Jose A. Brito v. United States
- Paul Gardephe
- 1:21-cv-07572
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Jose A. Brito v. United States, Judge Gardephe denied Brito’s Section 2255 motion without prejudice because his direct appeal was pending.
Jose A. Brito’s Section 2255 motion; the United States was the respondent.
What happened
In Jose A. Brito v. United States, Jose A. Brito challenged his federal conviction through a motion under Section 2255. He had pleaded guilty to unlawfully reentering the United States after an aggravated-felony conviction and deportation, and the court had sentenced him to 24 months in prison.
Brito had filed a direct appeal before filing the Section 2255 motion. Because that appeal was still pending, the court ruled that the motion was premature and denied it without prejudice. The court therefore did not decide the motion’s underlying claims.
Judge Paul G. Gardephe said that handling the motion while the appeal was pending could create confusion or waste judicial resources by placing the same issues before two courts at once.
The detailed version
- Jose A. Brito v. United States · No. 1:21-cv-07572
- Paul Gardephe
- Sept. 16, 2021
Background
Jose A. Brito pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang to unlawfully entering the United States after having been convicted of an aggravated felony and deported, in violation of 8 U.S.C. §§ 1326(a) and (b)(2). The district court accepted his plea on January 7, 2021, and sentenced him to 24 months’ imprisonment on January 13, 2021.
Brito filed a notice of direct appeal on January 20, 2021. He later filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which allows a federal prisoner to challenge the legality of the conviction or sentence. An initial filing on August 31, 2021, was terminated because of a filing error, and Brito re-filed the motion on September 9, 2021.
Ruling
The court denied the present Section 2255 motion without prejudice as premature because Brito’s direct appeal was pending. The court explained that it was not strictly barred from deciding the motion during the appeal, but that judicial economy favored avoiding confusion or wasted time from having the same issues before two courts simultaneously.
The order did not address the merits of Brito’s Section 2255 claims. Because the motion was denied without prejudice, the order did not state that the claims were permanently barred from being raised later.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.