Opinion
No. 28 CR 846-1
July 25, 2000
MEMORANDUM ORDER
Charles Hayes ("Hayes"), whom this Court sentenced more than a decade ago (the judgment and commitment order is dated May 11, 1989) to a 15-year prison term because that was the statutory minimum applicable to his eight-count violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922 ("Section 922"), has just submitted to this Court a letter with some bulky documents (his caption on the latter is "Notice of Fraud Upon the Court and Request for Disclosure of Grand Jury Minutes and Relevent [sic] Ducuments [sic]"). Because the time for any correction of an assertedly invalid sentence under Fed.R.Crim.P. 35 expired very shortly after the imposition of sentence, and because any opportunity to obtain post-conviction relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 is also time-barred, Hayes disclaims as potential sources of relief those routes as well as the path of habeas corpus — instead he urges that his conviction was based on a void indictment.
It is certainly true that Hayes' situation is particularly unfortunate, because his prior felony convictions that caused the penalty for his current gun offenses to escalate dramatically — to carry the heavy 15-year mandatory minimum sentence rather than, as this Court recalls, no more than a two-year term — had taken place decades earlier. Indeed, this Court suggested to his counsel at the time of sentencing that he consider, on appeal, seeking to attack that lengthy sentence on constitutional grounds of cruel and unusual punishment, while at the same time making it plain that such an effort was pretty much hopeless because of established precedent.
But that unfortunate situation does not validate Hayes' current contentions. As best this Court can determine, Hayes appears to suffer from the mistaken notion that every criminal statute must be linked with implementing regulations to become effective, so that the existence of a valid criminal charge depends on the coexistence of a statute and a regulation published in the Federal Register. That is simply wrong. Section 922 (the statute of conviction) is entirely valid on its own (without any need for an implementing regulation).
Hence any arguable underpinning for Hayes' claim of a void conviction falls away. None of the cases or materials that Hayes has cited carries any persuasiveness to suggest any other conclusion. Accordingly, treating Hayes' submission as a motion (perhaps the best available label), this Court denies that motion.