Summary
This First Circuit opinion addresses Derek Capozzi’s second successive § 2255 motion challenging his Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) sentence and the district court’s decision to adjust his sentence rather than order a full resentencing after vacating one conviction. The court holds that Capozzi’s claim relying on Johnson II is time-barred under AEDPA because the record does not show his original ACCA enhancement was based solely on the now-invalidated residual clause. Consequently, the court lacks jurisdiction over his underlying challenge and affirms the district court’s exercise of discretion in correcting the sentence without a plenary resentencing hearing.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether AEDPA permitted Capozzi to pursue a Johnson II-based § 2255 challenge where he could not show that his ACCA enhancement was based solely on the residual clause.
- Whether the district court abused its discretion by vacating the sixty-month sentence for the invalid firearm-in-furtherance conviction rather than conducting a plenary resentencing on all related convictions.
Holdings
- A prisoner cannot invoke Johnson II's renewed one-year limitations period unless he shows that the challenged ACCA sentence was based solely on the unconstitutional residual clause. Because the record supported reliance on the enumerated clause and Capozzi's claim depended on Mathis or Taylor-based objections to the enumerated clause, the claim was untimely under AEDPA and the federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear it.
- The district court did not abuse its discretion by correcting the sentence through vacatur of the sixty-month sentence for the invalid firearm-in-furtherance conviction rather than conducting a de novo resentencing.
Key quotations
“For challenges to sentences brought based on Johnson II, AEDPA's statute of limitations resets only as to those sentences imposed in fact under the ACCA's residual clause, not for those that purportedly should have been imposed under the residual clause because their imposition under another clause was flawed.” (at 104)
“Thus, we cannot find that the court abused its considerable discretion on these facts by opting to correct Capozzi's sentence without doing so.” (at 107)
Factual background
In 1999, Capozzi was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, attempted extortion, and using a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. The sentencing court applied the ACCA's fifteen-year mandatory minimum based on eight Massachusetts convictions, including four or more breaking-and-entering convictions that the record indicated involved buildings. The district court later vacated the firearm-in-furtherance conviction under Davis but concluded that the record did not show that the ACCA enhancement rested solely on the unconstitutional residual clause.
Procedural history
A jury convicted Capozzi in 1999 of being a felon in possession of a firearm, attempted extortion, and using a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. The district court imposed a total 360-month sentence, including a fifteen-year ACCA enhancement. Capozzi's direct appeal was unsuccessful, and the Supreme Court denied review. His first § 2255 motion challenging the use of his Massachusetts breaking-and-entering convictions as ACCA predicates was denied in 2007. After Johnson II, Capozzi obtained authorization to file a successive § 2255 motion; the district court later vacated his firearm-in-furtherance conviction under Davis, reduced his sentence by sixty months, denied his Johnson II ACCA claim as untimely, and declined to order plenary resentencing.