United States Fourth Circuit

Petitioner's motion for authorization to file a successive habeas corpus motion to challenge his life sentence without parole for conspiracy to traffic in controlled substances is denied, where: 1) even assuming that petitioner qualifies as a juvenile offender, his proposed motion would necessarily rely on a right that became available to him in 2010 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), which held that sentencing a juvenile who did not commit a homicide to life imprisonment without parole violates the Eighth Amendment, and not on Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012), which extended the Graham rule to prohibit mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of committing homicide; and 2) because Graham was decided more than one year before petitioner filed this motion, the successive habeas motion he seeks leave to file would be barred by the applicable 1-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. section 2255(f)(3).

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/06/2014
• Published 05/06/2014

Judges

• NIEMEYER

Court

• United States Fourth Circuit

Counsel