PHILADELPHIA – A federal court of appeals has thrown out a petition from an plaintiff seeking to challenge the lengthening of his sentence in an Iowa court for unlawful possession of a firearm under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
On June 24, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit judges Joseph A. Greenaway Jr., David J. Porter and Paul B. Matey ruled to deny the petition from Eugene Davis.
In 2009, Davis pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa to unlawful possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(1). The District Court determined that Davis’ three prior convictions for burglary under Iowa law qualified as “violent felonies” under the ACCA.
As a result, the penalty for his conviction was increased from no more than 120 months’ imprisonment, 10 years, to at least 180 months, or 15 years. The District Court ultimately imposed a sentence of 210 months, or 17-and-a-half years, a decision later affirmed on direct appeal.
“In 2012, Davis challenged his sentence under 28 U.S.C. Section 2255, asserting ineffective assistance of counsel. The District Court denied that motion and declined to grant a certificate of appealability. In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit denied Davis’s request to file a successive Section 2255 petition,” Matey said.
“Later in 2016, Davis again asked the Eighth Circuit for permission to file a successive Section 2255 petition. This time, he directed the court to Mathis v. United States, which held that convictions under Iowa’s burglary statute did not qualify as ‘violent felonies’ under the ACCA. But the Eighth Circuit denied his request, concluding that Mathis ‘did not announce a new rule of constitutional law.”
In 2017, Davis petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania for a writ of habeas corpus under Section 2241, once again relying on Mathis to challenge his ACCA sentence enhancement.
The District Court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction, and Davis, now incarcerated in Pennsylvania at FCI-Allenwood, then appealed to the Third Circuit.
Matey mentioned the Court considered the language of this “safety-valve” clause in Dorsainvil, where a petitioner challenged his sentence, asserting ineffective assistance of counsel and double jeopardy, but that motion was denied.
Though the Court denied the request for a follow-up petition, Matey adds it noted that “under narrow circumstances, a petitioner in this uncommon situation” – i.e., a petitioner “claiming that he is being detained for conduct that has subsequently been rendered non-criminal by an intervening Supreme Court decision with no other avenue of judicial review available to challenge his conviction”—may use the safety-valve clause of Section 2255 to challenge his conviction under Section 2241.
“Davis’s petition does not fall into these ‘narrow circumstances.’ He is challenging neither his conviction…nor his Iowa burglary convictions. Instead, he claims to be no longer eligible for the 15-year mandatory minimum sentence,” Matey said.
Matey clarified a sentence enhancement does not create a separate offense and the Court affirmed the dismissal of Davis’s petition.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit case 19-2641
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania case 3:17-cv-00968
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com