Jones v. United States

82 F.4th 1039

Charles Edward JONES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 20-13365

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

Filed: September 14, 2023

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, D.C. Docket No. 1:16-cv-22268-KMM

Margaret Y. Foldes, Michael Caruso, Federal Public Defender's Office, Fort Lauderdale, FL, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Kathryn Dalzell, U.S. Attorney's Office, Grand Rapids, MI, Jason Wu, Lisa Tobin Rubio, Emily M. Smachetti, U.S. Attorney Service - SFL, Miami, FL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Freddy Funes, Toth Funes, PA, Miami, FL, for Amicus Curiae United States District Court Southern District of Florida.

Before Wilson, Luck, and Lagoa, Circuit Judges.

Luck, Circuit Judge:

A federal prisoner may move to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence if it violates the Constitution or laws of the United States, exceeds the maximum sentence allowed by law, was entered without jurisdiction, or is otherwise subject to collateral review. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a); R. Governing § 2255 Proceedings 1(a). But there are strict limits on second or successive motions. This case involves one of those limits.

For the federal courts to have jurisdiction to consider the prisoner's second or successive motion, it must be based on "a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(2).¹ The issue here is whether the Supreme Court has announced a "new rule of constitutional law" that applies to the residual clause in 18 U.S.C. section 3559—the three-strikes law. We conclude that it hasn't. And because it hasn't, the district court did not have jurisdiction to decide the merits of Charles Jones's second section 2255 motion to vacate his life sentence under the three-strikes law. We therefore vacate the district court's order and remand for Jones's motion to be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In 2002, the grand jury indicted Jones for (1) armed bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 2113(a) and (d); (2) knowingly carrying, using, possessing, and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 924(c)(1)(A)(iii); and (3) possessing a firearm as a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 922(g)(1). The government then filed a notice that Jones qualified for the enhanced sentence under section 3559.

Section 3559—known as the three-strikes law—provides that a person convicted of a "serious violent felony" shall receive a mandatory life sentence if he has previously been convicted of "[two] or more serious violent felonies," so long as "each serious violent felony . . . used as a basis for sentencing under this subsection, other than the first, was committed after the defendant's conviction of the preceding serious violent felony." Id. § 3559(c)(1)(A)(i), (B). The government's enhancement notice cited two of Jones's prior convictions as predicate "serious violent felonies": (1) a 1988 Florida conviction for burglary and robbery; and (2) a 2001 Florida conviction for burglary with an assault or battery.

There are three different ways a prior conviction can qualify as a "serious violent felony" under the three-strikes law. First, the three-strikes law's enumerated offenses clause lists specific offenses that qualify, like robbery, manslaughter, and murder—but not burglary. Id. § 3559(c)(2)(F)(i). Second, the elements clause makes any offense punishable by at least ten years in prison "that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another" a serious violent felony. Id. § 3559(c)(2)(F)(ii). And third, the residual clause provides that any offense punishable by at least ten years in prison "that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person of another may be used in the course of committing the offense" is a serious violent felony. Id. The government's enhancement notice didn't say which clause (or clauses) it was relying on.

Jones went to trial in 2003, and the jury convicted him as charged. The presentence investigation report calculated that Jones would've had a sentencing guideline range of 360 months' imprisonment to life but, because he faced a mandatory life sentence under the three-strikes law for his armed bank robbery conviction, the guideline range was life.

The district court sentenced Jones to life in prison for the armed bank robbery, a concurrent 360 months in prison for possessing a firearm as a felon, and a consecutive 120 months for knowingly carrying, using, possessing, and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. The district court also didn't say whether Jones's predicate convictions qualified as serious violent felonies under the three-strikes law's elements clause, residual clause, or both.

Jones appealed his convictions and sentences, and we affirmed. United States v. Jones, 90 F. App'x 383 (11th Cir. 2003) (table). He also filed a section 2255 motion in 2005, raising claims that are not relevant here. The district court denied the 2005 motion on the merits, and we denied Jones's request for a certificate of appealability.

That's how Jones's case stood until 2015. That year, the Supreme Court ruled that the residual clause in a different recidivist statute—the Armed Career Criminal Act—was unconstitutionally vague. See Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 597, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 192 L.Ed.2d 569 (2015). Following Johnson, Jones filed an application requesting an order authorizing the district court to consider a second section 2255 motion. He sought to argue that, applying Johnson, the three-strikes law's residual clause was also unconstitutionally vague. We granted Jones's application as to this claim.

Jones then filed in the district court a second section 2255 motion—the motion at issue here. He argued that, because the three-strikes law's residual clause was "very similar" to the residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act, it was "likewise unconstitutional in light of Johnson." And, because his prior conviction for burglary with an assault or battery conviction didn't satisfy the three-strikes law's elements or enumerated offenses clauses, it wasn't a valid predicate offense and he didn't qualify for the enhanced life sentence.

In November 2017, the district court denied Jones's motion. It concluded that, because we said in Ovalles v. United States, 861 F.3d 1257 (11th Cir. 2017), that the residual clause in 18 U.S.C. section 924(c) wasn't unconstitutionally vague, the same logic applied to the three-strikes law given that the two statutes and their residual clauses were similar.² The district court granted Jones a certificate of appealability as to whether Johnson applied to the three-strikes law's residual clause.

Jones appealed the denial of his motion. But, while the appeal was pending, the government moved to remand his case based on Beeman v. United States, 871 F.3d 1215 (11th Cir. 2017).³ The government argued that "the existing record d[id] not indicate how or why Jones's original sentencing court classified either of his two predicate offenses as 'serious violent felonies' for purposes of the three-strikes enhancement," and a remand was proper because "[t]he district court [wa]s best-positioned to address that question in the first instance." We granted the government's motion and remanded for the district court to reconsider Jones's second section 2255 motion under the Beeman standard.

On remand, Jones filed a brief addressing Beeman. He argued that the enhancement of his sentence under the three-strikes law was based solely on the residual clause. Jones maintained that his 2001 conviction for burglary with an assault or battery could qualify as a predicate offense only under the three-strikes law's residual clause because, at the time of his sentencing, a burglary conviction didn't qualify under either the enumerated offenses or elements clauses.

The government responded that Jones couldn't meet his burden under Beeman because the record was silent as to which clause the district court relied on to conclude that his burglary with an assault or battery conviction was a predicate offense, and "there was a viable or possible avenue" for the district court to apply the three-strikes law's elements clause at the time of Jones's sentencing. This was so, the government argued, because Jones's burglary conviction had an "accompanying assault or battery," and the district court "may have concluded that both of those offenses had as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the victim," satisfying the statute's elements clause.

The district court entered an order again denying Jones's second section 2255 motion. The district court found that Jones met his burden under Beeman because—based on its interpretation of our caselaw at the time of Jones's sentencing—burglary "was a 'serious violent felony' under only the residual clause." But the district court declined to declare the three-strikes law's residual clause unconstitutionally vague. The district court said that no court of appeals had applied the Supreme Court's decisions in Johnson, Sessions v. Dimaya, — U.S. —, 138 S. Ct. 1204, 200 L.Ed.2d 549 (2018), or United States v. Davis, — U.S. —, 139 S. Ct. 2319, 204 L.Ed.2d 757 (2019), to the statute's residual clause and it would not do so without controlling precedent. Because this issue was "unsettled," the district court again granted Jones a certificate of appealability as to whether the three-strikes law's residual clause was unconstitutionally vague.

This is Jones's appeal. Rather than continue to oppose Jones's motion, the government now concedes that the three-strikes law's residual clause is unconstitutionally vague. The government...