FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
December 16, 2014
TENTH CIRCUIT
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v. No. 14-8051
(D. Wyoming)
CHRISTOPHER M. TENDERHOLT, (D.C. Nos. 2:14-CV-00068-NDE and
2:04-CR-00059-CAB-1)
Defendant - Appellant.
ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY
Before HARTZ, McKAY, and MATHESON, Circuit Judges.
Defendant Christopher Tenderholt, acting pro se, filed a motion for relief under
28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming. His
single claim (and the only claim raised in this court) was that he was improperly
sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), because
his Montana burglary convictions were not convictions of violent felonies. Although we
rejected that contention on his direct appeal, see United States v. Tenderholt, 149 F.
App’x 805, 810 (10th Cir. 2005), he relies on the recent Supreme Court decision in
Descamps v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (2013), as requiring a different result. The
district court rejected Defendant’s § 2255 motion as untimely, and Defendant now asks
us to issue a certificate of appealability (COA). See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) (requiring a
COA to pursue appeal). We deny a COA and dismiss this appeal.
A COA will issue “only if the applicant has made a substantial showing of the
denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). This standard requires “a
demonstration that . . . includes showing that reasonable jurists could debate whether (or,
for that matter, agree that) the petition should have been resolved in a different manner or
that the issues presented were adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.”
Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other
words, the applicant must show that the district court’s resolution of the claim was either
“debatable or wrong.” Id. If habeas relief was denied on procedural grounds, the COA
applicant must also show “that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the
district court was correct in its procedural ruling.” Id. “Where a plain procedural bar is
present and the district court is correct to invoke it to dispose of the case, a reasonable
jurist could not conclude either that the district court erred in dismissing the petition or
that the petitioner should be allowed to proceed further.” Id.
Defendant filed his § 2255 motion some seven years after his conviction became
final, well after the expiration of the one-year limitations period set forth in 28 U.S.C.
§ 2255(f). He raises two arguments, however, for extending that limitations period. Both
derive from his contention that Descamps established a new right for defendants. First,
he relies on § 2255(f)(3), which restarts the one-year limitations period from “the date on
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which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has
been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases
on collateral review.” 28 U.S.C. §2255(f)(3). Second, he contends that he could not
have raised his present claim before Descamps and thus can invoke the equitable-tolling
doctrine, which protects a § 2255 movant who can establish “(1) that he has been
pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his
way.” Yang v. Archuleta, 525 F.3d 925, 928 (10th Cir. 2008) (footnote and internal
quotation marks omitted).
Both arguments fail because they are based on a false premise. Descamps did not
create a new right, nor was it even, as Defendant asserts, a “reinterpretation of precedent
which corrected mistakes that federal circuits had been making for years,” Aplt. Br. at 3.
There was no impediment to Defendant’s raising his present arguments before that
decision was handed down. The purpose of Descamps was not to make new law but to
correct the Ninth Circuit’s misunderstanding of prior opinions. The Court began its
discussion of the issue before it by stating that its “caselaw . . . all but resolves this case.”
Descamps, 133 S. Ct. at 2283; see United States v. Trent, 767 F.3d 1046, 1055 (10th Cir.
2014) (the Descamps Court “did not . . . suggest in any way that it was retreating from its
application of [the modified categorical] approach in previous cases”).
No reasonable jurist could conclude either that the district court erred in denying
Defendant’s § 2255 motion or that Defendant should be allowed to proceed further. See
Slack, 529 U.S. at 484.
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We DENY the application for a COA and DISMISS the appeal.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Harris L Hartz
Circuit Judge
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