McCall: Summary denial of SOS for Guidelines applicant

In In re: Datrist McCall, No. 16-12972-J ((June 17, 2016), in a one-paragraph order, the Court denied an application for file a second or successive § 2255 motion to a defendant sentenced under the Sentencing Guidelines. [Judge Martin, concurring, noted that, unlike the Eleventh Circuit, all eleven of the other courts of appeals have either held or assumed that Johnson makes the residual clause of the career offender Guideline unconstitutionally vague. A grant of McCall’s application “would give him a shot at the relief he could have pursued had he been sentenced anywhere but in the Eleventh Circuit.” Judge Martin noted that the Eleventh Circuit had denied “hundreds” of applications by scrutinizing whether the applicant would prevail on the merits, reaching whether a defendant committed every crime listed in his presentence investigation report in the manner alleged in that report, or even deciding questions of first impression about how a state’s courts interpret the elements of its own criminal statute – without input from a lawyer. Judge Martin pointed out that other courts are not scrutinizing the merits of these cases at this stage. “If even a single one of those orders are mistaken, then a prisoner has been doomed to serve an unlawful prison sentence, without possibility of further review.” ].