James McKinney v. Steve Lauritsen

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted November 7, 2025*
Decided November 10, 2025
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge
DORIS L. PRYOR, Circuit Judge
No. 25-1200
JAMES MCKINNEY,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
STEVE LAURITSEN,
Respondent-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Central District of Illinois.
No. 1:24-cv-1328
Colleen R. Lawless,
Judge.
O R D E R
James McKinney appeals the denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus,
see 28 U.S.C. § 2241, challenging the Bureau of Prison’s computation of his sentence.
Because the Bureau properly calculated and executed his sentence, we affirm.
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 25-1200 Page 2
This appeal has an extensive procedural history. In 2017, McKinney pleaded
guilty in the Southern District of Iowa to heroin-related offenses and was sentenced to
50 months’ imprisonment, followed by six years’ supervised release. In 2019, he was
transferred by the Bureau of Prisons, first to a residential reentry center and later to
home confinement. After he violated his placement conditions in January 2020, the
Bureau cancelled his home confinement and ordered him to return to the reentry center.
McKinney, however, removed his GPS ankle monitor and fled. He was a fugitive from
January 6, 2020, until September 13, 2021, when the U.S. Marshals Service arrested him.
In early 2022, McKinney pleaded guilty to a charge of escape from custody
under 18 U.S.C. § 751(a). He was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment to be served
consecutively to the remaining term of imprisonment for his heroin conviction. He was
also sentenced to a year of supervised release, to be served concurrently with the six-
year term of supervised release in the heroin case.
On September 30, 2022, McKinney completed his custodial sentence in the heroin
case. The Bureau, having yet to receive the judgment in the escape case, released him
erroneously. He then began serving his concurrent supervised release term.
In October 2023, the Probation Office petitioned to revoke McKinney’s
supervised release in the heroin case based on violations of his conditions of
supervision. The district court agreed and revoked his supervised release. The court
sentenced him to 10 months in prison and 60 months of supervised release. McKinney
then began serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution Pekin in central
Illinois.
By the time McKinney returned to prison, the Bureau had received the
revocation judgment and became aware of the unsatisfied judgment in the escape case.
The Bureau recalculated his sentence, combining the custodial sentences from the
escape case and the revocation case for an aggregate sentence of 22 months. In March
2024, the Bureau notified the district court of these details and its subsequent
recalculation of McKinney’s sentence.
In March 2024, McKinney moved to alter or amend judgment in the escape case,
contending among other things that the Bureau “added 12 months to [the] sentence that
[he had] already served and completed supervised release for.” The district court
denied these motions, noting that McKinney was “not entitled to a boon by virtue of
[the Bureau’s] error.” And because McKinney objected to the Bureau’s execution of his

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No. 25-1200 Page 3
sentence instead of the judgment itself, the court concluded, his claim would be
cognizable only if raised in a collateral attack in the district of his confinement.
In September 2024, McKinney petitioned the Central District of Illinois under
28 U.S.C. § 2241 to challenge the Bureau’s execution of his sentence. As relevant for this
appeal, he argued, first, that because a term of supervised release cannot begin until a
prescribed term of imprisonment ends, see 18 U.S.C. § 3583(a), his completion of his
supervised release in the escape case meant that he must have finished serving the
custodial portion of that sentence. Next, he invoked the common law doctrine of
“primary custody”1 and argued that the prison term on his escape charge began
running once the Marshals Service apprehended him in September 2021. He also
asserted that the Bureau’s calculation violated a common law rule that requires a
sentence to be served continuously rather than stretched out through releases and
reimprisonments. See Dunne v. Keohane, 14 F.3d 335, 336 (7th Cir. 1994). He argued that
the Bureau violated this rule (also known as the doctrine against punishment on the
installment plan) by requiring him to serve out his escape sentence despite having
released him erroneously, through no fault of his own.
The district court denied McKinney’s petition. First, the court explained that
while the statutory framework for computing multiple sentences did not address
McKinney’s situation, see 18 U.S.C. § 3584, the Bureau’s calculation was consistent with
the statute, and no provision allowed the Bureau to disregard McKinney’s
undischarged escape sentence. Next, the court determined that the doctrine of primary
custody did not apply to McKinney’s situation because for the relevant time he had
been only in federal custody. As for McKinney’s argument regarding the rule against
installment punishment, the court found the rule of “dubious application” because
McKinney’s delayed sentence had been caused by the government’s “inadvertent
error,” and there were no issues of fundamental fairness.
1 The doctrine of primary custody governs sentence calculation when two
separate sovereigns—state and federal, for example—have custody of a prisoner at
different times. Under the doctrine, a prisoner’s federal sentence does not begin until
the federal government exercises primary jurisdiction over him. Pope v. Perdue, 889 F.3d
410, 415 (7th Cir. 2018). The doctrine also authorizes the sovereign that first arrests a
defendant to take primary custody over him.

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No. 25-1200 Page 4
On appeal, McKinney presses only one argument—that the district court erred
by declining to afford him relief under the rule against installment punishment.2 Citing
Dunne and related cases, he maintains that a sentence must be served continuously,
unless interrupted by escape or some fault of the prisoner, and he cannot be required to
serve it in installments. He contends that his 12-month prison term in the escape case
expired during the 13 months that he erroneously was out on release, so the Bureau had
no authority to re-impose the sentence.
The district court rightly concluded, however, that McKinney was not entitled to
relief under the common law rule. This rule, which rarely is invoked successfully,
see Dunne, 14 F.3d at 336, does not apply here. This is not a case where “the government
is trying to delay the expiration of the defendant’s sentence.” Id. at 337. Declarations
from Bureau officials reflect that the Bureau had not received the judgment in
McKinney’s escape case upon its entry, and thus the agency could not account for it in
its sentencing calculations. As the district court explained, the Bureau’s error was
inadvertent, and equity did not call for application of the rule, given that McKinney’s
early-release error was discovered only when he was returned to prison for his own
conduct in violating the conditions of his supervised release in the heroin case. Thus,
the circumstances of McKinney’s reimprisonment differ factually from the handful of
cases where prisoners have successfully invoked the rule. E.g., White v. Pearlman,
42 F.2d 788, 789 (10th Cir. 1930) (applying rule after prisoner called attention to
government’s error in releasing him and was later recommitted); Green v. Christiansen,
732 F.2d 1397, 1400 (9th Cir. 1984) (applying rule where government mistakenly
released prisoner and re-apprehended him two years later after discovering its error).
To the extent McKinney questions the district court’s determination that the
Bureau properly administered the escape and revocation sentences consecutively,
see 18 U.S.C. § 3584(a), he does not develop any argument for us to address, see Pole v.
Randolph, 570 F.3d 922, 939 (7th Cir. 2009).
AFFIRMED
2 On May 30, 2025, while this appeal was pending, the Bureau released
McKinney from custody. Despite his release from prison, this appeal is not moot
because he remains subject to a term of supervised release and a decision in his favor
could affect the length of that term. See Pope, 889 F.3d at 414.

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