Scott v. United States

Background

O’Neil Scott filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 challenging his federal sentence. He raised two principal arguments: that his lawyers provided ineffective assistance by failing to file a notice of appeal after he instructed them to do so, and that the court should credit time he spent in custody between 2016 and 2019 toward his sentence for the 2014 robberies.

Scott had previously received a sentence for a 2010 robbery. While serving that sentence, he was charged in connection with robberies committed in 2014. He pleaded guilty to a robbery conspiracy and a kidnapping conspiracy and received sentences that ran concurrently with each other but consecutively to the sentence for the 2010 robbery. His plea agreement included an appeal waiver. The judgment was entered on March 18, 2019, and no appeal was filed within 14 days.

Scott contacted his lawyers within the appeal period and asked them to file a notice of appeal. In an email, he stated that he wanted to challenge the judge’s decision concerning his custody time. One lawyer responded that another lawyer would handle the matter but said they were outside the appeal period. The lawyers did not file a notice of appeal.

Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

The court applied the two-part test for ineffective assistance of counsel: whether the lawyer’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and whether the error caused prejudice. The court found that Scott clearly and explicitly instructed his lawyers to file a notice of appeal within the required period. Because counsel understood that instruction but did not file the notice, the court found that counsel’s performance was professionally unreasonable.

The court also found that prejudice could be presumed because counsel’s failure caused Scott to lose the appeal proceeding itself. That presumption applied even though Scott had signed a plea agreement waiving his right to appeal. The court therefore granted Scott’s ineffective-assistance petition and requested that the Clerk of Court vacate and re-enter the original judgment so Scott, his defense counsel, or the Clerk at Scott’s request could file an appeal. The court stated that this ruling did not assess whether Scott had any meritorious arguments on appeal.

Request for Credit Based on Related Conduct

Scott argued that the conduct underlying the 2010 robbery conviction was related to the 2014 robberies and that he should receive credit for time spent in custody from 2016 to 2019. The court rejected that argument. It found that the robberies involved different schemes, occurred more than three years apart, and involved different participants. The court also explained that the 2016 superseding information replaced the original 2016 indictment; it did not add conduct to the earlier case involving the 2010 robbery.

Because the court found that the 2010 robbery was not relevant conduct to the 2014 robberies, it concluded that Scott was not entitled to credit for the requested time toward the later sentence. The court noted that it had considered whether to make the sentences concurrent at the original sentencing and had instead imposed the 2014 sentence consecutively. Scott’s request for this credit was denied.

Request Under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b)

Scott separately sought credit under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b) for time spent in official detention before sentencing. The court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to decide that request. According to the opinion, the Bureau of Prisons—not the sentencing court—determines sentence computations and prior-custody credit. A challenge to that calculation must generally be brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the federal district where the prisoner is incarcerated, after exhausting the Bureau of Prisons’ administrative remedies.

The court found that Scott had not shown that he exhausted those administrative remedies and stated that the proper district for such a challenge would be the Northern District of New York. The court nevertheless added that, even if it had jurisdiction, the request would fail on the merits because the custody time had already been credited toward Scott’s sentence for the 2010 robbery and could not also be credited toward the 2014 robbery sentence. The court denied the § 3585(b) petition and requested that a copy of the opinion be mailed to Scott and that the case be terminated.