US v. Robinson: In 2002, Robinson was convicted of drug charges as well as a pair of §924(c) firearms charges, resulting in a total sentence or 960 months. He filed numerous motions after his case became final, including an approved second-or-successive §2255 motion. In 2019, the district court reduced his sentence under the First Step Act to 601 months in prison. In 2022, Robinson filed another §2255 motion, this time without permission from the Fourth Circuit, arguing that he could not be convicted on both §924(c) offenses. The district court denied Robinson’s motion (1) because Robinson did not have permission to file another successive §2255 motion the court lacked “jurisdiction” and (2) even if it did, the motion was untimely.
The Fourth Circuit granted a certificate of appealability only on the first issue – whether the First Step Act reduction order was a new judgment from which Robinson could file a §2255 motion without permission. In his opening brief, Robinson sought to expand the certificate of appealability to cover the timeliness issue as well, but the Fourth Circuit denied the motion.
Ultimately, the Fourth Circuit dismissed Robinson’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction. That was because given the narrow scope of the certificate of appealability the court could not reach the district court’s ruling on timeliness and therefore even if Robinson prevailed on the first issue the court could not provide any relief on the second. It rejected Robinson’s argument that the district court’s timeliness ruling was a nullity because it came after the district court concluded it lacked jurisdiction. The court concluded that the second-or-successive requirements in §2255 and §2244 were not actually jurisdictional (the district court used the term too loosely), but claims processing rules, which meant it had the authority to rule on the timeliness issue (which the Fourth Circuit had already declined to review).
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