Taboada v. United States
- Lewis Liman
- 1:22-cv-08141
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Taboada v. United States, Judge Liman denied reconsideration because Taboada had waived his challenge to his sentence.
Ricardo Taboada’s effort to challenge his federal sentence was denied; the United States was the opposing party.
What happened
In Taboada v. United States, Ricardo Taboada asked the court to reconsider its earlier refusal to review his challenge to how his fraud sentence was calculated. He argued that the court should have used the victim’s actual loss rather than the intended loss.
The court did not decide whether actual loss should control. It explained that Taboada had agreed not to challenge his sentence through a motion under Section 2255, a federal law allowing certain attacks on a sentence. The court also rejected his argument that it had improperly treated his earlier filing as a Section 2255 motion.
Judge Liman denied Taboada’s motion for reconsideration and directed the clerk to close the related docket entries. The earlier ruling therefore remained in place.
The detailed version
- Taboada v. United States · No. 1:22-cv-08141
- Lewis Liman
- May 22, 2023
Background
Ricardo Taboada moved for reconsideration of the court’s February 13, 2023 order. That earlier order treated his petition for a writ of audita querela—an older form of request for relief from a judgment—as a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which permits a federal prisoner to challenge a sentence in limited circumstances, and denied the motion without issuing a certificate of appealability.
Taboada had argued that the sentencing court incorrectly calculated his Sentencing Guidelines range by using the intended loss from the fraud rather than the actual loss. The court’s earlier order held that Taboada had waived his right to bring a Section 2255 challenge and that binding Second Circuit precedent required using the greater of the actual or intended loss when calculating the Guidelines range.
Reconsideration standard
The court stated that reconsideration is available only when the moving party identifies an intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, or a need to correct clear error or prevent manifest injustice. The standard is strict and generally requires the party to identify controlling decisions or information the court overlooked that could reasonably change the result.
Court’s analysis
Taboada relied on a Third Circuit decision holding that the Sentencing Guidelines should use actual loss rather than intended loss. The court said it did not need to decide whether that reasoning should apply because Taboada had not argued that the court was wrong to hold that he waived his right to challenge his sentence under Section 2255.
The court held that it could not relieve Taboada on its own from his agreement not to bring such a challenge. It stated that knowing and voluntary waivers of Section 2255 rights are generally enforceable and that, regardless of whether the Third Circuit decision was correct or whether the court might agree that loss should be limited to actual loss, Taboada had waived the right to make that argument after the judgment became final.
The court also reaffirmed that there was no merit to Taboada’s argument that it improperly treated his petition for a writ of audita querela as a Section 2255 motion.
Disposition
The court denied Taboada’s motion for reconsideration. It directed the clerk to close the specified docket entries in the civil and criminal cases.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.