Bey v. United States

                                                                        F I L E D
                                                                  United States Court of Appeals
                                                                          Tenth Circuit

                                                                         MAR 1 2005
                                    PUBLISH

                        UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS              PATRICK FISHER
                                                                               Clerk
                                TENTH CIRCUIT



 NEWTON BEY,

          Petitioner,
                                                       No. 05-3051
 v.
                                                   (94-CR-20075-KHV)
                                                        (D. Kan.)
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

          Respondent.


                                     ORDER


Submitted on the briefs: *

Newton O. Bey, Petitioner, Pro Se



Before KELLY, LUCERO, and O’BRIEN, Circuit Judges.


LUCERO, Circuit Judge.


      Newton Bey, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, seeks authorization to

file a second or successive 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or



      *
       The case is unanimously ordered submitted without oral argument
pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 34(f) and 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G).
correct his sentence. He contends that his sentence entered pursuant to the then-

mandatory United States Sentencing Guidelines is unconstitutional under Blakely

v. Washington, 124 S.Ct. 2531 (2004), and United States v. Booker, 125 S.Ct. 738

(2005).

      After accepting Bey’s guilty plea to one count of using and carrying a

weapon during the commission of a drug trafficking offense and one count of

distribution of cocaine, the district court applied a three-level enhancement for his

supervisory role in the offense and sentenced him to 60 months’ incarceration on

the firearm count and 135 months on the distribution count. Bey filed a § 2255

motion claiming ineffective assistance of counsel, which the district court denied.

Bey then filed a Rule 60(b) motion. His motion having been denied, Bey

appealed. On appeal, this court treated his Rule 60(b) motion as an unauthorized

second or successive habeas petition, vacated the district court order, and denied

authorization. United States v. Bey, No. 04-3139, 2004 WL 2595967 (10th Cir.

Nov. 16, 2004) (unpublished)

      In the motion presently before us, Bey argues that the sentencing court

violated his Sixth Amendment rights by finding by a preponderance of the

evidence that Bey exercised a supervisory role and by then applying a three-level

enhancement to his base offense level under the mandatory Guidelines regime.

Specifically, he argues that his sentence was imposed in contravention of his right


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to have “[a]ny fact (other than a prior conviction) which is necessary to support a

sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the facts established by a plea of

guilty or a jury verdict . . . be admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury

beyond a reasonable doubt.” Booker, 125 S.Ct. at 756.

      Bey may not raise this claim in a second or successive § 2255 motion

unless he can show that his claim is based on a “new rule of constitutional law,

made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was

previously unavailable.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255. 1 In Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656

(2001), the Supreme Court held that a “new rule becomes retroactive, not by the

decisions of the lower court or by the combined action of the Supreme Court and

the lower courts, but simply by the action of the Supreme Court.” Id. at 663.

Therefore, a holding by this court that a new rule of constitutional law satisfies

the requirements for retroactive application to initial habeas petitions as

announced in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), does not suffice to make that

rule retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review for purposes of



      1
        We may also authorize Bey to file a second or successive § 2255 motion if
he demonstrates that “the factual predicate for the claim could not have been
discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence,” and that “the facts
underlying the claim, if proven and viewed in the light of the evidence as a whole,
would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for
constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant
guilty of the underlying offense.” 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2). Bey does not contend
that he has discovered new facts in support of a claim for habeas relief.

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authorizing a second or successive § 2255 motion or a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition.

Moreover, a new rule is made retroactive to cases on collateral review only when

the Supreme Court explicitly holds that the rule it announced applies retroactively

to such cases. Cain, 533 U.S. at 663. The Court noted that its “interpretation is

necessary for the proper implementation of the collateral review structure created

by AEDPA” because courts of appeals should not “engage in the difficult legal

analysis that can be required to determine questions of retroactivity in the first

instance.” Id. at 664.

      Applying these principles, we have previously concluded that Blakely was

not to be applied retroactively to second or successive § 2255 motions. Leonard

v. United States, 383 F.3d 1146 (10th Cir. 2004). Because we ruled that Blakely

was merely an extension of the rule that the Court announced in Apprendi v. New

Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and because “[t]he Supreme Court has not expressly

held that the rule announced in Blakely is . . . retroactive to cases on collateral

review for purposes of granting a second or successive § 2255 motion,” we denied

the petitioner authorization to challenge his sentence under Blakely in a second or

successive habeas petition. Leonard, 383 F.3d at 1148. Indeed, we have not only

held that Apprendi itself is not retroactively applicable to successive habeas

petitions, Browning v. United States, 241 F.3d 1262, 1265 (10th Cir. 2001), but

we have also held that it is not applicable to initial habeas petitions because it


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merely “clarifies that certain questions that were previously thought to be

properly determined by the court must now be proved to a jury beyond a

reasonable doubt.” United States v. Mora, 293 F.3d 1213, 1219 (10th Cir. 2002).

      The Booker Court expressly applied its holding only to cases on direct

review. Booker, 125 S.Ct at 769 (“we must apply today's holdings – both the

Sixth Amendment holding and our remedial interpretation of the Sentencing Act –

to all cases on direct review.”). Although the Court described its constitutional

holding as creating a “fundamental change,” id. at 758, that characterization is not

relevant to whether prisoners may challenge their federal sentences under Booker

in a second or successive § 2255 motion. The Court decided Booker on direct

appeal and did not expressly declare, nor has it since declared, that Booker should

be applied retroactively to cases on collateral review. We will not presume to do

so for the Court.

      Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s holding in Cain, we must conclude that

under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), Pub. L. No.

104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, Booker may not be applied retroactively to second or

successive habeas petitions. Accordingly, authorization is DENIED. This order

is not subject to a petition for rehearing or a writ of certiorari. See 28 U.S.C.

§ 2244(b)(3)(E). The matter is DISMISSED.




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