[NOT FOR PUBLICATION–NOT TO BE CITED AS PRECEDENT]
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 99-1795
UNITED STATES,
Appellee,
v.
ALFREDO UGARTE-CASTRO,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Carmen Consuelo Cerezo, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Chief Judge,
Stahl and Lynch, Circuit Judges.
Alfredo Ugarte-Castro on brief pro se.
Guillermo Gil, United States Attorney, Jorge E. Vega-
Pacheco, Assistant United States Attorney, and Nelson Perez
Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.
September 29, 2000
Per Curiam. Appellant Ugarte-Castro appeals a
denial of his motion for a second resentencing under 18
U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2). Appellant now seeks a reduction in his
term of imprisonment under the "safety valve" provision.
See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f). He says that in 1996, when a
lowering of his guidelines' sentencing range eventuated in
his being resentenced to a 188-month term of imprisonment,
his attorneys "should have also moved for a reduction in his
sentence under the safety valve provision." The district
court denied the current motion on the merits of the safety
valve factors.
The district court correctly denied the motion,
although it need not have reached the merits. The court
lacked authority under § 3582(c)(2) to modify the previously
imposed sentence. Appellant did not appeal from the 1996
resentencing judgment. His current motion is not based on
a "subsequently" lowered guidelines range, nor on any of the
other "limited circumstances" which trigger a court's
authority, under § 3582(c), to modify a previously imposed
sentence. United States v. Jordan, 162 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.
1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1105 (1999).
As the government points out, a district court is
vested with the authority to entertain motions to correct a
sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. However, we do not
construe this motion as one brought under § 2255, since it
appears to have been filed well beyond the statute's
limitations period, appellant insists that it was not
intended as a § 2255 petition, and neither the court nor the
parties addressed the complexities of § 2255 below.
For these reasons, we also need not reach the
parties' arguments about the temporal applicability of the
safety valve provision to appellant's sentence or
resentence.
Affirmed.
-3-