United States v. Cardenas, No. 18-40790 (5th Cir. 2021)
Annotate this CaseThe Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. 2255 because the motion was time-barred by the one-year limitations period in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The court concluded that defendant is not entitled to equitable tolling or recharacterization on his pro se filings. The court found United States v. Riggs, 314 F.3d 796, 799 (5th Cir. 2002), controlling where the record showed that defendant's counsel erroneously told defendant that he had not missed the deadline. Furthermore, even if defendant were entitled to have his pro se Johnson motion recharacterized as a section 2255 motion, his current arguments alleging prosecutorial conflict of interest do not relate back to his Johnson filing under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c).
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