In re: Leonard Sapp, No. 16-13338 (11th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePetitioner filed an application seeking an order authorizing the district court to consider a second or successive motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his federal sentence, 28 U.S.C. 2255. Petitioner argues, pursuant to Johnson v. United States, that the mandatory career offender enhancement applied to his sentence, imposed in January 2003, is unconstitutional. In In re Griffin, the court held that its reasoning in United States v. Matchett applied with equal force to the residual clause of the career-offender guideline in the context of the mandatory Guidelines. While the court respectfully disagreed with the holding of Griffin, the court nonetheless was bound by that decision. Consequently, petitioner has not satisfied the statutory criteria for filing a successive section 2255 motion. First, even though the Supreme Court has held in Welch v. United States that Johnson applies retroactively to cases on collateral review, the court's binding precedent holds that Welch does not make Johnson retroactive for purposes of filing a successive section 2255 motion raising a Johnson-based challenge to the Sentencing Guidelines. Furthermore, petitioner cannot make a prima facie showing that Johnson applies to him in light of the court's holding in Griffin that the mandatory Sentencing Guidelines cannot be unconstitutionally vague. Because petitioner has failed to make a prima facie showing of the existence of either of the grounds set forth in section 2255(h), the court denied his application for leave to file a second or successive motion.
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