Full Opinion

Appellate Case: 26-5029 Document: 17-1 Date Filed: 10/22/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT October 22, 2026 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 26-5029 (D.C. No. 4:12-CR-00050-JDR-7) JAMES MILLER, a/k/a Mill Ticcet, (N.D. Okla.) Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________ Before HARTZ, TYMKOVICH, and McHUGH, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ James Miller, a federal prisoner proceeding pro se, 1 appeals from the district court’s denial of his motion to correct or reduce his criminal sentence. The district court denied the motion on the merits. We affirm the denial, albeit on a ground different from those relied on in the district court’s order. We conclude that the After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined * unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. We construe Miller’s filings liberally but do not serve as his advocate. Luo 1 v. Wang, 71 F.4th 1289, 1291 n.1 (10th Cir. 2023). Appellate Case: 26-5029 Document: 17-1 Date Filed: 10/22/2026 Page: 2 district court lacked jurisdiction to consider Miller’s motion because he did not file it in the proper court. In 2012, Miller was arrested in Oklahoma on state charges for escape from confinement. He pleaded guilty and was placed in state custody. Later that year he was indicted on a federal charge of Hobbs Act robbery in the Northern District of Oklahoma, which resulted in a 180-month sentence. The sentence was ordered to run consecutively to the sentences imposed in his state case. After Miller was federally sentenced in 2013, Oklahoma authorities took him into custody to complete his state sentence, and he then returned to federal custody in 2014. In 2025, Miller filed a motion in the Northern District of Oklahoma to correct or amend his sentence. He argued that the “Bureau of Prison’s officials took it upon themselves to re-sentence [him].” R. at 34. He argued that his sentence should be credited for the time spent in custody before he was sentenced and transferred back to Oklahoma custody. The motion’s certificate of service, return address, and postmark indicated he mailed it from Coleman Penitentiary in Florida. The district court denied the motion on the merits. Miller then filed another motion (again mailing it from Coleman Penitentiary) seeking essentially the same relief as his first motion to correct or amend his sentence. The district court denied it as duplicative. Miller appealed. On appeal Miller challenges the district court’s first decision on the merits. In response the government points out that Miller’s motions before the district court 2 Appellate Case: 26-5029 Document: 17-1 Date Filed: 10/22/2026 Page: 3 challenged the administration of his sentence under § 2241 and that the district court accordingly lacked jurisdiction over the motion. We agree. Challenges to the execution of a federal inmate’s sentence must be brought in a § 2241 application; even if an applicant styles a sentence-execution challenge as something else, we construe it as a § 2241 application. See, e.g., United States v. Miller, 594 F.3d 1240, 1241–42 (10th Cir. 2010) (construing filing styled as “petition for a writ of nunc pro tunc” as § 2241 application because of type of relief sought). This includes challenges which seek credit for time served in custody before being sentenced. See Hale v. Fox, 829 F.3d 1162, 1165 n.2 (10th Cir. 2016) (“The principal purpose of a § 2241 application is to challenge the execution, rather than the validity, of a federal prisoner’s sentence.”). Thus Miller’s motion was a § 2241 application because at its core it attacked the execution and calculation of Miller’s sentence. 2 Jurisdiction over § 2241 petitions “lies in only one district: the district of confinement.” Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426, 443 (2004). At the time he filed his motions, Miller was incarcerated in Florida. Accordingly, the district court lacked jurisdiction to consider his § 2241 petition because he filed it in the district where he was convicted, not the district where he was incarcerated. 3 2 Because Miller is a federal prisoner proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, he does not need a certificate of appealability to obtain review in this court. See Montez v. McKinna, 208 F.3d 862, 867 (10th Cir. 2000). 3 Transferring the petition in the instant case would not serve the interests of justice, and we decline to do so here. See 28 U.S.C. § 1631. 3 Appellate Case: 26-5029 Document: 17-1 Date Filed: 10/22/2026 Page: 4 Affirmed. Entered for the Court Harris L Hartz Circuit Judge 4