Clients Describe Their Federal § 2255 Cases

How to read these videos

These client stories are short videos about section 2255 motions and federal habeas cases. The line under each video says what that person is talking about. There is no transcript on this page, and there is no added result. One person’s account of one case is not a statement about any other case.

The legal notes below explain the statutes those topics come from. They do not fill in facts the videos do not state. If a caption says someone is talking about a notice of appeal, a later appeal, a resentencing hearing, or a federal habeas case, that is the whole of what this page says about that case.

What a § 2255 motion challenges

A § 2255 motion asks the sentencing court to vacate, set aside, or correct a federal sentence. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a) covers a constitutional or statutory violation, a lack of jurisdiction, a sentence above the legal maximum, and a sentence otherwise open to collateral attack. If the court grants the motion, § 2255(b) says it shall vacate the judgment and discharge the person, resentence, grant a new trial, or correct the sentence, as may appear appropriate. A video that mentions a resentencing hearing is one person describing that hearing. It does not mean resentencing follows every motion. See what the motion can challenge and how it is filed.

Custody and the one-year deadline

The motion is available only while the person is in custody on that federal sentence. Prison, supervised release, probation, and parole all count. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a); Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236 (1963). The deadline is a separate question: generally one year from finality, or from a later date in § 2255(f)(2), (f)(3), or (f)(4). With no appeal, finality is when the 14-day time to appeal runs out. Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A). After an appeal, with no petition to the Supreme Court, it is usually 90 days after the court of appeals enters judgment. Clay v. United States, 537 U.S. 522 (2003). These videos are not a filing calendar. Read who can file and the one-year deadline.

Grounds these stories sit beside

Ineffective assistance of counsel is a Sixth Amendment claim. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) requires unreasonable performance and a reasonable probability of a different result. When the claim is that a lawyer did not file a notice of appeal the client asked for, courts presume prejudice, even if an appeal waiver was signed. The person does not have to show the appeal would have succeeded. Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U.S. 470 (2000); Garza v. Idaho, 586 U.S. 232 (2019). That is the legal test. It is not a finding about anyone in the videos. The caption under each video is the only account this page gives of that person’s case. See ineffective assistance and appeal claims.

A later motion is tightly limited. After a first § 2255 motion is decided, another one generally needs permission from the court of appeals, and a new-rule claim must rest on a new constitutional rule the Supreme Court has made retroactive. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h). A first motion that relies on a newly recognized right has one year from the date of that decision, not from a later retroactivity case. Dodd v. United States, 545 U.S. 353 (2005). Jurisdiction claims are narrower than the phrase suggests. See also newly recognized rights and second or successive motions.

§ 2241 and compassionate release are separate

A § 2241 petition is generally about how a federal sentence is being carried out, and it is filed where the person is held. 28 U.S.C. § 2241. An attack on the conviction or sentence belongs in § 2255. Tolliver v. Dobre, 211 F.3d 876 (5th Cir. 2000). The saving clause in § 2255(e) is narrow after Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023). Our page on the saving clause explains that limit.

Compassionate release is a different statute. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), a court may reduce a prison term for extraordinary and compelling reasons in the person’s circumstances. In Fernandez v. United States (May 28, 2026), the Supreme Court held that a challenge to the validity of a conviction goes through § 2255, and that the supposed invalidity of a conviction is not an extraordinary and compelling reason for release. The comparison is on our habeas corpus page.

What to gather before you file

Before a consultation, have the judgment, the docket number, and the dates of any appeal decisions. The longer set is on the page about preparing a § 2255 motion: the docket, plea or trial papers, transcripts, the presentence report, and the defense file. If you are in Bureau of Prisons custody, do not have the presentence report or statement of reasons mailed into the prison. The Bureau treats those copies as contraband. Collecting records does not pause the one-year period.

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