United States v. Keeland Williams


Case: 16-20815 Document: 00514577582 Page: 1 Date Filed: 07/30/2018 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit No. 16-20815 FILED July 30, 2018 Lyle W. Cayce UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Clerk Plaintiff-Appellee, v. KEELAND DURALLE WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas Before ELROD, GRAVES, and HO, Circuit Judges. JAMES E. GRAVES, JR., Circuit Judge: Before the court is Defendant Keeland Duralle Williams’s motion for re- consideration of the denial of his application for a certificate of appealability (COA). We GRANT the motion, withdraw the prior order of March 9, 2018, and substitute the following: In 2014, Defendant Keeland Duralle Williams, who proceeds before this court pro se, was convicted of aiding and abetting bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2113(a) & (d) (Count One), and aiding and abetting the carrying and brandishing of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (Count Two). The district court sentenced him to seventy months of imprisonment on Count One and a consecutive eighty-four-month term of Case: 16-20815 Document: 00514577582 Page: 2 Date Filed: 07/30/2018 No. 16-20815 imprisonment on Count Two. Williams did not appeal, but he later filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, which the district court dismissed as time-barred. He seeks a COA in this court, arguing that (1) reasonable jurists would debate whether the district court erred in determining that his § 2255 motion was time-barred because Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. —, 136 S. Ct. 1257 (2016), made John- son v. United States, 576 U.S. —, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), in which the Supreme Court invalidated the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), retroactive to cases on collateral review; (2) his § 2255 motion was timely filed under § 2255(f)(3) within one year of Johnson; and (3) in light of Johnson, the residual clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(B), the statute under which he was sentenced, was unconstitutionally vague. Federal habeas proceedings are subject to the rules prescribed by the Anti- terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). Matamoros v. Stephens, 783 F.3d 212, 215 (5th Cir. 2015); see 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Under AEDPA, a federal habeas petitioner may appeal a district court’s dismissal of his § 2255 motion only if the district court or the court of appeals first issues a certificate of ap- pealability. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2253(c)(1)(B) & 2253(c)(2); Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. —, —, 137 S. Ct. 759, 773 (2017); Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 335–36 (2003). When a district court has denied relief on procedural grounds, “the petitioner seeking a COA must show both ‘that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the petition states a valid claim of the denial of a constitutional right and that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district court was correct in ...

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