Gunn v. United States

Background

Roderick Gunn pleaded guilty in 2003 to all six counts in an information. The charges included conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery, a Hobbs Act robbery, brandishing a firearm during the robbery-related offenses, conspiracy to distribute narcotics, and two firearm-possession charges. In 2010, Judge William Pauley sentenced him to 57 months on five counts, running at the same time, and 84 months on the brandishing count, running consecutively, for a total of 141 months. Gunn also received five years of supervised release.

Gunn later filed an earlier sentence-challenge petition, which was denied in 2014. After Supreme Court decisions in Johnson v. United States and United States v. Davis, the Second Circuit authorized Gunn to seek permission to file another petition after finding that he had made the required initial showing. The Second Circuit also directed this court to decide whether the proposed claims actually satisfied the legal requirements governing repeat petitions.

Gunn has finished serving the prison terms imposed in the case at issue, but the court found that he remained legally in custody because he had not yet begun the five-year supervised-release term. The court also noted that Gunn was serving a life sentence and concurrent 40-year sentence in a separate criminal case, along with a life term of supervised release in that case.

Court’s analysis

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act generally requires dismissal of a repeat sentence-challenge petition unless it relies on a new constitutional rule that the Supreme Court made retroactive to cases being reviewed after conviction, or on certain previously undiscovered facts. Even after the appeals court authorizes a filing based on an initial showing, the district court must perform this additional screening, or gatekeeping, review.

For Gunn’s challenge to the firearm-brandishing conviction, the court applied the concurrent-sentences doctrine. That doctrine allows a court to decline to consider a challenge when the person is serving an equal or longer sentence on another valid conviction and cannot show a reasonable prospect of spending less time in custody. The court concluded that overturning the challenged conviction would not reasonably shorten Gunn’s custody because of the separate life and 40-year sentences and the separate life term of supervised release. The court therefore did not reach the merits of that challenge.

Gunn also challenged two firearm-possession convictions under Rehaif v. United States. The court relied on the Second Circuit’s decision in Mata v. United States, which held that Rehaif interpreted a statute rather than announced a new constitutional rule. Because that type of claim does not satisfy the requirements for a repeat sentence-challenge petition, the court denied Gunn’s Rehaif claim.

Other requests and disposition

Gunn alternatively asked the court to treat his filing as a request for a writ of error coram nobis, a limited remedy generally available to someone no longer in custody for the conviction. The court assumed, without deciding, that Gunn could satisfy two of the requirements for that remedy, but found that he had not shown continuing consequences from the conviction that the remedy could correct. The alternative request was denied.

The court held that Gunn’s motion to reopen an earlier withdrawn petition had become moot after the Second Circuit authorized the new filing and directed the district court to conduct the required gatekeeping review. The motion to reopen was therefore denied as moot. The motion to supplement was also denied as moot because the opinion resolved the pending gatekeeping issues.

In conclusion, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein denied Gunn’s motion, declined to issue a certificate of appealability because Gunn had not made the required substantial showing that a constitutional right was denied, and directed the clerk to terminate the identified open motions.