according to the “savings clause” of
An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.
A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion under this section.
Defendants in the instant cases cannot raise their claims in a § 2255 motion for several reasons. First, the one-year limit bars their motions. In addition, a second or successive motion is only permitted if the court of appeals certifies that the defendant has presented newly discovered evidence or a new and retroactive rule of constitutional law that was previously unavailable.
The unavailability of § 2255 relief does not alone establish inadequacy or ineffectiveness under the savings clause. This court has clearly stated that “the § 2255 remedy is not considered inadequate or ineffective simply becausе § 2255 relief has already been denied . . . or because the petitioner is procedurally barred from pursuing relief under § 2255 . . . or because the petitioner has been denied permission to file a second or suсcessive motion to vacate[.]” Charles, 180 F.3d at 756 (citations omitted).
The circumstances in which § 2255 is inadequate and ineffective are narrow, for to construe § 2241 relief much more liberally than § 2255 relief would defeat the purpose of the restrictions Congress placed on the filing of successive petitions for collateral relief. See Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (amending
We invoked the prevailing standard that is said to warrant the bringing of such § 2241 petitions in our Charles opinion when we noted that “[n]o circuit court has to date permitted а post-AEDPA petitioner who was not effectively making a claim of ‘actual innocence’ to utilize § 2241 (via § 2255‘s ‘savings clause‘) as a way of circumventing§ 2255‘s restrictions on the filing of second or successive habeas рetitions.” Id. at 757. These “actual innocence” cases have arisen from a common factual scenario; some prisoners convicted of “using” a firearm during a drug crime or violent crime found themselves innoсent when the Supreme Court subsequently defined “use” in a restrictive manner in Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137 (1995). See
Without determining the exact scope of the savings clause, we conclude that defendants’ claims do not fall within any arguable construction of it because defendants have not shown an intervening change in the law that establishes their actual innоcence. Under Charles, if petitioners do not make a claim for actual innocence, they are not entitled to relief through § 2255‘s savings clause; Bell, Peterman, and Forest do not argue innocence but instead сhallenge their sentences. Courts have generally declined to collaterally review sentences that fall within the statutory maximum. See, e.g., Grant v. United States, 72 F.3d 503, 506 (6th Cir. 1996) (declining to grant § 2255 relief on a defaulted claim of sentencing error bеcause there was no “breakdown of the trial process“); Scott v. United States, 997 F.2d 340, 343 (7th Cir. 1993) (holding that the district court should not have considered a § 2255 petition based on an alleged misapplication of the sentencing guidelines).
For thesе reasons, we hold that defendants have failed to show that § 2255 was “inadequate or ineffective” for their claims, and therefore the district court lacked jurisdiction to grant relief under § 2241. We do not reach Bell‘s cross-appeal regarding a further sentencing reduction.
III.
Accordingly, we reverse the grants of habeas relief, and remand these causes to the district court with instructions to vacate the new sentences, and rеinstate the original sentences.