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United States v. McClain
Citation: 672 F. App'x 591Docket: No. 16-1240
Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; December 21, 2016; Federal Appellate Court
Thurman McClain was sentenced in 2003 to 192 months for being an Armed Career Criminal under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(e). After completing his sentence in 2012, he began a 5-year supervised release but was returned to prison twice for violations. Currently, he is serving a 4-year term of reimprisonment imposed in 2013, set to end in May 2017, followed by another 6 months of supervised release. McClain did not appeal his conviction or the revocations of his supervised release, nor did he file a post-conviction motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. In 2015, he filed a motion to reduce his sentence, claiming that the maximum term of reimprisonment after his second revocation should have been 18 months, not 4 years, as per 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3) and (h). The district court dismissed his motion, asserting it lacked jurisdiction to address a term imposed nearly two years earlier. The court's dismissal was found to be incorrect; although it could not consider McClain's motion under § 3583, the government acknowledged that McClain's argument regarding the legality of his 4-year term could be construed as a § 2255 motion. However, the court noted that McClain's motion did not sufficiently question the legality of his supervised release term. McClain argued that he no longer qualifies as an Armed Career Criminal following the Supreme Court's decision in Johnson v. United States, which deemed the ACCA’s residual clause unconstitutional. He contended that, without this classification, the maximum reimprisonment term should be two years instead of four. However, this claim was barred by precedent set in Dawkins v. United States, which affirmed that McClain's Illinois residential burglary convictions qualify as ACCA predicates. Lastly, the government's claim that McClain's notice of appeal was filed late was rejected. Recent amendments to the prisoner mailbox rule clarified that a postmark is sufficient to establish timely filing. McClain's envelope was postmarked a day before the due date. The district court's dismissal was thus affirmed.