Elizabeth Franklin-Best

My practice is federal-only and almost entirely post-judgment. I handle direct criminal appeals in the United States Courts of Appeals, petitions for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, motions to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, habeas corpus petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, compassionate release motions under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), sentence reductions under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) when the Sentencing Commission makes a guideline amendment retroactive, Federal Bureau of Prisons administrative litigation including First Step Act earned time credit disputes, and petitions for pardon and commutation of sentence filed with the Office of the Pardon Attorney under 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1 through 1.11. I do not take state court matters.

What makes the practice unusual is that it covers the entire sequence rather than just one stage. Most firms that handle federal appeals stop at the mandate. Most firms that file § 2255 motions do not also litigate inside the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ administrative process, and almost none of them prepare clemency petitions. Those remedies are not independent of one another. Under 28 C.F.R. § 1.3, a commutation petition should not even be filed while other judicial or administrative relief remains available, so clemency is genuinely the last stage of a sequence and not a parallel option. The § 2255 one-year deadline is strict and, if missed, usually permanent, whereas compassionate release has no deadline and can be renewed as circumstances change. Deciding what to file, in what order, is frequently the single most consequential judgment in the case, and it is very difficult to make well if you only handle one of the pieces.

The second unusual point is that the firm operates a federal prison consulting division alongside its litigation practice, led by Managing Director Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, who wrote the Federal Prison Handbook and the Directory of Federal Prisons. That team handles designation and placement, sentence computation review, RDAP, First Step Act programming, disciplinary defense, medical advocacy, and reentry planning. It matters legally, not just practically. A compassionate release motion or a commutation petition lives or dies on the institutional record — programming completed, conduct, medical documentation, a verified release plan — and that record is far stronger when it is built contemporaneously by the same team than when it is reconstructed years later by counsel who is new to the case.

Before I opened this practice in 2019, I spent more than two decades on the other side of that record. I began as trial counsel at the Richland County Public Defender’s Office, then served as appellate counsel at the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, Appellate Division, where I reviewed hundreds of trial transcripts for preserved error and argued before the South Carolina Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. I then spent seven years as a partner at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC, litigating capital post-conviction and federal habeas cases. Reading records for a living is the skill this practice actually runs on.

These are the questions I am asked most often, and the answers I provide:

What is the difference between a § 2255 motion and a § 2241 petition?

A motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 attacks the conviction or the sentence itself, and it is filed in the district that imposed it. A petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 challenges how the Bureau of Prisons is carrying out the sentence — including sentence computation, good conduct time, First Step Act credits, prior custody credit, denial of prerelease custody, and due process in disciplinary proceedings — and is filed in the district where the petitioner is confined. Choosing the wrong option costs time and can cost the remedy outright, because someone who has already filed a § 2255 motion generally needs authorization from the court of appeals under § 2255(h) before filing another § 2255 motion.

How long do I have to file a § 2255 motion?

One year, under 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f), running from the latest of four dates: when the judgment of conviction became final; when a government-created impediment to filing was removed; when the Supreme Court recognized the right you are asserting and made it retroactive on collateral review; or when the facts supporting your claim could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence. Which trigger applies is often the most important question in the case, because the gap between them can be years. This is the deadline people miss most, and missing it usually ends the matter.

My appeal was denied. Is that the end?

Usually not, and the belief that it is costs people remedies every year. There may still be a petition for writ of certiorari, due within ninety days of the court of appeals’ judgment. There may be a § 2255 motion if the one-year period is still open or a later trigger applies. There may be a compassionate release motion, which has no deadline and can be renewed when circumstances change. There may be a sentence reduction if the Sentencing Commission makes a guideline amendment retroactive. There is often litigation involving the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and when the courts are genuinely exhausted, there is clemency. My post-conviction review starts with the judgment, docket, appellate decision, sentence computation, and institutional record, and it ends with a written list of every remedy still open and the deadline governing each. Sometimes that list is empty. More often, it is not.

Can I still get compassionate release based on a change in the law?

Much less often than a year ago. In Rutherford v. United States, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), the Supreme Court held that a disparity created by a statutory change Congress chose not to make retroactive — the First Step Act’s fix to § 924(c) stacking being the leading example — cannot be an extraordinary and compelling reason under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i), and it invalidated U.S.S.G. § 1B1.13(b)(6) to that extent. The other grounds are untouched: medical circumstances, age combined with deterioration and time served, family caregiver circumstances, having been the victim of abuse in custody, and the catch-all for circumstances of similar gravity. If your motion was built primarily on a non-retroactive change in law, it needs to be rebuilt.

Did the Supreme Court change the rules on second § 2255 motions?

Yes, in your favor. In Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), the Court held that AEDPA’s bar on relitigating previously presented claims, 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(1), does not apply to a federal prisoner’s second or successive motion under § 2255(h), and that the Supreme Court retains certiorari jurisdiction to review a court of appeals’ refusal to authorize one. If a successive motion of yours was denied because the claim had been raised before, it was denied under a rule that does not apply to federal prisoners.

What has to happen before a compassionate release motion can be filed?

Administrative exhaustion. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), you must either fully exhaust the Federal Bureau of Prisons administrative appeal process after asking the warden to file on your behalf, or wait thirty days from the warden’s receipt of that request — whichever comes first. Filing early gets the motion dismissed. The thirty-day clock is almost always the faster route.

My release date looks wrong. Can a lawyer fix that?

Frequently, and this is often the fastest relief available in a federal sentence. First Step Act earned time credits are governed by 18 U.S.C. §§ 3632 and 3624(g), and the recurring problems include credits earned but never applied, PATTERN risk score errors that block application, credits not converted into prerelease custody, failure to combine First Step Act credits with Second Chance Act halfway house and home confinement authority, and eligibility disputes under the disqualifying offense list at § 3632(d)(4)(D). These go through the Bureau of Prisons Administrative Remedy Program first and, if that fails, by § 2241 petition in the district of confinement. Because a credit error directly affects a release date, correcting one can outrun anything filed in the sentencing court.

What is the difference between a pardon and a commutation?

A commutation shortens a sentence you are still serving and leaves the conviction in place. A pardon addresses a completed sentence and removes the civil disabilities that flow from the conviction. Both are submitted to the Office of the Pardon Attorney under 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1-1.11, but the rules differ. Section 1.2 says a pardon petition should not be filed until at least five years after release from confinement, and generally not while you are on probation, parole, or supervised release. Section 1.3 says a commutation petition should not be filed at all if other judicial or administrative relief is available, absent exceptional circumstances.

Will a pardon clear my record?

No, and this is important to highlight, as it is often misunderstood in executive clemency. The Department of Justice states it plainly: a pardon does not remove the offense from your record, and after a grant, both the conviction and the pardon appear on it. What a pardon does is remove legal disabilities arising from the conviction and stands as official federal recognition of rehabilitation, which carries real weight in licensing, bonding, immigration, and employment. There is no general federal expungement statute for a valid conviction, which is why a pardon is essentially the only federal record relief option.

Can the President pardon a state conviction?

No. The clemency power under Article II, Section 2, extends to offenses against the United States. A state conviction requires clemency from that state’s governor or clemency board under that state’s own procedures, and someone carrying both federal and state convictions needs two separate applications under two different sets of rules.

How long does clemency take, and can I appeal a denial?

Often years, and no. There is no statutory deadline by which the President must decide, and a denial of clemency is a matter of unreviewable executive discretion. The regulations at 28 C.F.R. Part 1 are advisory internal Department of Justice guidance under § 1.11 and do not create any enforceable rights. Anyone who promises you a timeline or an appeal is not describing this process accurately.

How do you charge?

Much of what I do cannot be described in public, and the matters I am proudest of are often the ones a client would least like discussed. What I can describe is the pattern that recurred most this year: people who had been told, sometimes by more than one lawyer, that nothing further could be done — and who still had a remedy open. Sometimes the § 2255 deadline had not actually run, because the operative trigger under § 2255(f) was not the one everyone had assumed. Sometimes the claim belonged in a § 2241 petition in the district of confinement rather than in the sentencing court. Sometimes, First Step Act time credits under 18 U.S.C. §§ 3632 and 3624(g) had been earned and never applied, and the release date was incorrect.

Two Supreme Court decisions this year moved the ground under many pending cases in both directions — Rutherford v. United States, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), narrowed compassionate release based on non-retroactive changes in law, and Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), widened access to second and successive § 2255 motions. Both are reasons to re-read a file rather than assume it is closed.

Deadlines, and the fact that most of them are unforgiving in a way that has nothing to do with the merits.

The one-year limitation period in 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f) is the clearest example. A person can have a genuinely meritorious claim — ineffective assistance that plainly affected the outcome, a plea that was not knowing and voluntary — and be entirely out of court because the period ran. Which of the four triggers in § 2255(f) applies is a real legal question, and it is often the difference between a case and no case. But once it has run, there is usually nothing to be done, and explaining that to someone who has just spent a year gathering the documents to prove their claim is the hardest conversation in this practice.

The related difficulty is procedural default and the successive motion bar. A claim that was available on direct appeal but not raised may be deemed waived. A prisoner who has already filed one § 2255 motion generally needs authorization from the court of appeals under § 2255(h), and the standards for that are narrow. Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), improved this — the Court held that AEDPA’s bar on relitigating previously presented claims does not apply to federal prisoners’ § 2255(h) motions — but the gate is still a gate. The practical consequence is that the first post-conviction filing has to be right, because it is frequently the only one, and people routinely file a pro se motion in a hurry and forfeit the claim they actually had.

The third challenge is that the law moves, and the people it moves are not in a position to notice. Rutherford v. United States, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), eliminated a compassionate release theory that hundreds of pending motions were built on. The Sentencing Commission designates amendments retroactive on an irregular cycle, and each one creates new eligibility under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2) that nobody tells existing prisoners about. Someone in a federal facility has limited access to the law library, limited access to mail, and no realistic way to track it. So a substantial part of the job is unglamorous re-screening — going back through old files against each new decision and each new amendment — rather than anything that happens in a courtroom.

And then there is the part that is challenging for a different reason. A great deal of this work is telling people no. Most cases do not have a viable claim, most sentences are not legally vulnerable, and Supreme Court Rule 10 makes clear that certiorari is rarely granted for the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law. Families in this position have often already paid someone who told them what they wanted to hear. Being accurate is more useful than being encouraging, but it is not easier.

The work that shaped my practice most was capital post-conviction. I spent seven years as a partner at Blume Franklin-Best & Young, LLC, litigating post-conviction and federal habeas cases for clients under sentences of death and for people who had received life sentences as juveniles. Capital post-conviction is where you learn that a trial record is not a neutral account of what happened — it is a document with gaps in it, and the gaps are where the case is. That is the same skill the rest of my practice depends on.

Before that, appellate work at the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense meant reading hundreds of trial transcripts, most of them belonging to people who had no realistic prospect of anyone reading them carefully. The South Carolina Public Defender Association named me Public Defender of the Year in 2010 for that work, and it is still the recognition that means the most to me.

I now chair the Board of Directors of Justice 360 and serve as Co-Chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Amicus Committee for the Fourth Circuit. Both roles grew directly out of the capital work rather than from anything I planned.

Two thoughts, both practical.

First, if you or someone in your family has a federal conviction and you have been told that nothing further can be done, get the file reviewed again by someone who does this work. Not because that advice is always wrong — often it is right — but because the analysis depends on details that are easy to get wrong from the outside. Whether the § 2255 one-year period has actually run depends on which of the four triggers in § 2255(f) applies. Whether a claim belongs in the sentencing court or in the district of confinement depends on whether you are challenging the sentence or its execution. Whether First Step Act time credits under 18 U.S.C. §§ 3632 and 3624(g) have been correctly applied is a computation question that is frequently answered incorrectly. And the law changed twice this year in ways that cut in both directions: Rutherford v. United States, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), closed a compassionate release theory, and Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), opened access to second and successive § 2255 motions. A file that was correctly closed in 2024 is not necessarily correctly closed now.

Second, a caution about clemency. Federal pardon and commutation work attracts non-lawyer consultants, and a clemency petition requires disclosures that are candid to the point of being uncomfortable. Those disclosures are protected by the attorney-client privilege when you make them to a lawyer. They are not protected when you make them to a consultant. That is not a marketing point; it is the reason I do not work with pardon consultants and advise clients against it.

I am admitted in New York and South Carolina and practice in federal courts nationwide, with offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Consultations on post-conviction matters begin with the judgment, docket, appellate decision, and sentence computation, and end with a written assessment of every remaining remedy and the deadline governing each. While some lawyers may consider this overkill, at Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C., when we say we leave no stone unturned, we mean it.