UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 06-6048
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
ADRIAN MAURICE HUDGINS,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Beckley. Joseph Robert Goodwin,
District Judge. (CR-96-181; CA-03-221-5)
Submitted: June 28, 2006 Decided: September 25, 2006
Before WILLIAMS, MICHAEL, and KING, Circuit Judges.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Adrian Maurice Hudgins, Appellant Pro Se. Charles T. Miller,
United States Attorney, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
See Local Rule 36(c).
PER CURIAM:
Adrian Maurice Hudgins appeals the district court’s order
accepting the recommendation of the magistrate judge, which
construed a letter that Hudgins sent to the court as a 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255 (2000) motion, and dismissing the § 2255 motion.
In 1997, Hudgins was convicted in the Southern District
of West Virginia for possession of contraband (marijuana) in
prison. The district court sentenced him to a twenty-one-month
term of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised
release, and imposed a $500 fine. The court also imposed a $100
assessment fee. On March 3, 2003, Hudgins sent a letter to the
district court, claiming that the court improperly delegated the
timing and amount of payments to the Bureau of Prisons in violation
of United States v. Miller, 77 F.3d 71 (4th Cir. 1996).
Because a § 2255 motion may not be used for the sole
purpose of challenging fines or restitution orders, we conclude
that the district court should have treated Hudgins’s claim as a
habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 (2000). See United
States v. Bernard, 351 F.3d 360, 361 (8th Cir. 2003) (collecting
cases). A § 2241 petition, however, must be brought in the
district of incarceration, 28 U.S.C. § 2241(a); In re: Jones, 226
F.3d 328, 332 (4th Cir. 2000), and Hudgins is incarcerated at the
Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. The
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district court therefore does not have jurisdiction over this
§ 2241 proceeding.
We vacate the district court’s order and remand for the
court to determine whether transferring Hudgins’s § 2241 petition
to the proper federal district court would serve the interests of
justice, see 28 U.S.C. § 1631 (2000), or whether the action would
be more appropriately dismissed without prejudice to Hudgins’s
right to file his action in the appropriate district court. We
dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions
are adequately presented in the materials before the court and
argument would not aid the decisional process.
VACATED AND REMANDED
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