Steven Martinez v. FCC Coleman - USP I Warden

Filing

Opinion issued by court as to Appellant Steven Martinez. Decision: Affirmed. Opinion type: Non-Published. Opinion method: Per Curiam.

Case: 14-15264

Date Filed: 07/13/2015

Page: 1 of 3

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 14-15264
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 5:13-cv-00356-WTH-PRL

STEVEN MARTINEZ,
Petitioner-Appellant,
versus
WARDEN, FCC COLEMAN - USP I,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
________________________
(July 13, 2015)
Before HULL, MARTIN and ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Steven Martinez, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, appeals the district

Case: 14-15264

Date Filed: 07/13/2015

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court’s dismissal of his 28 U.S.C. § 2241 habeas corpus petition for lack of
subject-matter jurisdiction. Martinez claims that he is actually innocent of
murdering a federal employee because newly discovered evidence shows that his
victim, Guillermo Gonzalez, was not employed by the United States Postal Service
at the time of his death. After careful review, we affirm.
Martinez’s first federal habeas petition was denied by the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York, and he has neither sought nor
received permission from this Court to file a second or successive petition. Thus, a
federal court may not consider his petition unless he satisfies the requirements of
28 U.S.C. § 2255(e). That provision, known as the “savings clause,” reads:
An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who
is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section,
shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to
apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that
such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy
by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his
detention.
28 U.S.C. § 2255(e) (emphasis added).
The applicability of the savings clause is a question of subject-matter
jurisdiction. Bryant v. Warden, 738 F.3d 1253, 1262–63 (11th Cir. 2013). In order
to bring an actual-innocence claim under the savings clause, a petitioner must
establish that (1) his claim “is based upon a retroactively applicable Supreme Court
decision; (2) the holding of that Supreme Court decision establishes [he] was
2

Case: 14-15264

Date Filed: 07/13/2015

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convicted for a nonexistent offense; and (3) circuit law squarely foreclosed such a
claim at the time it otherwise should have been raised in [his] trial, appeal, or first
§ 2255 motion.” Id. at 1264 (quotation marks omitted).
Martinez’s claim that Gonzalez was not a federal employee meets none of
these three requirements. 1 Thus, the district court correctly found that it did not
have jurisdiction to consider Martinez’s § 2241 petition.
AFFIRMED.

1

Specifically, Martinez argues that the USPS’s failure to produce Gonzalez’s personnel
file in response to his Freedom of Information Act request shows that Gonzalez was not
employed by the USPS. However, as the Second Circuit explained in denying Martinez’s
request to file a second or successive habeas petition based on this exact claim, “[t]he lack of a
personnel file does not prove that the victim was not a postal employee and, in any event,
Petitioner does not explain why the issue could not have been explored prior to, or at, trial.”
3