Reported / Citable
Background
Justin Majors was indicted in the Eastern District of Texas on four federal counts: conspiracy to kidnap, two counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering, and conspiracy to launder proceeds of unlawful activity. With the assistance of counsel, he signed a waiver of venue and pleaded guilty without a plea agreement to all four counts. At sentencing, the court applied a two-level vulnerable-victim enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(1), yielding a guidelines range of life imprisonment. The district court imposed a below-guidelines sentence of 540 months on the kidnapping conspiracy count, with shorter concurrent terms on the remaining counts. The Fifth Circuit affirmed his conviction and sentence on direct appeal in January 2022.
In April 2023, Majors filed a pro se motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 asserting four grounds for relief: (1) his guilty plea was not knowing and voluntary due to ineffective assistance of counsel; (2) an intervening change in the law invalidated his kidnapping conviction; (3) the government committed prosecutorial misconduct in connection with his venue waiver; and (4) counsel was ineffective for failing to properly advise him regarding the venue waiver. He later filed supplemental authority citing Tenth Circuit decisions that he argued rendered his convictions invalid for lack of an interstate commerce nexus.
The Court’s Holding
United States Magistrate Judge Bill Davis issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that the § 2255 motion be denied in its entirety and dismissed with prejudice. On the knowing-and-voluntary plea claim, the magistrate found that the extensive plea colloquy record — including Majors’s sworn admissions that he understood the charges, the sentencing consequences, and that any guidelines estimate was not binding — foreclosed his post-hoc allegations that counsel misinformed him. Majors provided no independent evidence sufficient to overcome his solemn in-court declarations, the representations of counsel and the government, or the court’s findings at the time of the plea.
The intervening-change-in-law claim failed because the out-of-circuit decisions Majors cited — from the Tenth Circuit and D.C. Court of Appeals — do not constitute changes in Fifth Circuit law, which controls. The prosecutorial-misconduct claim regarding the venue waiver was procedurally barred for failure to raise it on direct appeal, and Majors could not satisfy either the cause-and-prejudice or actual-innocence exceptions to excuse the default. The ineffective-assistance claim regarding the venue waiver likewise failed on the merits: the record demonstrated that Majors reviewed and understood the waiver before signing it and that the district court conducted a thorough on-the-record colloquy confirming the waiver was knowing and voluntary. The magistrate also recommended denial of a certificate of appealability, finding that reasonable jurists would not debate the dismissal.
Key Takeaways
- Sworn statements made during a Rule 11 plea colloquy create a heavy evidentiary burden that a defendant must overcome with independent evidence — not mere post-conviction assertions — to succeed on a later § 2255 challenge to the voluntariness of a guilty plea.
- Venue is not a jurisdictional issue and is therefore not cognizable as a ground for § 2255 relief; a knowing and voluntary waiver of venue at the time of plea forecloses collateral attacks on that waiver.
- Out-of-circuit decisions — even from multiple circuits — do not constitute a change in the controlling circuit’s law and cannot serve as the basis for an “intervening change in law” claim under § 2255 in the Fifth Circuit.
- A prosecutorial-misconduct claim not raised on direct appeal is procedurally defaulted and may be reached in a § 2255 motion only upon a showing of cause and actual prejudice, or actual innocence — neither of which Majors could establish.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the well-established principle that a thorough Rule 11 plea colloquy is among the most durable shields against later collateral attack. Defense counsel and district courts are reminded that careful, on-the-record advisements at the time of plea — covering sentencing ranges, the non-binding nature of guidelines estimates, and the consequences of waiver — will typically defeat subsequent § 2255 claims premised on alleged counsel errors or lack of understanding.
The case also illustrates the limits of relying on persuasive authority from other circuits in § 2255 proceedings. As circuit splits on the scope of federal kidnapping and interstate commerce statutes continue to develop — with the Ninth and Tenth Circuits taking narrowing views — defendants in the Fifth Circuit cannot leverage those developments unless and until the Fifth Circuit itself adopts them. Practitioners filing collateral challenges in the Fifth Circuit must anchor their arguments in binding circuit precedent or directly applicable Supreme Court authority.