Michael Frank Burgess v. United States

ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge:

Efficiency can be a virtue, particularly for a court. But sometimes we can have too much of even a good thing.1 That’s what happened here. In this case, Petitioner-Appellant Michael Frank Burgess filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion challenging his conviction and sentence. Although the government opposed Burgess’s motion on the merits, the district court instead, and of its own volition, invoked a collateral-action waiver in Burgess’s plea agreement with the government to dismiss one of Burgess’s claims. Today we hold that a court may not do that.

I

Petitioner-Appellant…