United States of America v. Claude Sloan

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 23-6078
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
CLAUDE SLOAN,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at Big
Stone Gap. James P. Jones, Senior District Judge. (2:18-cr-00004-JPJ-1)
Submitted: July 20, 2023 Decided: July 25, 2023
Before NIEMEYER and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Claude Sloan, Appellant Pro Se. Steven Randall Ramseyer, Assistant United States
Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Abingdon, Virginia, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:
Claude Sloan appeals the district court’s order summarily denying Sloan’s petition
for actual innocence and selective prosecution. We have reviewed the record and find no
reversible error.* Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order. United States v. Sloan,
No. 2:18-cr-00004-JPJ-1 (W.D. Va. Dec. 12, 2022). We dispense with oral argument
because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
* Although the district court did not explain its reasoning for denying Sloan’s
petition, our review of the record reveals that the petition is properly construed as an
unauthorized, successive 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion and, thus, was subject to dismissal on
that basis. See United States v. Caldwell, 7 F.4th 191, 200 n.4 (4th Cir. 2021) (“[W]e may
affirm on any grounds apparent from the record” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

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