Ghailani v. United States

Background

Ahmed Ghailani was convicted of conspiring to bomb the United States embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The jury also found facts supporting an increased sentence because his conduct directly or proximately caused another person’s death. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2011. The conviction was affirmed in 2013, and the court denied his earlier motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in 2016. The Court of Appeals denied permission to appeal that ruling in 2017.

Ghailani then filed several handwritten, self-represented motions. The court treated them as including a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60, requests for more time to amend or clarify that motion, and an argument that the statute supporting his conviction was unconstitutionally vague. The court denied the motions but temporarily allowed him to supplement or clarify one of them. After further requests, the court denied additional extensions and treated the related Rule 60 proceedings as ended.

Current motions

Ghailani’s May 19, 2021 motion again sought more time to clarify the earlier Rule 60 motion. He argued that he had not received the court’s August and December 2020 orders, that a later Second Circuit decision showed that the Supreme Court’s decision in Davis applied to his conviction, and that he should be allowed to raise an unspecified jurisdictional challenge.

He also submitted materials concerning a Bureau of Prisons administrative complaint about the alleged failure to deliver the orders. The June 8 and June 16 submissions asked the court to consider those materials. Ghailani further sought reconsideration of earlier orders and, alternatively, a certificate of appealability for an appeal.

Court’s reasoning

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied the May 19 motion for additional time. The August 2020 order had set a September 2020 deadline, and a December 2020 order had later extended the deadline to February 2021. The court had already denied two requests to extend the February deadline. The court also stated that Ghailani’s January 2021 filing showed that he knew about the December order and had sought an extension before the February deadline expired.

The court concluded that the alleged failure to receive the August and December orders did not affect the result. It declined to order the prison mailroom to provide evidence and denied the June 8 and June 16 motions. The court noted that Ghailani was not raising a claim against the Bureau of Prisons in these proceedings and that such a claim would not properly be before this court.

The court also denied reconsideration. It found that Ghailani had not presented a new argument or evidence that could reasonably change the earlier decisions. The court explained that the appellate decision he cited involved permission to file a successive § 2255 motion and a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), while Ghailani’s conviction involved 18 U.S.C. § 844(f) and (n), with enhanced penalties under § 844(f)(3). The court therefore concluded that Davis and the later decision did not apply to Ghailani’s conviction.

Finally, the court ruled that there was nothing presently to decide about Ghailani’s unspecified jurisdictional challenge because he had not identified what the challenge was. The court denied all of Ghailani’s motions, denied a certificate of appealability, and certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3).