Flowers v. United States
- Vincent Briccetti
- 7:19-cv-11950
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Flowers v. United States, Judge Briccetti denied Flowers’s challenge because his firearm conviction remained supported by a marijuana-distribution conspiracy.
Rakeem Flowers’s federal firearm conviction and sentence; the petition was dismissed and the case was closed.
What happened
In Flowers v. United States, Rakeem Flowers, representing himself, asked the court to vacate his firearm conviction and sentence under a federal law allowing challenges to federal sentences. He argued that a Supreme Court decision, United States v. Davis, invalidated the racketeering conspiracy as a basis for that conviction.
The government argued that Flowers had not raised the issue on direct appeal. The court did not decide that argument because it found another valid basis for the firearm conviction: the conspiracy to distribute and possess marijuana with intent to distribute. Flowers had admitted during his guilty plea that he carried a firearm to further marijuana distribution.
Judge Vincent L. Briccetti denied the motion and dismissed the petition. The court also said no appeal certificate would issue, denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees, and directed the Clerk to close the case.
The detailed version
- Flowers v. United States · No. 7:19-cv-11950
- Vincent Briccetti
- Nov. 18, 2020
Background
Rakeem Flowers pleaded guilty to three counts in a superseding information. Count One charged conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise. Count Two charged conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute marijuana. Count Three charged using, carrying, and possessing firearms in furtherance of both conspiracies, under 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i) and 2.
The court sentenced Flowers to an aggregate 96 months in prison: concurrent 36-month terms on Counts One and Two, followed by a consecutive mandatory minimum 60-month term on Count Three. Proceeding without a lawyer, Flowers filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which permits a federal prisoner to seek correction of an unlawful sentence. He argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Davis invalidated his firearm conviction because it could no longer rest on the racketeering conspiracy.
Legal framework and analysis
Section 924(c) prohibits using, carrying, or possessing a firearm in furtherance of either a qualifying “crime of violence” or a “drug trafficking crime.” Before Davis, the statute defined a crime of violence through both an elements clause and a residual clause. In Davis, the Supreme Court invalidated the residual clause. The court concluded that, after Davis, the racketeering conspiracy charged in Count One no longer qualified as a crime of violence.
The court nevertheless held that Davis did not invalidate the separate drug-trafficking predicate. A drug-trafficking crime includes a felony punishable under the Controlled Substances Act, and the court identified the marijuana conspiracy in Count Two as such a predicate. The charging document alleged that Flowers used and carried firearms during and in relation to that drug-trafficking crime and possessed firearms in furtherance of it. During his guilty-plea proceeding, Flowers also admitted that he carried a firearm to further marijuana distribution.
The government argued that Flowers had procedurally defaulted his claim by failing to raise it on direct appeal. The court did not reach that argument because it found that Count Two independently supported the Section 924(c) conviction.
Disposition
The court held that Flowers’s Section 924(c) conviction remained valid because it was supported by the marijuana conspiracy. It therefore denied Flowers’s Section 2255 motion and dismissed the petition. The court declined to issue a certificate of appealability, certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees, and directed the Clerk to close the case.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.