Parker v. United States

Background

Darren Parker was serving a 60-month federal sentence after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute 40 grams or more of mixtures containing fentanyl. The plea agreement included a waiver of his right to appeal or bring certain collateral challenges to a sentence within or below the stipulated Sentencing Guidelines range. The court ultimately imposed the statutory minimum sentence of 60 months, followed by four years of supervised release.

Parker filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, a procedure allowing a federal prisoner to challenge a sentence on specified constitutional, jurisdictional, or legal grounds. Liberally read, his claims alleged ineffective assistance of counsel, lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, an unconstitutional statute, a defective indictment, and due-process violations. Parker also filed a motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) seeking compassionate release based on diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and the risk of serious illness from COVID-19. Parker represented himself in both matters.

Section 2255 Claims

The court first held that Parker’s plea-agreement waiver barred his challenges to the sentence to the extent the waiver applied. The court found that Parker understood the waiver because it was discussed during the guilty-plea hearing, he confirmed that he understood it, and he stated under oath that his plea was voluntary. The court also relied on his later decision, after receiving new counsel and discussing whether to withdraw the plea, to continue with the guilty plea and plea agreement.

The court then addressed the claims on their merits. It rejected Parker’s jurisdictional argument because the charged federal drug-conspiracy offense was within Congress’s authority to regulate and was properly charged. It concluded that the statutes used for his conviction, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846, were not facially unconstitutional, and it rejected his argument that the indictment needed to allege an offense in the United States’ special maritime or territorial jurisdiction.

The court also rejected Parker’s argument that an allegedly unlawful wiretap undermined his conviction. Because Parker was convicted after pleading guilty rather than after a trial, the court said the conviction did not rest on evidence that may have been improperly obtained. The court further found that Parker’s ineffective-assistance claims did not satisfy the two-part test requiring deficient performance and resulting prejudice. His sworn statements during the plea hearing contradicted his allegations, and he did not claim that he would have gone to trial if counsel had acted differently. The court therefore denied the Section 2255 motion, dismissed the petition, and found that no hearing was necessary.

Compassionate Release

The court considered the compassionate-release motion despite uncertainty about whether Parker had asked the Bureau of Prisons to pursue release after his transfer to a federal facility. The Government had waived an exhaustion objection, and the court chose to consider the motion’s merits to avoid future litigation based on the same facts.

The court accepted that COVID-19 and Parker’s medical conditions could potentially support compassionate release. But it found that Parker had received two Moderna vaccine doses, had previously contracted COVID-19, and had not shown that he could not manage his medical needs in prison. The court therefore concluded that he had not established an extraordinary and compelling reason for reducing his sentence.

The court also determined that release would not be consistent with the applicable Sentencing Commission policy statement or the statutory sentencing factors. Parker did not show that he was not a danger to another person or the community, and the court noted that he had been arrested while on bail. The court further found that releasing him after he had served approximately one-quarter of the sentence would not reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for the law, provide adequate deterrence, or protect the public. It denied the compassionate-release motion.

Disposition

The court denied Parker’s motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and dismissed the petition. It likewise denied the motion under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c). The court declined to issue a certificate of appealability, certified that an appeal on the merits would not be taken in good faith, directed entry of judgment for the United States, and ordered the civil case closed.