Background
A jury convicted Abraham Augustin of six federal offenses in 2010, including discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). The district court imposed 120 months for the § 924(c) conviction, consecutive to 380 months for the remaining convictions. Augustin’s first motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 was unsuccessful.
After United States v. Davis held § 924(c)(3)(B)’s residual clause unconstitutionally vague, the Sixth Circuit authorized another § 2255 motion. The district court granted relief, vacated the § 924(c) conviction, reduced Augustin’s sentence by 120 months, left the other convictions and 380-month term unchanged, and entered an amended judgment. When Augustin later filed a § 2255 motion challenging the five remaining convictions, the district court treated it as “second or successive” and transferred it to the Sixth Circuit.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Circuit held that Augustin’s latest § 2255 motion was not “second or successive” because it was his first collateral challenge to the amended judgment. When the district court granted the earlier § 2255 motion, it vacated the original judgment before correcting the sentence and entering an intervening judgment. That new judgment could be challenged once as of right without satisfying § 2255(h)’s gatekeeping requirements.
The court rejected any distinction between a full resentencing and a sentence correction following vacatur of a judgment. Because the prior judgment had been vacated, the remedial method used to produce the new judgment did not affect Augustin’s right to challenge it. The court granted his motion to remand for further proceedings, but declined to assign the case to a different district judge, finding that the two-year transfer delay and Augustin’s allegations of bias did not justify the extraordinary remedy of reassignment.
Key Takeaways
- A later-in-time § 2255 motion is not necessarily “second or successive”; the inquiry turns on the judgment being challenged.
- Vacating a judgment and entering an amended judgment after correcting a sentence creates a new judgment that may be challenged once as of right, even as to convictions and prison terms left unchanged.
- Sentence corrections under § 2255 differ from sentence reductions under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c), Rule 35(b), and certain nunc pro tunc orders, which do not necessarily create new judgments.
- Delay alone did not warrant reassignment where other postconviction litigation was ongoing and reassignment likely would have caused further delay.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms that federal prisoners who obtain partial § 2255 relief may challenge the resulting amended judgment without first obtaining authorization for a second or successive motion. The rule applies even when the district court merely corrects the sentence rather than conducting a full resentencing.
For postconviction practitioners, the critical question is whether the earlier proceeding vacated the original judgment and produced a genuinely new judgment—not simply whether a sentence was modified in some way.