United States v. McGaughy, No. 11-2030 (10th Cir. 2012)
Annotate this Case
Appellant Michael McGaughy pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute marijuana, and the district court sentenced him to 46 months' imprisonment. Months later, Appellant filed a "2255" motion alleging ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing and asked for resentencing. The district court conferred informally with the parties, and the government agreed to re-sentencing. At re-sentencing, the district court again sentenced Appellant to 46 months' imprisonment, and dismissed the 2255 motion as moot. Appellant then filed another motion to correct sentence under both Rule 35(a) and 2255, this time arguing that at re-sentencing the government presented materially false information regarding his efforts to cooperate with the government before pleading guilty. The district court denied the motion. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit found that the re-sentencing raised three related issues: (1) whether the court retained jurisdiction to re-sentence Appellant under 2255 because it never granted the petition (instead dismissing it as moot after re-sentencing); (2) whether the district court had subject-matter jurisdiction to rule on Appellant's Rule 35(a) claim after the Rule’s 14-day time limit lapsed; (3) whether the district court properly denied Appellant's second 2255 claim. The Court concluded the district court had jurisdiction to re-sentence Appellant, but that his challenge to his re-sentencing was untimely because Rule 35’s 14-day time limitation is jurisdictional. Therefore, the Court affirmed the denial of Appellant's 2255 claim, vacated the denial of his Rule 35(a) claim and remanded the case for the district court to dismiss the Rule 35(a) claim for lack of jurisdiction.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.