Filed: Apr. 09, 2014
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _ No. 12-3664 _ CHARLES D. CONWAY, Appellant v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; WILFREDO TORRES, CHIEF PROBATION OFFICER _ No. 13-2155 _ CHARLES D. CONWAY, Appellant v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey (Nos. 2-12-cv-01412 and 2-12-cv-05700) District Judge: Hon. Stanley R. Chesler Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) March 17, 2014 Before: CHAGARES, GRE
Summary: NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _ No. 12-3664 _ CHARLES D. CONWAY, Appellant v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; WILFREDO TORRES, CHIEF PROBATION OFFICER _ No. 13-2155 _ CHARLES D. CONWAY, Appellant v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey (Nos. 2-12-cv-01412 and 2-12-cv-05700) District Judge: Hon. Stanley R. Chesler Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) March 17, 2014 Before: CHAGARES, GREE..
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_____________
No. 12-3664
_____________
CHARLES D. CONWAY,
Appellant
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA;
WILFREDO TORRES, CHIEF PROBATION OFFICER
_____________
No. 13-2155
_____________
CHARLES D. CONWAY,
Appellant
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Jersey
(Nos. 2-12-cv-01412 and 2-12-cv-05700)
District Judge: Hon. Stanley R. Chesler
Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
March 17, 2014
Before: CHAGARES, GREENAWAY, JR., and VANASKIE, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: April 9, 2014)
____________
OPINION
____________
CHAGARES, Circuit Judge.
In this consolidated appeal, Charles D. Conway challenges the District Court’s
orders dismissing his motions for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. For the reasons stated
below, we will affirm.
I.
We write exclusively for the parties and therefore set forth only those facts that are
necessary to our disposition. On February 5, 2004, a grand jury returned a 33-count
indictment against Conway, a New Jersey-based lawyer who specialized in tax and estate
planning. The indictment alleged that Conway engaged in a scheme to defraud and
misappropriate funds from the estate of his client. On March 31, 2004, Conway pleaded
guilty to ten counts of the indictment, including, inter alia, money laundering, in violation
of 18 U.S.C. § 1957(a).1 Pursuant to the plea agreement, the Government dropped the
remaining charges. The District Court accepted Conway’s guilty plea, and imposed upon
him a sentence of 78 months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release.
On June 2, 2008, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in United
States v. Santos, 553 U.S. 507 (2008). The Court held that the term “proceeds” in 18
U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)2 refers to “profits” and not to “receipts” from specified unlawful
1
Section 1957 provides that “[w]hoever . . . knowingly engages or attempts to engage in
a monetary transaction in criminally derived property of a value greater than $10,000 and
is derived from specified unlawful activity, shall” face “[a fine] or imprisonment for not
more than ten years or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 1957(a)-(b). “[C]riminally derived property”
is defined as “any property constituting, or derived from, proceeds obtained from a
criminal offense.”
Id. § 1957(f)(2).
2
This section provides that “[w]hoever, knowing that the property involved in a financial
transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, conducts or
2
activity. Six weeks later, on July 14, 2008, Conway filed a pro se motion to vacate his
sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, arguing that the money laundering activity to which he
pleaded was no longer criminal in light of Santos. Conway asserted that he would not
have pled guilty to money laundering or any of the other charges if he had understood
“proceeds” in 18 U.S.C. § 1957 to mean “profits.” The District Court issued an order
advising Conway of his rights under United States v. Miller, 197 F.3d 644, 652 (3d Cir.
1999) (requiring district courts to issue a notice in response to a pro se petitioner’s post-
conviction motion regarding the effect of such a pleading). Citing the Miller notice,
Conway moved to withdraw his motion, and the District Court terminated his case.
Conway submitted another § 2255 motion under a cover letter dated August 3,
2009, which the Court docketed on September 4, 2009. The motion identified ten claims
of error, including the Santos claim that Conway raised in the previous § 2255 petition.
In an opinion and order dated July 8, 2010, the District Court dismissed Conway’s
motion as untimely. With respect to the Santos claim in particular, the District Court
assumed that the Supreme Court’s decision triggered a new one-year limitations period,
but held that Conway’s claim was nonetheless untimely because it was filed more than
one year after the Court issued Santos. Conway filed a motion for reconsideration in
which he argued that his motion was timely delivered to prison authorities in February
2009. The Court rejected this claim, citing his August 3, 2009 cover letter, and denied
attempts to conduct such a financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of
specified unlawful activity . . . shall be sentenced to a fine of not more than $500,000 or
twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is greater, or
imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1).
3
the motion for reconsideration. Both the District Court and this Court declined to grant
Conway a certificate of appealability.
On March 5, 2012, Conway filed his first motion for relief pursuant to § 2241 in
the District of New Jersey. He asserted once again that he was actually innocent of
money laundering under Santos, and that therefore the plea agreement, guilty plea,
conviction, and forfeiture of his property should be set aside. The District Court
construed the petition as a successive motion under § 2255 and dismissed it for lack of
jurisdiction because it was not based on newly discovered facts or a new rule of
constitutional law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(1)-(2). Conway filed a similar motion under
§ 2241 in the Eastern District of New York, which was transferred to the District of New
Jersey. The District Court also construed this motion as one under § 2255 and dismissed
it for lack of jurisdiction.
Conway timely appealed from the District Court’s orders dismissing his petitions.
On October 6, 2012, while his appeals were pending, Conway’s term of supervised
release expired.3 This Court consolidated the appeals on July 10, 2013.
II.
This consolidated appeal is from two final orders of the District Court, each
dismissing habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. We have jurisdiction over the
appeals pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253(a). We exercise plenary review over the
3
Since Conway is no longer serving his sentence, his habeas petition may be moot. See
generally Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1 (1998). We need not address the mootness
issue, however, because we will dispose of Conway’s petition based on lack of
jurisdiction.
4
District Court’s legal conclusions and apply a clearly erroneous standard to its factual
findings. See Cradle v. United States, 290 F.3d 536, 538 (3d Cir. 2002) (per curiam).
III.
Conway argues that the District Court erred in dismissing his petitions for lack of
jurisdiction. In each one, he asserted that the factual predicate for his guilty plea was
insufficient to show, under Santos, that he violated 18 U.S.C. § 1957(a). Although
Conway concedes that he raised this claim in his previous § 2255 petition, which the
District Court dismissed as untimely, he asserts that he should be able to raise it again
under § 2241 because the remedy afforded by § 2255 was inadequate.
Under § 2255(e), a petitioner may proceed under § 2241 only if a § 2255 motion
would be “inadequate or ineffective.” See 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e); Cradle, 290 F.3d at 538.
A § 2255 motion is inadequate or ineffective “only where the petitioner demonstrates that
some limitation of scope or procedure would prevent a § 2255 proceeding from affording
him a full hearing and adjudication of his wrongful detention claim.”
Cradle, 290 F.3d at
538. “It is the inefficacy of the remedy, not the personal inability to use it, that is
determinative.”
Id. Accordingly, § 2255 is not inadequate or ineffective “merely
because the sentencing court does not grant relief, the one-year statute of limitations had
expired, or the petitioner is unable to meet the stringent gatekeeping requirements of the
amended § 2255.” Id.; see also In re Dorsainvil,
119 F.3d 245, 251 (3d Cir. 1997) (listing
cases in which courts found that § 2255 was not “inadequate or ineffective” even though
the petitioner was unable to raise a successful claim under it).
5
We have emphasized repeatedly that the “safety valve” provision of § 2255 is
extremely narrow and applied only in rare circumstances. For example, in Dorsainvil, we
allowed the petitioner to proceed under § 2241 because an intervening change in the law
decriminalized conduct for which the petitioner had been convicted, and he had no earlier
opportunity to challenge his conviction. There, the petitioner was in “an unusual
situation because [the relevant Supreme Court case] was not yet decided at the time of his
first § 2255 motion.” Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d at 251-52.
In the present case, Conway had an opportunity to challenge his conviction in light
of Santos because, in contrast to the petitioner in Dorsainvil, he had not yet filed a § 2255
motion when the Supreme Court issued its decision. Section 2255(f)(3) provides that a
one-year limitations period begins to run from “the date on which the right asserted was
initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the
Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review” 28
U.S.C. § 2255(f)(3). Presumably relying upon this provision, Conway filed his first §
2255 motion only six weeks after the Supreme Court decided Santos, but he subsequently
withdrew the motion. Conway then waited another thirteen months before filing his
second § 2255 motion, at which point his motion was time barred. The fact that Conway
can no longer file a timely petition does not make the remedy afforded by § 2255
inadequate or ineffective in his case. See Cradle, 290 F.3d at 538 (holding that petitioner
failed to show that his remedy under § 2255 was inadequate or ineffective where he was
time barred from filing a § 2255 petition).
6
Because Conway has not shown that the remedy afforded by § 2255 is inadequate
or ineffective, he cannot proceed with his Santos claim under § 2241. Thus, the District
Court did not err in dismissing Conway’s petition for lack of jurisdiction.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the orders of the District Court.
7
