Low Sentence Undoes § 2255 Prejudice – Update for December 9, 2025

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

LAWYER’S ERROR ON GUIDELINES NOT ALWAYS PREJUDICIAL, 11TH SAYS

In 2016, Cecil Buckner pled guilty to several Hobbs Act violations and 18 USC § 924(c) counts. The presentence report classified him as a Guidelines career offender because Cecil had two prior felony convictions for a controlled substance offense. The combined statutory minimum sentence for his § 924(c) convictions was 384 months. The PSR calculated a career-offender range of 535 to 572 months’ imprisonment. Without the career-offender classification, Cecil’s guideline range would have been 504 to 534 months.

At Cecil’s sentencing, no one objected to the PSR. The district court adopted it as its findings of fact and imposed a 414-month prison sentence, reducing it by 121 months because the § 924(c) mandatory sentence was so long that it amounted to an essentially life sentence.

Later, in a 28 USC § 2255 petition, Cecil argued that the PSR was wrong in classifying him as a career offender and that his lawyer had been ineffective for failing to object to the error. Without the mistake, Cecil says, the bottom of his Guidelines range would have been 31 months lower.

It has always been generally accepted that an incorrect Guidelines calculation is enough to show § 2255 prejudice, that is, a reasonable probability of a different outcome. But last week, the 11th Circuit said this presumption is not carved in stone.

The Circuit held that the application of an erroneous Guideline range may not be dispositive on the prejudice prong when the district court gives “a detailed explanation… mak[ing] it clear that the judge based the sentence… on factors independent of the Guidelines.” Here, the district court sentenced Cecil based on factors independent of his career-offender classification, imposing a sentence of 414 months of imprisonment, only 30 months more than the mandatory 384 months for the two § 924(c)s.

Because the district court arrived at Cecil’s sentence by balancing his life expectancy with the “terror” and “fear” that he inflicted upon his victims, the 11th held, Cecil had “not established a reasonable probability that his sentence would have been different if counsel had objected to his career-offender classification.”

Buckner v. United States, Case No. 24-10001, 2025 U.S.App. LEXIS 31479 (11th Cir., December 3, 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root