James Harold Griffith v. United States

ED CARNES, Chief Judge:

James Harold Griffith was convicted by a jury of several drug and firearms offenses. After this Court affirmed his convictions on direct appeal, he filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion to vacate his sentence. Among other things, he sought an evidentiary hearing based on his claim that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to argue that some waste materials in the drug manufacturing process should not have been included as a “mixture or substance” in the drug quantity determination. That would matter, he claimed, because the drug quantity determination triggered…