PEREZ-MEJIAS v. HOLLINGSWORTH

Filing 9

OPINION FILED. Signed by Judge Renee Marie Bumb on 10/10/13. (js)

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
________________________________
:
:
: Civil Action No. 12-7779 (RMB)
Petitioner,
:
:
v.
:
:
JORDAN R. HOLLINGSWORTH,
:
:
Respondent.
:
_______________________________________
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RAMON PEREZ-MEJIAS,
:
: Civil Action No. 12-7836 (RMB)
Petitioner,
:
:
v.
:
:
JORDAN R. HOLLINGSWORTH,
:
:
OPINION
Respondent.
:
APPLIES TO BOTH ACTIONS
_______________________________________
:
MARCO ANTONIO-VILLALBA,

Bumb, District Judge:
These two matters come before the Court upon motions filed
by Marco Antonio Villalba (“Villalba”) and Ramon Perez Mejias
(“Mejias,” hereinafter collectively “Petitioners”).

The motions

are seeking reconsideration of the Court’s denial of Petitioners’
§ 2241 applications for lack of jurisdiction.
The facts of both matters have already been established and
are not in dispute.

Both Petitioners are federal inmates

confined at the FCI Fort Dix, New Jersey, and both entered guilty
pleas with regard to drug-trafficking offenses conducted in

international waters.

Specifically, Villalba pled guilty to such

conduct committed 28 miles off the coast of Colombia, while
Mejias pled guilty to such conduct committed 30 miles off the
coast of the Dominican Republic.
When the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in United
States v. Bellaizac-Hurtado, 700 F.3d 1245 (11th Cir. 2012),
reversed a certain criminal defendant’s conviction on direct
appeal, and interpreted the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act
(“MDLEA”), 94 Stat. 1159, 46 U.S.C. App. § 1901 et seq., as
extending the United States penal jurisdiction solely to drug
trafficking activities taking place outside foreign territorial
waters, both Petitioners filed their respective § 2241 petitions
seeking vacatur of their convictions and sentences under the
holding of Bellaizac.
This Court, in substantively identical decisions, dismissed
these petitions.

See Antonio-Villalba v. Hollingsworth, 2013

U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75837 (D.N.J. May 29, 2013); Perez-Mejias v.
Hollingsworth, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88937 (D.N.J. June 25,
2013).

Each of the Court’s rulings: (a) opened with the

paragraph containing a sentence reading, “Having thoroughly
reviewed the Petition, this Court will summarily dismiss [it]”;
and (b) found lack of § 2241 jurisdiction over Petitioners’
applications in light of § 2255 being not an “inadequate or

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ineffective” vehicle to test the legality of their detentions.1
Both Petitioners sought reconsideration by raising virtually
identical challenges.2

Specifically, Villalba asserted that this

Court improperly stated that it thoroughly reviewed Villalba’s
petition since the Court’s opinion dismissing Villalba’s
application did not addressed his “universal jurisdiction”
argument; Mejias, too, asserted the same “universal jurisdiction”
argument, albeit without alleging that the Court erred in its
statement that it thoroughly reviewed Mejias’ petition.
The best this Court can surmise, Petitioners’ references to
“universal jurisdiction” was intended to assert, initially and in
their instant motions, that this Court should have expanded the
holding of Bellaizac so to negate the United States jurisdiction

1

In addition, with respect to Mejias, the Court pointed
out that “Petitioner was not even sentenced in the Eleventh
Circuit; he was sentenced in the District of Puerto Rico, which
is under the jurisdiction of the First Circuit.” Mejias, 2013
U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88937, at *6.
2

The first decision issued in this District with regard to
a § 2241 Bellaizac-based challenge noted:
It is an unfortunate reality of prisoners’ litigation
that this area of law is particularly amenably to “fad
suits,” since the news of a judicial decision perceived
by inmates as favorable to incarcerated individuals
tends to spread throughout prison facilities like wild
fire, causing prisoners to commence scores of merely
hope-driven, poorly thought-through actions: until . .
. the next fad grabs the prisoners’ attention.
Ortiz-Dominguez v. Hollingsworth, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5605, at
*1 (D.N.J. Jan. 11, 2013). The motions at bar, seem to fit this
observation.
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as to all drug-trafficking activities outside the United States
geographical jurisdiction, regardless of whether these offenses
were conducted on high seas on in foreign territorial waters,
i.e., to effectively find the MDLEA unconstitutional in its
entirety.3

See generally, Antonio-Villalba v. Hollingsworth,

Civil Action No. 12-7779, Docket Entry No. 12; Perez-Mejias v.
Hollingsworth, Civil Action No. 12-7836, Docket Entry No. 8.
Petitioners’ position to that effect was and is unavailing.4
A motion for reconsideration is a device of limited utility.
There are only four grounds upon which a motion for
reconsideration might be granted: (a) to correct manifest errors
of law or fact upon which the judgment was based; (b) to present
newly-discovered or previously unavailable evidence; (c) to
prevent manifest injustice; and (d) to accord the decision to an
intervening change in prevailing law.

See 11 Charles A. Wright,

Arthur R. Miller & Mary Kay Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure
§ 2810.1 (2d ed. 1995); see also Harsco Corp. v. Zlotnicki, 779
F.2d 906, 909 (3d Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1171 (1986)

3

Mejias also alleged that a declination to so expand
Bellaizac would amount to a miscarriage of justice.
4

While Villalba expressed displeasure with this Court’s
election not to discuss his “universal jurisdiction” argument in
connection with screening Villalba’s § 2241 petition, “the court
has no duty to address every frivolous argument made by a
litigant.” Zimmerman v. United States, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
15101, at *2 (E.D. Cal. 2000) (citing Urbina-Mauricio v. INS, 989
F.2d 1085, 1089 (9th Cir. 1993)).
4

(purpose of motion for reconsideration is to correct manifest
errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence).
Thus, “[t]o support reargument, a moving party must show that
dispositive factual matters or controlling decisions of law were
overlooked by the court in reaching its prior decision.”
Assisted Living Assoc’s of Moorestown, L.L.C., v. Moorestown Tp.,
996 F. Supp. 409, 442 (D.N.J. 1998).

Importantly, [i]n the

context of a motion to reconsider, the term “manifest injustice”
. . . means that the Court overlooked some dispositive factual or
legal matter that was presented to it,” In re Rose, 2007 U.S.
Dist. LEXIS 64622, at *3 (D.N.J. Aug. 30, 2007), making the
definition an overlap with the prime basis for reconsideration
articulated in Harsco, that is, the need “to correct manifest
errors of law or fact upon which the judgment was based.”
Alternatively, the term “manifest injustice” could be defined as
“‘an error in the trial court that is direct, obvious, and
observable.’”

Tenn. Prot. & Advocacy, Inc. v. Wells, 371 F.3d

342, 348 (6th Cir. 2004) (quoting Black's Law Dictionary 974 (7th
ed. 1999)).

“Most cases, therefore, use the term ‘manifest

injustice’ to describe the result of a plain error.”

Douglass v.

United Services Auto. Ass’n, 79 F.3d 1415, 1425 (5th Cir. 1996).
The fact that the litigant complains about his . . . criminal
prosecution (e.g., on the grounds of the litigant's belief that
such prosecution [was] wrongful), does not inject the danger of
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“manifest injustice” into the decision of the court performing
collateral review.

This very issue [was resolved] by the Court

of Appeals in Duran v. Thomas, 393 F. App’x 3 (3d Cir. Aug. 27,
2010).

See also In re Telfair, 745 F. Supp. 2d 536, 561 (D.N.J.

2010)(citations omitted).
Petitioners here do not offer the Court a viable basis for
vacating its prior decisions.

Neither Villalba nor Mejias

asserted an error or law or fact, or an intervening change in
prevailing law, or any newly discovered evidence.

Rather, each

asserts his preference for an expansive reading of Bellaizac so
to render the MDLEA unconstitutional in its entirety.

Yet, such

reading would be at odds with the Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit’s holding in United States v. Martinez-Hidalgo, 993 F.2d
1052 (3d Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1048 (1994).
In Martinez-Hidalgo, the Court of Appeals implicitly upheld
application of the MDLEA to the offenses conducted on high seas
when it pointed out that no nexus to the United States was needed
to exercise United States penal jurisdiction (under the MDLEA)
over the drug-trafficking activities committed in international
waters.

See id.

Thus, the narrow holding of Bellaizac, being

limited solely to the offenses committed in foreign territorial

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waters, cannot be expanded in the fashion argued for by
Petitioners.5
In light of the foregoing, Petitioners’ motions warrant no
vacatur of this Court’s prior decisions, just as Petitioners’
original positions warranted no habeas relief.

Accordingly, the

Court will grant Petitioners’ motions in form and will deny them
in substance.

See Pena-Ruiz v. Solorzano, 281 F. App’x 110, 111,

n.1 (3d Cir. 2008) (a motion for reconsideration should be deemed
“granted” when the court addresses the merits of that motion, but
the very fact of the court’s review does not prevent the court
from reaching a disposition identical, either in its rationale or
in its outcome, or in both regards, to the court’s prior
decision).

The Court’s dismissal of Petitioners’ § 2241

applications for lack of jurisdiction will remain in full force.
An appropriate Order follows.

s/Renée Marie Bumb
RENÉE MARIE BUMB,
United States District Judge
Dated: October 10, 2013

5

Moreover, it is unlikely that the Court of Appeals for
the Third Circuit would adopt the holding of Bellaizac-Hurtado if
presented with the scenario where a litigant committed a drag
trafficking offense in foreign territorial waters. See MunozValdez v. Hollingsworth, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76445, at *9-15
(D.N.J. May 31, 2013) (extensively detailing the same).
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