United States v. Peña, No. 20-4192 (2d Cir. 2023)
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Defendant was charged in district court with five counts of an eight-count indictment in connection with two killings. Counts Four, Five, and Six charged Defendant with conspiring to commit, and committing, murder for hire. Counts Seven and Eight charged Defendant with the use of a firearm to commit murder. Defendant was convicted on all five counts and received a sentence of five concurrent life terms, one for each count. In response to intervening Supreme Court precedent, Defendant filed a motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Section 2255 asserting that his two Section 924(j) convictions on Counts Seven and Eight should be vacated. The district court agreed and granted the motion. The court declined, however, to resentence Defendant de novo. Defendant argued that this was an error, either because de novo resentencing was mandatory, or because the district court abused its discretion in declining to resentence Defendant de novo.
The Second Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that Section 2255's statutory text vests district courts with the discretion to decide when to conduct a de novo resentencing and that de novo resentencing was not mandatory here. The court also concluded that because resentencing Defendant would have been “strictly ministerial,” resulting in the same sentence of mandatory life imprisonment that he received in the first instance, the district court did not abuse its discretion.
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on December 13, 2022.
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