Do you have a client who was deemed a career offender pursuant to the residual clause of the mandatory (pre-Booker) Career Offender Guideline? If so, keep fighting that sentence! There are at least a couple ways:
1) If the client has a petition pending under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, make sure to argue the sentence is unconstitutional given Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015). That argument is currently foreclosed by Nunez v. United States, 954 F.3d 465 (2d Cir. 2020), but there’s a circuit split on the issue that just deepened: the First Circuit has joined the Seventh in holding Johnson effectively invalidated the residual clause of the mandatory Guideline. See Shea v. United States, ___ F.3d ___, 2020 WL 5755462 (1st Cir. Sept. 28, 2020). The Supreme Court refused to resolve this split when the Seventh Circuit was the sole outlier, but …