Amodeo v. FCC Coleman - Low Warden, 17-15456

984 F.3d 992

Frank L. AMODEO, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.FCC COLEMAN - LOW WARDEN, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 17-15456

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

January 8, 2021

Raechel Keay Kummer, Ryan Michael Fournier, Matthew J. Sharbaugh, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, LLP, Washington, DC, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Roberta Josephina Bodnar, U.S. Attorney's Office-FLM, Ocala, FL, Linda Julin McNamara, U.S. Attorney Service-Middle District of Florida, U.S. Attorney's Office, Tampa, FL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before BRANCH, LUCK, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.

ED CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Frank L. Amodeo, a federal prisoner, appeals the dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 petition for writ of habeas corpus, which contains a claim that he is actually innocent of the crimes to which he pleaded guilty and was convicted.

The rule is that a federal prisoner who seeks to collaterally attack his conviction or sentence must file a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion to vacate instead of a § 2241 habeas corpus petition. Section 2255(e) contains the rule, but the last clause of it contains an exception to the rule, which is known as the "saving clause." Subsection (e) provides that a § 2241 petition "shall not be entertained" if the prisoner has either failed to apply for the relief he seeks by § 2255 motion in the sentencing court, or has applied and been denied it, "unless it also appears that the remedy by [ § 2255 ] motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). It rarely is. See McCarthan v. Dir. of Goodwill Indus.-Suncoast, Inc., 851 F.3d 1076, 1088 (11th Cir. 2017) (en banc) ("A motion to vacate is not often an inadequate or ineffective remedy."). A claim of actual innocence is not one of the rare ones for which a § 2255 motion is an inadequate or ineffective remedy. For that reason, the district court properly dismissed Amodeo's § 2241 petition for lack of jurisdiction.

I. BACKGROUND

In August 2008 a federal grand jury charged Amodeo with 27 crimes relating to conspiracy to defraud the United States. After a magistrate judge found him competent to stand trial and competent to enter a guilty plea, Amodeo pleaded guilty to conspiracy, failure to collect and remit payroll taxes, and obstruction of an agency proceeding. The district court accepted his guilty plea and adjudicated Amodeo guilty. After a five-day sentence hearing, the district court sentenced him to five consecutive 54-month terms of imprisonment for a total of 270 months. See Amodeo v. United States, No. 6:08-CR-176-0RL-28, 2015 WL 5687815, at *1 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 25, 2015).

On direct appeal Amodeo unsuccessfully argued that his counsel was ineffective and also that the district court had failed to determine that Amodeo was competent to plead guilty. See United States v. Amodeo, 387 F. App'x 953, 954 (11th Cir. 2010). We declined to address his ineffective-assistance claim because the record was not sufficiently developed. Id. And we rejected his competency determination claim because it was not only "without support in the record" but was also "belied by the record." Id. Even though Amodeo and the government had stipulated that he was competent, the district court had assured itself that he was by questioning him extensively and hearing testimony from his doctor. Id. Amodeo did not raise a factual innocence claim on direct appeal. See id.

After we affirmed his convictions in 2010, Amodeo filed a series of § 2255 motions to vacate. In the first two of those motions he claimed that he had been incompetent to enter his guilty plea and that he was factually innocent for various reasons. The district court dismissed the first one of those § 2255 motions without prejudice because the pleadings were deficient and Amodeo had failed to correct the deficiencies after being given the chance to do so. The same thing happened for the same reason to Amodeo's second § 2255 motion. See Amodeo, 2015 WL 5687815, at *1 (discussing both of those motions and orders). He did not appeal either dismissal of either motion.

In 2012 Amodeo filed a third § 2255 motion that "allege[d] fifteen claims for relief, each with numerous subclaims, for a total of more than seventy claims." Id. Among other things, he asserted that he was incompetent to enter his guilty plea and that he was factually innocent of the crimes for which he had been convicted. He was incompetent to enter his guilty plea, Amodeo alleged, because he is afflicted with "bipolar [disorder] with psychotic features," which includes "rapid cycles of mania and depression" that make it "impossible for [him] to enter a voluntary guilty plea because, from one moment to the next, his perception of reality can be different." Amodeo alleged that he was factually innocent because he had not realized he had a personal duty to ensure that the corporations he ran timely paid taxes.

The district court ruled that Amodeo's third § 2255 motion was time-barred, and he was not entitled to equitable tolling. Id. at *2–8. It also ruled that his actual innocence claim, which the court construed as "relat[ing] to the legal sufficiency of his convictions," failed on the merits because Amodeo did "not support his claim of actual innocence with evidence that would raise a substantial doubt about his guilt or establish that his conviction probably resulted from a constitutional violation." Id. at *7. In addition to denying Amodeo's third § 2255 motion, including the factual innocence claim, the court dismissed the case with prejudice as time-barred. Id. at *8 ; see also 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f).

Amodeo filed a notice of appeal from that order, and a motions panel of this Court issued a certificate of appealability on the question of whether the district court erred in dismissing his § 2255 motion as time-barred. After briefing, we held that the district court had not erred, and we affirmed the denial of Amodeo's third § 2255 motion as untimely. Amodeo v. United States, 799 F. App'x 728, 730–31 (11th Cir. 2020).

In the course of doing so, we summarized Amodeo's postconviction filings up to that date:

Amodeo inundated the courts with postconviction filings. In June 2011, a month before we affirmed Amodeo's conviction, he filed a motion to vacate that the district court dismissed without prejudice after he disobeyed three orders to amend the contents of his motion. See 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Amodeo then petitioned unsuccessfully for a certificate of appealability and for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in November 2011, Amodeo filed a second motion to vacate that the district court dismissed after he refused to comply with several orders to reduce the length of his motion. Amodeo moved to vacate the order of dismissal, and when that proved unsuccessful, he applied for a certificate of appealability, which both the district court and this Court denied. And Amodeo moved six times for the district court to reopen or reconsider its order of dismissal after he filed his third motion to vacate that is the subject of this appeal.

Id. at 730. After the district court had denied his third § 2255 motion but before we issued our opinion affirming that denial, Amodeo filed a fourth § 2255 motion that did not raise an actual innocence claim; that motion was dismissed as second or successive. See Amodeo v. United States, 743 F. App'x 381, 382–86 (11th Cir. 2018) (affirming dismissal of the motion on that ground); see also 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h).

In mid-2017 Amodeo filed the § 2241 petition for writ of habeas corpus that is the subject of this appeal. In the petition he claims that he is factually innocent because his bipolar disorder prevented him from having the intent that is an element of his crimes of conviction, which he argues makes his imprisonment illegal.¹ Amodeo contends that he can file a § 2241 petition because a "claim of factual innocence is in-recognizable [sic] in § 2255," so a motion to vacate is inadequate or ineffective to contest his sentence, and as a result he satisfies the saving clause. Amodeo asserts that the relief he seeks on his actual innocence claim is for the court to "order his immediate release and either vacate the criminal judgment or enjoin further enforcement of the judgment."

The district court dismissed Amodeo's petition for lack of jurisdiction. It ruled that under our McCarthan decision: " 28 U.S.C. § 2241 is not available to challenge the validity of a sentence except upon very narrow grounds not present in this case." Amodeo moved to alter or amend the district court's judgment, asserting that his actual innocence claim was properly presented in a § 2241 petition because it is not cognizable under § 2255. The district court denied that motion. This is Amodeo's appeal.

We review de novo questions of law concerning subject matter jurisdiction, including whether a prisoner may, in a particular circumstance, bring a § 2241 petition for a writ of habeas corpus under the saving clause of § 2255(e). McCarthan, 851 F.3d at 1081 ; Gupta v. McGahey, 709 F.3d 1062, 1064–65 (11th Cir. 2013).

II. DISCUSSION

Amodeo contends that in ruling his actual innocence claim could not be brought in a § 2241 petition because it was outside the scope of § 2255 ’s saving clause, the district court misinterpreted our en banc decision in the McCarthan case. But it is Amodeo who misinterprets McCarthan.

A. The History of the Saving Clause

Before 1948, federal prisoners who collaterally challenged any aspect of their detention did so in a § 2241 petition, which had to be filed in the district where they were incarcerated. See United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 206–07, 212–13, 72 S.Ct. 263, 96 L.Ed. 232 (1952) ; see also Prost v. Anderson, 636 F.3d 578, 587 (10th Cir. 2011) (Gorsuch, J.). That regime proved problematic after Congress expanded the scope of collateral relief for federal prisoners, opening the floodgates to a tidal wave of petitions that inundated the few district courts where federal...