Smith v. United States, No. 17-3201 (8th Cir. 2019)
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The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion. The court held that there was no error in applying the concurrent sentence doctrine and the district court did not abuse its discretion in not ordering a complete resentencing. In this case, petitioner's career offender sentence on possession of cocaine with intent to distribute was still valid under Beckles v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 886 (2017).
The court also held that appellate counsel did not provide constitutionally ineffective assistance by failing to inform this court on direct appeal that petitioner's sentence might be affected by the Supreme Court’s impending decision in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). The court reasoned that the failure of counsel to anticipate a rule of law that has yet to be articulated did not render counsel's performance professionally unreasonable.
Court Description: Loken, Author, with Colloton and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Prisoner case - Habeas. The district court properly applied the concurrent sentence doctrine to find that while Smith was entitled to relief on his ACCA felon-in-possession sentence, his career offender sentence on possession of cocaine with intent to distribute was still valid under Beckles; as the sentences on the two charges was the same length, no reduction of Smith's sentence was required; Smith was not entitled to a full resentencing under the sentencing package doctrine; claim that appellate counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to inform this court on direct appeal that Smith's sentence might be affected by the Supreme Court's impending decision in Johnson rejected. Judge Kelly, dissenting.
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