Rivera v. United States

Background

Jesus Rivera pleaded guilty on August 26, 2015, to aiding and abetting murder with a firearm in connection with an armed narcotics robbery. The court sentenced him on January 7, 2016, to 270 months of imprisonment followed by five years of supervised release. The Second Circuit affirmed his conviction and sentence in 2017.

Rivera later filed several motions under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, a procedure allowing a federal prisoner to challenge a conviction or sentence. The district court consolidated his counseled and self-represented motions, granted two motions to amend, and denied the consolidated § 2255 motion on April 27, 2021. Rivera appealed that order on May 12, 2021. He also filed a motion under Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure asking the district court to alter or amend the order; the court denied that motion on June 15, 2021.

Rivera’s current filing, dated June 7, 2021, sought to add two grounds to his § 2255 motion. The court treated the filing date as the date Rivera gave the document to prison staff under the prisoner-mailbox rule. Rivera’s counsel later withdrew, and the court ordered the United States to respond. The Second Circuit stayed Rivera’s appeal while the district court addressed this motion.

Jurisdiction

The court held that Rivera’s notice of appeal transferred jurisdiction over the original § 2255 motion to the Second Circuit. Although a timely Rule 59(e) motion can temporarily prevent a notice of appeal from becoming effective, the district court’s jurisdiction lasted only until it denied Rivera’s Rule 59(e) motion on June 15, 2021. Rivera’s notice of appeal then became effective.

The court further held that Rivera’s June 7 filing could not preserve district-court jurisdiction by being treated as a Rule 59(e) or Rule 60(b) motion. A Rule 59(e) motion must be filed within 28 days of the challenged ruling, and the filing was 41 days after the April 27 order. The court also stated that the filing did not meet the timing requirements that would allow a Rule 60(b) motion to delay the effectiveness of the appeal. Because the appeal was effective, the district court lacked jurisdiction to grant leave to amend the § 2255 motion.

Indicative ruling and proposed grounds

Rule 62.1 permits a district court that lacks authority to grant relief because an appeal is pending to defer consideration, deny the motion, or state that it would grant the motion if the appellate court remanded the matter or that the motion raises a substantial issue. The court chose to deny Rivera’s motion rather than defer it.

The court also concluded that the proposed amendment was groundless. Rivera’s first proposed ground asserted that trial counsel was ineffective for advising him to plead guilty instead of relying on his 2001 plea agreement. The court found that the earlier agreement covered telephone calls concerning the operation of a narcotics conspiracy, not the later conduct involving aiding and abetting murder during an armed narcotics robbery. Therefore, the court said the earlier agreement did not bar the later prosecution.

Rivera’s second proposed ground asserted that his participation in an unspecified reverse-proffer session without counsel was automatically a violation of the Sixth Amendment. The court rejected that argument because Rivera did not show that the session occurred after adversary proceedings began for the offense involved in his sentence. The court also said that, even if the argument were considered under the Fifth Amendment, Rivera did not show that he had invoked a right to counsel or identify any self-incriminating statements made during the meeting.

Disposition

Judge Kimba M. Wood denied Rivera’s motion to amend and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion at ECF No. 123. The opinion addressed whether Rivera could add grounds to his already-denied § 2255 motion; it did not grant the requested amendment.