Criminal Procedure – successive appeals

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Criminal Procedure – successive appeals

A successive appeal challenging the defendant’s classification as a career offender was properly dismissed where the defendant could have filed the motion earlier but did not.

“[A] litigant who bypasses arguments on appeal cannot depict his own omission as an ‘extraordinary’ event that justifies post-judgment relief. Hill could have told us during his appeal in 2011 that he had already filed a §2255 petition and could have made in 2011 the same arguments that prevailed in Brown. He also could have provided that information and raised the arguments in a petition for rehearing. He took neither step. There are time limits for seeking rehearing or certiorari. Those time limits would be vitiated if all a litigant had to do was make a motion in the district court under Rule 60(b) and then raise on appeal contentions that could have been presented years earlier.”

Affirmed.

12-3168 Hill v. Rios

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, McDade, J., Easterbrook, J.