[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________ FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
No. 10-13084 ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
MARCH 21, 2012
Non-Argument Calendar
JOHN LEY
________________________
CLERK
D. C. Docket No. 8:04-cr-00434-RAL-TBM-2
HAROLD WILLIAMS,
Petitioner-Appellant,
versus
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Respondent-Appellee.
_________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
_________________________________________
(March 21, 2012)
Before EDMONDSON, MARTIN, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Harold Williams appeals the district court’s denial of his pro se post-
conviction motion, which the district court construed as a time-barred 28 U.S.C. §
2255 motion to vacate. The district court issued a certificate of appealability
(“COA”) on whether it failed to provide Williams with the notice and warning
mandated by Castro v. United States, 124 S.Ct. 786 (2003). No reversible error
has been shown; we affirm.
Under Castro, a district court cannot recharacterize a pro se litigant’s motion
as an initial section 2255 motion without first (1) notifying the litigant that it
intends to recharacterize the motion; (2) warning the litigant that this
recharacterization means that later section 2255 motions would be subject to the
restrictions on second or successive section 2255 motions; and (3) giving the
litigant the opportunity to withdraw the motion or to amend it to include all of the
litigant’s claims. Castro, 124 S.Ct. at 792. “If the court fails to do so, the motion
cannot be considered to have become a § 2255 motion for purposes of applying to
later motions the law’s ‘second or successive’ restrictions.” Id. The requirements
of Castro apply even when the district court denies a recharacterized section 2255
motion as untimely. Gooden v. United States, 627 F.3d 846, 849 (11th Cir. 2010).
That the district court failed to give Williams the notice and warning
required by Castro is undisputed. Williams’s remedy for this error is that -- should
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he file a later section 2255 motion -- it cannot be barred as second or successive
based on the instant recharacterized motion. See Castro, 124 S.Ct. at 792. But
because no other remedy, including remand, is available to address the district
court’s error, we affirm.*
AFFIRMED.
*
Our review is limited to those issues specified in the COA. Murray v. United States, 145
F.3d 1249, 1250-51 (11th Cir. 1998). Thus, we will not consider Williams’s arguments about the
substantive merits of his post-conviction motion.
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