Christian Winchel v. United States

I. Supreme Court Rule 10(a)—Whether the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has departed from the accepted and usual course of postconviction proceedings under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power, when: A. The court failed to give Petitioner’s verified § 2255 motion proper consideration as the functional equivalent of an affidavit; B. The court determined the credibility of witnesses solely from affidavits which contained disputed questions of material fact; and C. The court failed to grant a hearing pursuant to § 2255(b) for Petitioner’s claims which are not conclusively refuted by the record. II. Supreme Court Rule 10(c)—Whether the decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals conflicts with and/or grossly misapplies this Court’s decision in Lee v. United States, 582 U.S. 357 (2017), where: A. The decision assigns Petitioner an evidentiary burden to provide “contemporaneous evidence” in support of his assertion that he would not have entered the plea but for counsel’s deficient performance; B. The decision inherently requires “contemporaneous evidence” to be fully and sufficiently pled within the § 2255 motion; and