Bernie Moore v. United States

Moore appeals from a district court order dismissing his application for section 2255 relief. Moore claimed that his 1968 guilty plea to a violation of 18 U. S.C. § 2113(a) should be set aside because he was mentally incompetent when his plea was taken.

The district court dismissed the application for two reasons: (1) Moore waived his claim for relief on the ground here asserted because he had not presented the claim on an earlier section 2255 petition; and (2) Moore’s “mental competence was the subject of psychiatric investigation, a hearing, and judicial determination before his plea was made and accepted,” and the issue is thus foreclosed.

Denial of a prior application for section 2255 relief does not foreclose a subsequent petition for the same relief on a ground not earlier presented, unless that failure to assert the claim was an abuse of the section 2255 process: “[I]f a prisoner deliberately withholds one of two grounds for federal collateral relief at the time of filing his first application, in the hope of being granted two hearings rather than one or for some other reason, he may be deemed to have waived his right to a hearing on a second application presenting the…