Opinion
2:22-cv-361
08-02-2022
IRA WILLIE GENTRY, JR., Petitioner, v. JEFFERY H. ROSENLUND, Defendant.
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER DENYING [10] MOTION TO RECONSIDER
David Barlow, United States District Judge
This matter is before the court on Petitioner Ira Gentry Jr.'s motion asking the court to reconsider its July 11, 2022, ruling denying his motion for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. Gentry's motion was denied because he failed to establish that relief under § 2241 was appropriate by showing that 28 U.S.C. § 2255 provided an inadequate or ineffective mechanism for seeking relief.
ECF No. 10, filed July 21, 2022.
ECF No. 9.
Id. at 2-3.
“Grounds warranting a motion to reconsider include (1) an intervening change in the controlling law, (2) new evidence previously unavailable, and (3) the need to correct clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” In seeking reconsideration here, Gentry essentially argues that the court's ruling was clearly erroneous by raising the same arguments he made in his original petition as to why relief under § 2255 is inadequate or ineffective. Specifically, he argues that the statute-of-limitations based claims he seeks to bring under § 2241 were raised on direct appeal and in a prior § 2255 motion but were never actually addressed by the courts who heard them.
Servants of Paraclete v. Does, 204 F.3d 1005, 1012 (10th Cir. 2000).
See ECF Nos. 4 at 5; 9 at 2-4.
However, Gentry's reassertion of these arguments does not convince the court that its ruling was clearly erroneous or manifestly unjust. Even if the courts that heard Gentry's direct appeal and previous § 2255 motion failed to address his statute-of-limitations based claims, that does not mean that § 2255 provides an ineffective or inadequate mechanism to test the merits of those claims. The Tenth Circuit has made it clear that § 2255's savings clause-which provides the basis for motions to be brought under § 2241 when a § 2255 motion is inadequate or ineffective-“concerns the adequacy of § 2255 itself, not the adequacy of another court's response to a particular § 2255 petition.” Thus, the test for determining whether a § 2241 motion is appropriate is and always has been whether the arguments made in that motion could have been tested in an initial § 2255 motion. If the answer is yes, then relief under § 2241 is unavailable.
See Barnett v. Maye, 602 Fed. App'x 717, 719 (10th Cir. 2015) (unpublished) (finding that the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the petitioner's motion under § 2241 even if “the district and appellate courts that heard his initial § 2255 petition failed either to consider or rule on several claims he presented in that petition”); see also Prost v. Anderson, 636 F.3d 578, 585 (10th Cir. 2011) (“[A]n ‘erroneous decision on a § 2255 motion doesn't suffice to render the § 2255 remedy itself inadequate or ineffective.”).
Barnett, 602 Fed. App'x at 719; see also Prost, 636 F.3d at 590 (“[T]he plain language of the savings clause does not authorize resort to § 2241 simply because a court errs in rejecting a good argument.”).
Barnett, 602 Fed. App'x at 719; Prost, 636 F.3d at 584 (“The relevant metric or measure, we hold, is whether a petitioner's argument challenging the legality of his detention could have been tested in an initial § 2255 motion.”).
Here, Gentry argues only that two courts-the Ninth Circuit in 2009 on direct appeal and the District of Arizona in 2013 under § 2255-previously erred by failing to address his meritorious statute of limitations arguments. Under Tenth Circuit case law, this is simply not enough to show that § 2255 provides an inadequate or ineffective mechanism for testing the merits of those arguments. Because § 2255 remains the proper mechanism for Gentry to assert his claims, relief under § 2241 is unavailable.
ECF No. 4, 2-4.
See Barnett, 602 Fed. App'x at 719-20; Prost, 636 F.3d at 590.
While the foregoing is dispositive, the court further notes that this action comes 16 years after the underlying convictions, 13 years after the direct appeal, and 9 years after the § 2255 action. As both the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court have stated, the “principle of finality, the idea that as some point a criminal conviction reaches an end, a conclusion, a termination, ‘is essential to the operation of our criminal justice system.'” Prost, 636 F.3d at 582-83.
ORDER
For the foregoing reasons, Gentry's motion for reconsideration is DENIED.
ECF No. 10.