JOYNER v. ORTIZ

Filing 2

OPINION FILED. Signed by Judge Noel L. Hillman on 3/16/18. (js)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
______________________________
:
WAYNE EDWARD JOYNER,
:
:
Petitioner,
:
Civ. No. 18-3455 (NLH)
:
v.
:
OPINION
:
DAVID ORTIZ,
:
:
Respondent.
:
______________________________:
APPEARANCE:
Wayne Edward Joyner, No. 18186083
FCI – Fort Dix
P.O. Box 2000
Joint Base MDL, NJ 08640
Petitioner Pro se
HILLMAN, District Judge
Petitioner Wayne Edward Joyner, a prisoner presently
incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution (“FCI”) at
Fort Dix, in Fort Dix, New Jersey, filed this Petition for Writ
of Habeas Corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, challenging a
sentencing enhancement based on what he alleges is a nonqualifying prior conviction.

ECF No. 1, at 2.

At this time,

the Court will review the Petition pursuant to Rule 4 of the
Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases, (amended Dec. 1, 2004), made
applicable to § 2241 petitions through Rule 1(b) of the Habeas
Rules.

See also 28 U.S.C. § 2243.

For the reasons expressed

below, this Court will dismiss the Petition for lack of
jurisdiction.

I.

BACKGROUND
Petitioner provides the following pertinent facts related

to his Petition:

“On November 8, 1972, an indictment was handed

up by the grand jurors of the State of Maryland against Wayne
Edward Joyner, which set forth crimes alleged to have been
committed by Joyner on July 5, 1972.”

ECF No. 1-4, Pet. at 2.

“On November 10, 1972, the case was nolle prosequi.”

Id.

“Simultaneously[,] Wayne Edward Joyner entered a guilty plea to
a lesser-included offense.”

Id.

“Decades later, Petitioner

appeared before the United States District Court [for the]
Eastern District of Virginia, subsequent to being adjudicated
guilty for the following Federal offenses[:]”

conspiracy to

commit bank robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 371; bank robbery under 18
U.S.C. § 2113(a); assault; use of a firearm in relation to a
crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) & (2); and
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon
922(g) & 924(a)(2).

Id.

under 18 U.S.C. §§

“Subsequent to perusing ‘ONLY’ the one

page available from the 1972 indictment . . ., the United States
District Court deemed Joyner a career offender and on July 10,
1992 executed a term of five hundred and sixty two months.”

Id.

Although Petitioner did not directly appeal his conviction or
sentence, he did file a motion under 28 U.S.C. 2255 in the
District of Virginia, which was denied.

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Id. at 3-4.

“Joyner is

now confined to the Federal Correctional institution at Fort
Dix, New Jersey.”

Id.

In his Petition, Petitioner seeks to challenge not his
conviction but his sentencing enhancement that resulted from his
prior guilty plea in 1972.

See ECF No. 1.

Specifically,

Plaintiff argues that Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551
(2015), applies to his sentencing and that the Johnson holding
may be applied retroactively.
II.

ECF No. 1-4, Br. at 4.

DISCUSSION
A.

Legal Standard

United States Code Title 28, Section 2243, provides in
relevant part as follows:
A court, justice or judge entertaining an
application for a writ of habeas corpus shall
forthwith award the writ or issue an order
directing the respondent to show cause why the
writ should not be granted, unless it appears
from the application that the applicant or
person detained is not entitled thereto.
A pro se pleading is held to less stringent standards than more
formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.

Estelle v. Gamble, 429

U.S. 97, 106 (1976); Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972).
A pro se habeas petition must be construed liberally. See
Hunterson v. DiSabato, 308 F.3d 236, 243 (3d Cir. 2002).
Nevertheless, a federal district court can dismiss a habeas
corpus petition if it appears from the face of the petition that
the petitioner is not entitled to relief.
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See Denny v. Schultz,

708 F.3d 140, 148 n. 3 (3d Cir. 2013); see also 28 U.S.C. §§
2243, 2255.
B. Analysis
As noted by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in
In re Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d 245, 249 (3d Cir. 1997), a motion to
vacate, set aside, or correct sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255
has been the “usual avenue” for federal prisoners seeking to
challenge the legality of their confinement.

See also Okereke

v. United States, 307 F.3d 117, 120 (3d Cir. 2002); United
States v. McKeithan, 437 F. App’x 148, 150 (3d Cir. 2011);
United States v. Walker, 980 F. Supp. 144, 145–46 (E.D. Pa.
1997) (challenges to a sentence as imposed should be brought
under § 2255, while challenges to the manner in which a sentence
is executed should be brought under § 2241).
Section 2255, however, contains a safety valve where “it
appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective
to test the legality of [Petitioner's] detention.”
U.S.C. § 2255(e).

See 28

In Dorsainvil, the Third Circuit held that

the remedy provided by § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffective,”
permitting resort to § 2241 (a statute without timeliness or
successive petition limitations), where a prisoner who
previously had filed a § 2255 motion on other grounds “had no
earlier opportunity to challenge his conviction for a crime that

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an intervening change in substantive law may negate.”
Dorsainvil, 119 F.3d at 251.
The court emphasized, however, that its holding was not
intended to suggest that § 2255 would be considered “inadequate
or ineffective” merely because a petitioner is unable to meet
the stringent limitations or gatekeeping requirements of § 2255.
Id.

To the contrary, the court was persuaded that § 2255 was

“inadequate or ineffective” in the unusual circumstances
presented in Dorsainvil because it would have been a complete
miscarriage of justice to confine a prisoner for conduct that,
based upon an intervening interpretation of the statute of
conviction by the United States Supreme Court, may not have been
criminal conduct at all.

Id. at 251-52.

The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit subsequently
emphasized the narrowness of its Dorsainvil holding when it
rejected a district court's conclusion that § 2255 was
“inadequate or ineffective” to address a claim based on Apprendi
v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000), an intervening decision
which held that, “[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction,
any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the
prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and
proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”

See Okereke, 307 F.3d at

120-21 (in which the petitioner had been sentenced based upon a
drug quantity determined at sentencing by a judge using the
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preponderance of evidence standard).

The mere fact that a claim

is time barred does not render § 2255 an inadequate or
ineffective remedy.

See Cradle v. United States, 290 F.3d 536,

539 (3d Cir. 2002).
Here, Petitioner’s claims do not fall into the Dorsainvil
exception.

Specifically, he does not allege that he had no

earlier opportunity to challenge his conviction for a crime that
an intervening change in substantive law may negate.

Instead,

his claims relate to the purported impropriety of his sentence,
not the crimes for which he was convicted.

See Scott v.

Shartle, 574 F. App'x 152, 155 (3d Cir. 2014) (“[B]ecause
[petitioner] is challenging his career offender designation and
is not claiming that he is now innocent of the predicate
offense, he does not fall within the ‘safety valve’ exception
created in In re Dorsainvil and cannot proceed under § 2241”)
(citation omitted); McIntosh v. Shartle, 526 F. App'x 150, 152
(3d Cir. 2013) (“Here, McIntosh is challenging his designation
as a career offender. Thus, he does not fall within the
exception created in Dorsainvil and may not proceed under §
2241”) (citation omitted); Johnson v. Scism, 454 F. App'x 87, 88
(3d Cir. 2012) (same); Wyatt v. Warden FCI Fort Dix, No. 171335, 2017 WL 1367239 (D.N.J. Apr. 10, 2017) (finding court
lacks jurisdiction under § 2241 when petitioner is challenging
his sentencing enhancement under Mathis); Newman v. Kirby, No.
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17-4653, 2017 WL 3080729 (D.N.J. July 19, 2017) (same); Coleman
v. Kirby, 2017 WL 3332262 (D.N.J. Aug. 4, 2017) (same).
Based on the foregoing, the Court finds that it lacks
jurisdiction under § 2241 over the instant habeas petition.
Whenever a civil action is filed in a court that lacks
jurisdiction, “the court shall, if it is in the interests of
justice, transfer such action . . . to any other such court in
which the action . . . could have been brought at the time it
was filed.”

28 U.S.C. § 1631.

Since he has previously filed a

§ 2255 petition, Petitioner must seek permission from the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to bring a second
or successive petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h) in the Eastern
District of Virginia.

See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2255(h); 2244.

The

Court finds that it is not in the interests of justice to
transfer this habeas Petition because the Petition appears timebarred.

Petitioner is free to file a request to bring a second

or successive petition with the Fourth Circuit on his own.
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the Petition will be dismissed
for lack of jurisdiction.

An appropriate order follows.

Dated: March 16, 2018
At Camden, New Jersey

s/ Noel L. Hillman
NOEL L. HILLMAN, U.S.D.J.

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