Sims v. Sherman , 207 F. App'x 155 ( 2006 )

Opinions of the United
2006 Decisions States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit
11-28-2006
Sims v. Sherman
Precedential or Non-Precedential: Non-Precedential
Docket No. 06-2440
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Recommended Citation
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BLD-3
NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
NO. 06-2440
___________
PATRICK LAMONT SIMS,
Appellant
v.
WARDEN JAMES F. SHERMAN
__________________________
On Appeal From the United States District Court
For the Western District of Pennsylvania
(WD/PA Civil No. 04-cv-00381E)
District Judge: Honorable Sean J. McLaughlin
_____________________________
Submitted For Possible Summary Action
Under Third Circuit LAR 27.4 and I.O.P. 10.6
October 5, 2006
Before: RENDELL, AMBRO and ROTH, Circuit Judges
(Filed: November 28, 2006)
___________________
OPINION OF THE COURT
__________________
PER CURIAM
Patrick Lamont Sims, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, appeals from the
District Court’s dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 petition for a writ of habeas corpus and
denial of his motion under Rule 60(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Sims
has also filed a motion for summary reversal. Because the District Court’s rulings were
not in error and this appeal does not present a substantial question, we will instead
summarily affirm. See 3d Cir. LAR 27.4; 3d Cir. IOP 10.6.
I.
In 1990, Sims and four others were arrested after attempting to purchase 15
kilograms of cocaine from undercover police officers in Detroit, Michigan. A jury in the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan later convicted Sims of,
among other things, using and carrying machine guns during and in relation to a drug
trafficking offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). That court, after an appeal and
remand, ultimately sentenced Sims to an aggregate term of 42 years and seven months
imprisonment, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. See
United States v. Sims, 41 F.3d 1508 (6th Cir. 1994).
In 1995, Sims filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the Eastern District of
Michigan, which denied it in 1999. Sims apparently did not seek to appeal. In 2001, he
simultaneously filed a § 2241 habeas petition in the Eastern District of Michigan and
sought leave from the Sixth Circuit to file a second § 2255 motion. In each of these
filings, Sims appears to have argued that his conviction on the machine gun charge should
be vacated in light of the United States Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Castillo
v. United States, 530 U.S. 120 (2000). The Sixth Circuit denied Sims’s application to file
a second § 2255 motion on December 20, 2001. In 2002, while his § 2241 petition was
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pending in the Eastern District of Michigan, Sims was transferred to a federal prison in
Bradford, Pennsylvania. The Eastern District of Michigan dismissed Sims’s § 2241
petition on October 31, 2003. Sims apparently did not appeal that ruling either.
Instead, on December 20, 2004, Sims filed another § 2241 petition in the United
States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In that petition, which is
the petition at issue here, Sims challenges his conviction under the Supreme Court’s post-
sentencing decisions in Castillo and Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137 (1995).
The Magistrate Judge recommended that Sims’s petition be dismissed because his claims
are properly raised only in a § 2255 motion filed with the sentencing court and do not fall
within that section’s “savings clause.” The District Court, before receiving Sims’s
objections, issued a Memorandum Order dated April 10, 2006, adopting the Magistrate
Judge’s Report and Recommendation and dismissing Sims’s petition for lack of
jurisdiction. Sims then filed a Rule 60(b)(6) motion, attaching a copy of his objections
and explaining that he had delivered them to prison staff for mailing on the day that they
were due to be filed. By order dated April 17, 2006, the District Court denied Sims’s
motion. Sims appeals from both orders. We will affirm.1
1
We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253(a). We exercise
plenary review over the District Court’s legal conclusions, see Woodall v. Fed. Bureau of
Prisons, 432 F.3d 235, 239 n.3 (3d Cir. 2005), and review its denial of Sims’s Rule 60
motion for abuse of discretion, see Pridgen v. Shannon, 380 F.3d 721, 725 (3d Cir. 2004).
We may affirm the District Court’s rulings if there is any basis to do so in the record. See
Fairview Twp. v. EPA, 773 F.2d 517, 524 n.15 (3d Cir. 1985).
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II.
A. The Dismissal of Sims’s § 2241 Motion
The validity of a federal conviction or sentence must be challenged by way of a §
2255 motion in the sentencing court unless it “appears that the remedy by motion is
inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of [the prisoner’s] detention.” 28 U.S.C. §
2255. If so, a prisoner may challenge his or her conviction or sentence by filing a § 2241
habeas petition with the district court for the judicial district in which he or she is in
custody. See Hill v. Morrison, 349 F.3d 1089, 1091 (5th Cir. 2003); Cradle v. United
States, 290 F.3d 536, 538 (3d Cir. 2002).2
Sims argues that § 2255 affords him an “inadequate or ineffective” remedy here
and that he should have been permitted to raise his Bailey and Castillo challenges in a §
2241 petition under this Court’s decision in In re Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d 245 (3d Cir. 1997).
We held in Dorsainvil that, where a § 2255 remedy is no longer available, a prisoner can
proceed on a § 2241 petition where the petitioner “had no earlier opportunity to challenge
his conviction for a crime that an intervening change in substantive law may negate.” Id.
at 251. This holding is “a narrow one” and addresses an “unusual situation” with two
components. Id. at 251-52. First, the petitioner there did not have an opportunity to raise
his challenge in a previous § 2255 motion and could not do so in a subsequent § 2255
2
For this reason, to the extent that the Magistrate Judge’s Report and
Recommendation suggests that a prisoner can never challenge the validity of a conviction
or sentence in any other than the sentencing court, that suggestion is erroneous.
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motion because his challenge was not based on newly-discovered evidence or a new rule
of constitutional law. See id. Second, it would have been a “miscarriage of justice” to
prevent the petitioner from raising the challenge because it was based on a Supreme Court
interpretation of substantive law that may have de-criminalized the conduct of which he
had been convicted. See id.
Sims’s Bailey challenge lacks the first of these components. Bailey was decided in
1995, and Sims thus could have raised it in his first § 2255 proceeding, which did not
conclude until 1999.
Sims’s Castillo challenge lacks the second of these components. In Castillo, the
Supreme Court held merely that whether a weapon is a “machinegun” is an element of an
offense that must be indicted and proven to a jury rather than a judge. See Castillo, 530
U.S. at 123-24, 131. The Court did not substantively interpret the “machinegun” element
itself. See id.; see also United States v. Gonzalez, 327 F.3d 416, 421-22 (5th Cir. 2003)
(explaining that “Castillo does not determine what conduct the law criminalizes”).
Castillo thus does not potentially de-criminalize the conduct of which Sims was
convicted. Accordingly, the potential miscarriage of justice that troubled us in Dorsainvil
is not implicated here. See Okereke v. United States, 307 F.3d 117, 120-21 (3d Cir.
2002) (rejecting Dorsainvil argument premised on Supreme Court decision that did not
de-criminalize the conduct in question).
B. The Denial of Sims’s Rule 60(b)(6) Motion
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Sims also appeals the District Court’s denial of his Rule 60 motion. The basis for
that motion is that the District Court dismissed Sims’s § 2241 petition before receiving
his objections, which Sims had submitted to prison staff for mailing on the day that they
were due to be filed and which thus should be deemed timely filed under the prison
mailbox rule. On appeal, Sims argues that the District Court failed to consider his
objections and that the brevity of the District Court’s Memorandum Order “implies that
the reasoning of the [Magistrate Judge] was merely adopted by the district court” in
asserted violation of his right to review by an Article III judge.
We reject Sims’s arguments for three reasons. First, Sims was not entitled to
proceed on his § 2241 petition. Second, the District Court expressly stated in its
Memorandum Order that it had reviewed the Magistrate Judge’s Report and
Recommendation de novo. Finally, Sims’s objections were attached to his Rule 60
motion, so the District Court necessarily had to consider them in ruling on that motion.
Accordingly, we will summarily affirm the District Court’s dismissal of Sims’s §
2241 petition and denial of his Rule 60 motion. Sims’s motion for summary action is
denied.
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