UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-6352
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
ROBERT JAMES DAWKINS,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, at Alexandria. Claude M. Hilton, Senior
District Judge. (1:07-cr-00224-CMH-1)
Submitted: August 16, 2011 Decided: August 19, 2011
Before WILKINSON, DAVIS, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Bruce A. Johnson, Jr., Bowie, Maryland, for Appellant. Neil H.
MacBride, United States Attorney, Gregory P. Bailey, Special
Assistant United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Robert James Dawkins appeals the district court’s
order denying his motion to withdraw his guilty plea due to
ineffective assistance of counsel. Finding no reversible error,
we affirm.
We review the denial of a motion to withdraw a guilty
plea for abuse of discretion. United States v. Ubakanma, 215
F.3d 421, 424 (4th Cir. 2000). Although a defendant may seek to
withdraw his guilty plea prior to sentencing, pursuant to Fed.
R. Crim. P. 11(e), “[a]fter the court imposes sentence, the
defendant may not withdraw a plea of guilty . . . , and the plea
may be set aside only on direct appeal or collateral attack.”
See Puello v. Bureau of Citizenship & Immigration Servs., 511
F.3d 324, 330 (2d Cir. 2007); United States v. Reyes-Contreras,
349 F.3d 524, 525 (8th Cir. 2003) (per curiam).
Dawkins pled guilty to filing false claims and was
sentenced in June 2007. He did not move to withdraw his guilty
plea until October 2010, over three years after sentencing.
Thus, we hold that the district court did not abuse its
discretion in denying Dawkins’s motion as untimely filed. *
*
Dawkins also argues that he is entitled to equitable
tolling of the 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (West Supp. 2011) statute of
limitations, appearing to believe that the district court
construed his motion as a § 2255 motion and denied it
accordingly. Because the district court made no such
(Continued)
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Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order and
deny Dawkins's motion for a certificate of appealability. We
dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before
this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
construction, the applicability of equitable tolling is not at
issue in this appeal. Likewise, no certificate of appealability
need issue.
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