Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals - Published Opinions

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Pearson: District Court Lacked Jurisdiction Over an Unauthorized Collateral Challenge at a Re-sentencing


In United States v. Pearson, No. 17-14619 (Oct. 15, 2019) (Tjoflat, Newsom, Antoon), the Court upheld a new sentence imposed after the the court vacated the defendant's ACCA enhancement in a successive 2255 motion based on Johnson.

At the re-sentencing hearing, the defendant collaterally challenged several of his 924(c) counts, alleging that the indictment  did not allege every element of the offense.  The Eleventh Circuit concluded that this challenge was procedurally improper because the defendant had not received authorization to raise that claim in a second or successive 2255 motion.  Therefore, the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider it.  The Court also upheld as substantively reasonable the new lower 447-month sentence, which was the result of a low-end guideline range sentence for some counts, followed by 384 months based on 924(c) counts.