Phillips v. Barnes

Background

Cherron Marie Phillips, proceeding without a lawyer, was convicted by a jury in the Northern District of Illinois of retaliating against a federal judge or law-enforcement officer under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1521 and 1522. She received an 84-month prison sentence.

Phillips later filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, the usual procedure for a federal prisoner to challenge a conviction or sentence in the court that imposed it. She argued, among other things, that the statute of conviction was unconstitutional and had not been properly enacted by Congress. The Northern District of Illinois considered the merits of those arguments and denied them, although it also found that the motion was barred by the one-year filing deadline and was procedurally deficient because Phillips had not raised the issues on appeal. The Seventh Circuit dismissed her appeal.

Current Petition and Objection

Phillips then filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the District of Minnesota. She argued that her confinement was unlawful because the conduct underlying her conviction was protected by the First Amendment and because the statute of conviction had not been properly enacted.

Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz recommended denying the petition. He concluded that Phillips had already raised the arguments in her § 2255 motion and had not shown why § 2255 was inadequate or ineffective. Under § 2255(e), sometimes called the savings clause, a federal prisoner may use § 2241 to challenge a conviction only if the § 2255 remedy is inadequate or ineffective.

Phillips objected. She acknowledged that § 2255 would generally be the proper procedure but argued that it was inadequate because she had been blocked from effective review. She said that the Northern District of Illinois’s Executive Committee had designated her a restricted filer and had interfered with her pending § 2255 proceedings.

Court’s Reasoning

The court held that a procedural barrier to bringing a § 2255 motion is not enough to show that the remedy is inadequate or ineffective. It concluded that any limits or delays imposed by the Executive Committee were only procedural barriers. Phillips therefore had not shown that she qualified to use the § 2255 savings clause.

Because § 2255 remained available to her, the District of Minnesota concluded that it lacked jurisdiction, meaning legal authority, to hear her § 2241 petition. The court did not decide whether Phillips’s First Amendment or statutory-enactment arguments were correct in this proceeding.

Disposition

The court adopted the magistrate judge’s Report and Recommendation and denied Phillips’s 28 U.S.C. § 2241 petition without prejudice. The order directed that judgment be entered accordingly.