Robbins v. Williams

KENDRICK LEE ROBBINS, No. 15515-041, Petitioner, v. ERIC WILLIAMS, Warden, FCI-Greenville, Respondent.

Case No. 18-cv-145-NJR

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

July 2, 2020

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ROSENSTENGEL, Chief Judge:

Petitioner Kendrick Lee Robbins, an inmate in the Bureau of Prisons, filed a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, raising Mathis v. United States, - U.S. -, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), to challenge the enhancement of his sentence as an armed career offender pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). (Doc. 1). Robbins is serving a 180-month sentence imposed in June 2011 by the District of Minnesota after he pled guilty to possession of a firearm as a felon. United States v. Robbins, Case No. 10-cr-310 (D. Minn.) (criminal case).

The Court denied Respondent's Motion to Dismiss the Petition in December 2018. (Doc. 26). Respondent subsequently answered (Doc. 34), and Robbins replied. (Doc. 38). On August 5, 2019, Robbins supplemented his original pleading to add a claim pursuant to Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019). (Docs. 39, 40). Respondent filed a supplemental response to that claim (Doc. 46), and Robbins replied. (Doc. 54).

RELEVANT FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Before his felon-in-possession conviction, Robbins had been convicted of a drug trafficking offense in New Mexico in 2009 (Doc. 13-3), and of 4th-degree aiding and abetting assault in Minnesota in 1996 (Case No. K9-95-000988 in Sherburne County; Doc. 13-2). These convictions (as well as a third not at issue here)¹ were relied upon to apply the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA") enhancement in 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) for a person having at least three prior convictions for a "violent felony" or "serious drug offense." In his plea agreement, both Robbins and the prosecution agreed that the armed career criminal enhancement applied, thus raising the minimum prison term to 15 years (180 months) - as opposed to a 10-year maximum without the enhancement. 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(a)(2), 924(e) (2010); (Doc. 12-1, pp. 1-2; Doc. 13, pp. 2-3). The parties disagreed on whether Robbins's total offense level would be 30 or 31 but agreed his criminal history category was VI, yielding an advisory sentencing guideline range of either 180-210 months or 188-235 months, depending on the offense level. (Doc. 12-1, p. 2).

Robbins did not file a direct appeal. In 2016, he filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion challenging his enhanced sentence, arguing that his New Mexico drug offense did not qualify as a "serious drug offense" under § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii), because the applicable penalty was only 9 years, while Section 924(e) requires a predicate drug offense to carry a maximum sentence of at least 10 years. United States v. Robbins, Case No. 16-cv-1855 (D. Minn.) (Doc. 63 in criminal case);² 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(A)(ii). The Section 2255 motion was denied as untimely, and the district court further found Robbins's argument that the drug offense maximum was below the required 10 years to be without merit. (Doc. 63, pp. 5-7, in criminal case).

In the present habeas Petition, Robbins revived the claim that the New Mexico drug statute under which he was convicted carried a maximum penalty of 9 years. This Court rejected that argument in the Order denying Respondent's Motion to Dismiss but ordered a response to the Mathis claim.(Doc. 26, pp. 4-6).

Robbins now seeks habeas relief on the following grounds:

(1) Under Mathis, Robbins's 2009 New Mexico conviction for possession with intent to distribute cocaine is no longer a "serious drug offense" for ACCA-enhancement purposes, because:

(a) the New Mexico statute is broader than the generic federal statute because it allows a conviction for a mere "offer to sell" and defines "distribute" more broadly than does federal law (Doc. 1, pp. 6-7; Doc. 1-1, pp. 4-9; Doc. 24, pp. 13-14);

(b) the New Mexico statute is overbroad because its analog element includes substances not listed in the federal statute (Doc. 24, pp. 19-21); and

(c) the "person" element in the New Mexico statute is overbroad (Doc. 24, pp. 13-14);

(2) Robbins's plea of "nolo contendere" to the New Mexico offense meant that he never admitted to all its essential elements, undermining the use of this conviction as a predicate for the sentence enhancement (Doc. 24, pp. 15-17);

(3) Under Mathis, Robbins's 1996 Minnesota 4th-degree aiding and abetting assault conviction no longer qualifies as a "violent felony" (Doc. 1, p. 7; Doc. 1-1, pp. 9-11);

(4) Under Rehaif v. United States, Robbins is actually innocent of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) because the government did not allege or prove he had knowledge of his convicted-felon status when he possessed the firearm. (Doc. 39, pp. 3-5).

Respondent maintains that the assault conviction remains a "violent felony" under the elements clause of Section 924(e)(2)(B)(1), and Mathis is inapplicable (Doc. 13, pp. 13-16; Doc. 34, pp. 9-17); the trafficking conviction still qualifies as a "serious drug offense" and Robbins's claim does not truly rely on Mathis (Doc. 34, pp. 17-32); and the Rehaif claim fails because Robbins cannot show his conviction amounted to a "miscarriage of justice." (Doc. 46, pp. 17-21). Respondent also seeks to preserve the argument that because Robbins brought a Section 2255 motion earlier, he cannot now usethe "savings clause" to mount another collateral attack using Section 2241.³ (Doc. 46, pp. 5-14).

APPLICABLE LEGAL STANDARDS

Generally, petitions for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 may not be used to raise claims of legal error in conviction or sentencing but are instead limited to challenges regarding the execution of a sentence. See Valona v. United States, 138 F.3d 693, 694 (7th Cir. 1998). Thus, aside from the direct appeal process, a prisoner who has been convicted in federal court is generally limited to challenging his conviction and sentence by bringing a motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the court which sentenced him. A Section 2255 motion is ordinarily the "exclusive means for a federal prisoner to attack his conviction." Kramer v. Olson, 347 F.3d 214, 217 (7th Cir. 2003). A prisoner is also normally limited to only one challenge of his conviction and sentence under Section 2255. He or she may not file a "second or successive" Section 2255 motion unless a panel of the appropriate court of appeals certifies that such motion contains either (1) newly discovered evidence "sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would have found the movant guilty of the offense," or (2) "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).

Under very limited circumstances, however, it is possible for a prisoner to challenge his federal conviction or sentence under Section 2241. Specifically, 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e) contains a "savings clause" which authorizes a federal prisoner to file a Section 2241 petition where the remedy under Section 2255 is "inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). See Hill v. Werlinger, 695 F.3d 644, 648 (7th Cir. 2012) ("'Inadequate or ineffective' means that 'a legal theory that could not have been presented under § 2255 establishes the petitioner's actual innocence.'") (citing Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir. 2002); see also United States v. Prevatte, 300 F.3d 792, 798-99 (7th Cir. 2002). The Seventh Circuit construed the savings clause inIn re Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 611 (7th Cir. 1998): "A procedure for postconviction relief can be fairly 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." In other words, "there must be some kind of structural problem with section 2255 before section 2241 becomes available." Webster v. Daniels, 784 F.3d 1123, 1136 (7th Cir. 2015).

Following Davenport and its progeny, the Seventh Circuit has developed a three-part test for determining whether Section 2255 is inadequate or ineffective so as to trigger the savings clause:

• Step #1: the federal prisoner must seek relief based on a decision of statutory interpretation (as opposed to a decision of constitutional interpretation, which the inmate could raise in a second or successive § 2255 motion);

• Step #2: the statutory rule of law in question must apply retroactively to cases on collateral review and could not have been invoked in a first § 2255 motion; and

• Step #3: a failure to afford the prisoner collateral relief would amount to an error "grave enough" to constitute "a miscarriage of justice."

Worman v. Entzel, 953 F.3d 1004, 1008 (7th Cir. 2020) (emphasis in original) (citing Montana v. Cross, 829 F.3d 775, 783 (7th Cir. 2016); Beason v. Marske, 926 F.3d 932, 935 (7th Cir. 2019)). See also Chazen v. Marske, 938 F.3d 851, 856 (7th Cir. 2019); Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d 583, 586 (7th Cir. 2013).

ANALYSIS

I. Mathis Claims

A claim that relies on Mathis v. United States satisfies the first Davenport condition, as Mathis is a statutory-interpretation case. See Holt v. United States, 843 F.3d 720, 722 (7th Cir. 2016); Dawkins v. United States, 829 F.3d 549, 550-51 (7th Cir. 2016).

As to the second element, Respondent concedes that Mathis is retroactively applicable on collateral review. (Doc. 13, p. 8). He argues, however, that the analysis set forth in Mathis is inapplicable to Robbins's argument regarding his Minnesota assault conviction, and that Robbins does not truly rely on Mathis in contesting the enhancement based on his New Mexico drug offense andcould have raised his arguments even before Mathis based on earlier precedent. (Doc. 34, pp. 9-21).

Robbins could not have invoked the 2016 Mathis decision in a timely initial Section 2255 motion, which he would have been required...