Opinion
Civil Action 2:21-1614
12-28-2021
WILLIAM F. KAETZ, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and WARDEN OF NEOCC, Respondents.
Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
PATRICIA L. DODGE, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
Pending before the Court is the Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus filed by William F. Kaetz (ECF 8), which he recently amended (ECF 10, 11). For the reasons set forth below, it is recommended that the Court summarily dismiss this habeas case without service.
The Court has a pre-service duty to screen and dismiss petitions filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 when it plainly appears that the petitioner is not entitled to relief. See 28 U.S.C. § 2243. See also Rule 4 of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases (which also applies to § 2241 cases).
I. Discussion
Kaetz is well known to the Court. On August 2, 2021, in his criminal case at United States v. Kaetz, No. 21-cr-211 (W.D. Pa.), he pleaded guilty to Count 3 of the Indictment (making restricted personal information publicly available in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 119(a)(1) and (2)). The Court entered a Judgment that same day. It committed Kaetz to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) and sentenced him to a term of sixteen months of imprisonment, with credit for time served on any federal detainer, to be followed by a three-year term of supervised release. In the section of the Judgment setting forth the term of imprisonment, the Court recommended that the BOP transfer Kaetz “to the Essex County Correctional Facility, or somewhere as close to Paramus, NJ, as possible (whether correctional facility or halfway house).” In the section setting forth the additional supervised release terms, the Court instructed that Kaetz “shall be placed on home detention for a period of 180 days, to commence as soon as arrangements can be made by the Probation Office.” (See ECF 116 in 2:21-cr-211.)
The U.S. Marshal Service then transported Kaetz to the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center (commonly known as “NEOCC”), located in Youngstown, Ohio. As explained in a joint status report filed on October 29, 2021 in his criminal case, the BOP determined that Kaetz's term of imprisonment would expire on December 6, 2021. Because he did not have that much longer to serve on that term, the BOP did not designate him to another facility and he remained at NEOCC to serve the remainder of his sentence there.
Kaetz believes that under the plea agreement, the Court's Judgment and 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c), he should have been placed on home detention as early as August 18, 2021. In November 2021, Kaetz commenced this federal habeas under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. As relief, he sought an order from the Court directing that he be immediately transferred to home detention. (ECF 8 at 36.) Because Kaetz did not pay the required $5.00 filing fee or move for leave to proceed in forma pauperis, the Court issued the standard deficiency order administratively closing this habeas case and instructing Kaetz that his Petition would not be processed further until he did one of those two things. (ECF 3.)
Section 3624(c) of Title 18, as amended by the Second Chance Act of 2007, Pub. L. No. 110-199, 122 Stat. 657 (April 9, 2008), governs the time the BOP can, in its discretion, “prerelease” inmates to a Residential Reentry Center (“RRC”) (formerly known as a halfway house or community correction centers) or home confinement as they approach the end of their sentences.
On or around December 6, 2021, Kaetz completed service of his term of imprisonment and he was released from NEOCC. He is now serving his term of supervised release and is presently on home detention at his residence in Paramus, New Jersey.
A few days after his release from NEOCC, Kaetz paid the filing fee in this habeas case. Therefore, this case was reopened and his Petition (ECF 8) was docketed. Kaetz then filed several amendments to his Petition. (ECF 10, 11.) He asserts that the Government breached the plea agreement and argues that “[n]o matter how artfully worded, Home Detention only can be imposed as a ‘substitution' for imprisonment time, not more imprisonment time disguised as ‘supervised release conditions[.]'” (ECF 11 at 9.) Kaetz also claims that Attorney Douglas Sughrue, his attorney in his criminal case, provided him with deficient representation because he did not move for specific performance of the plea agreement or request that Kaetz be permitted to withdraw his guilty plea.
II. Discussion
“Two federal statutes, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2241 & 2255, confer federal jurisdiction over habeas petitions filed by federal inmates.” Cardona v. Bledsoe, 681 F.3d 533, 535 (3d Cir. 2012). A § 2255 motion, which a petitioner must file with the court that sentenced him, “is the presumptive means by which federal prisoners challenge their convictions or sentences that are allegedly in violation of the Constitution.” Okereke v. United States, 307 F.3d 117, 120 (3d Cir. 2002); Bruce v. Warden Lewisburg USP, 868 F.3d 170, 178 (3d Cir. 2017) (“[A] federal prisoner's first (and most often only) route for collateral review of his conviction or sentence is under § 2255.”) In contrast to § 2255, § 2241 “confers habeas jurisdiction to hear the petition of a federal prisoner who is challenging not the validity but the execution of his sentence.” Cardona, 681 F.3d at 535 (emphasis added); Woodall v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 432 F.3d 235, 243 (3d Cir. 2005) (defining “execution of” the sentence to mean “‘put into effect' or ‘carry out.'”).
A § 2241 petition must be filed in the district in which the petitioner is confined. See, e.g., Bruce, 868 F.3d at 178. Kaetz contends that he correctly filed his § 2241 petition with this Court for the same reason that his criminal case was transferred here (because of the conflict between him and the judges of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey).
This means that, except for the very limited circumstances discussed below, a federal prisoner incarcerated within the Third Circuit can litigate only two types of claims in a § 2241 habeas proceeding. The first type of claim is one that challenges conduct by the BOP that affects the duration of the prisoner's custody. For example, a prisoner can challenge in a § 2241 habeas proceeding the manner in which the BOP is computing his federal sentence, see, e.g., Barden v. Keohane, 921 F.2d 476, 478-79 (3d Cir. 1990), or the constitutionality of a BOP disciplinary action that resulted in the loss of good conduct sentencing credits, see, e.g., Queen v. Miner, 530 F.3d 253, 254 n.2 (3d Cir. 2008). The second type of claim is one that challenges BOP conduct that the prisoner contends “conflict[s] with express statements in the applicable sentencing judgment.” Cardona, 681 F.3d at 536; McGee v. Martinez, 627 F.3d 933, 935-37 (3d Cir. 2010); Woodall, 432 F.3d at 243 .
To obtain federal habeas relief under § 2241, a federal prisoner ordinarily must first have exhausted the BOP's administrative remedy procedure. See Sutton v. Moser, No. 2:19-cv-210, 2019 WL 2743959, at *3 (W.D. Pa. July 1, 2019) (explaining the exhaustion requirement and when a habeas court may excuse it on futility grounds.) Kaetz asserts that he should be excused from the exhaustion requirement. The Court need not address the issue because, as discussed below, any cognizable § 2241 claim Kaetz raised in his Petition is moot since he has completed his term of imprisonment and is now serving his term of supervised release.
Importantly, § 2255 expressly prohibits a court from entertaining a § 2241 petition filed by a federal prisoner who is raising the type of claim that must be raised in a § 2255 motion unless it “appears that the remedy by [§ 2255 motion] is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). This provision of § 2255 is commonly referred to as the “savings clause.” See, e.g., Bruce, 868 F.3d at 174, 178-79. Under the law of the Third Circuit, as first announced in In re Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d 245 (3d Cir. 1997), a case falls within the “savings clause” only in the rare circumstance where the petitioner is asserting that: (1) he is actually innocent because a new precedential case interpreting the federal statute under which he was convicted negates criminal liability for his conduct; and (2) he is “otherwise barred from challenging the legality of the conviction under § 2255.” Bruce, 868 F.3d at 180 (quoting United States v. Tyler, 732 F.3d 241, 246 (3d Cir. 2013) and citing In re Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d at 251).
To the extent that in his Petition Kaetz challenged the way the BOP was carrying out his sentence because it did not designate him to home confinement pursuant to its discretionary authority under § 3624(c), that claim is moot because Kaetz completed service of his term of imprisonment on December 6, 2021 and, therefore, is no longer in the custody or control of the BOP. See, e.g., Speight v. Quintana, No. 1:08-cv-41, 2008 WL 4646122, at *2 (W.D. Pa. Oct. 17, 2008) (“Generally, when a prisoner is challenging the BOP's execution of his sentence pursuant to a petition for writ of habeas corpus, the petition becomes moot if the prisoner completes his term of imprisonment before the habeas proceedings have concluded.”); Matthews v. Meeks, No. 2:14-cv-09, 2014 WL 2161103, at *1 (W.D. Pa. May 23, 2014) (federal prisoner's § 2241 habeas petition challenging the BOP's decisions under § 3624(c) became moot when the BOP released him to an RRC) (citing Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 18 (1998), which explained that “mootness, however it may have come about, simply deprives us of our power to act; there is nothing for us to remedy, even if we were disposed to do so.”)).
Kaetz's remaining claims, including that the Government breached the terms of the plea agreement and that Attorney Sughrue provided him with ineffective assistance, are not cognizable in a § 2241 habeas petition. This is not one of the rare cases described in Dorsainvil that falls within the § 2255's “savings clause.” If Kaetz seeks modification of the terms of his supervised release, he may only do so by filing the appropriate motion in his criminal case. Similarly, his claim that the Government breached the terms of the plea agreement can only be brought through remedies available to him in his criminal proceeding. As for his claim that Attorney Sughrue was ineffective, it is only cognizable in a § 2255 motion. Thus, Kaetz cannot challenge the legality of his current home detention under § 2241.
III. Conclusion
Based on the foregoing, it is respectfully recommended that the Court summarily dismiss Kaetz's Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus (ECF 8), as amended (ECF 10, 11). Under the Magistrate Judges Act, 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) and (C), and Rule 72.D.2 of the Local Civil Rules, Kaetz is allowed fourteen (14) days from the date of this Order to file objections to this Report and Recommendation. Failure to do so will waive the right to appeal. Brightwell v. Lehman, 637 F.3d 187, 193 n.7 (3d Cir. 2011).
28 U.S.C. § 2253 sets forth the standards governing the issuance of a certificate of appealability for appellate review of a district court's disposition of a habeas petition. Federal prisoner appeals from the dismissal of a § 2241 habeas corpus proceeding are not governed by the certificate of appealability requirement. United States v. Cepero, 224 F.3d 256, 264-65 (3d Cir. 2000), abrogated on other grounds by Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U.S. 134 (2012). Therefore, the Court does not make a certificate of appealability determination in this matter.