Federal Post-Conviction Timeline: Deadlines You Cannot Miss

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

What are the federal post-conviction deadlines?

Several deadlines run at once. A criminal notice of appeal is due in 14 days (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A)); certiorari in 90 days (Sup. Ct. R. 13); a §2255 motion within one year of the latest §2255(f) trigger; a Rule 33 new-trial motion in 14 days or 3 years; an appeal from a §2255 denial in 60 days.

Key takeaways on post-conviction deadlines

• The criminal appeal deadline is 14 days, not 10. Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A) requires a defendant’s notice of appeal “within 14 days after the later of: (i) the entry of either the judgment or the order being appealed; or (ii) the filing of the government’s notice of appeal.” Sources saying 10 days are quoting the pre-2009 rule.
• The §2255 clock runs from the latest of four dates, and it is claim-specific. 28 U.S.C. §2255(f) says the period “shall run from the latest of” four triggers. Different claims in one motion can sit on different clocks.
• A pending compassionate-release motion does not stop the §2255 clock. Nothing in §2255(f) makes any trigger date depend on another motion. People lose §2255 rights waiting eighteen months for a §3582(c) ruling.
• The clock for a new decision runs from recognition, not retroactivity. Dodd v. United States, 545 U.S. 353 (2005): §2255(f)(3) “unequivocally identifies one, and only one, date … ‘the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court.'”
• Appealing a §2255 denial is a 60-day deadline, not 14. A §2255 proceeding is treated as civil for time computation, so Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B) governs — the United States is a party. Counting 14 days here is a common and fatal error.
• Mailing from prison counts as filing. Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988), and Rule 3(d) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings treat a paper as filed when deposited in the institution’s internal mail system — if you use the legal-mail system and attach the required declaration.

The master federal post-conviction deadline table

Every clock below runs independently. Nothing on this list pauses anything else on it. Find the row that matches where your case is, then read the trigger column, because the trigger — not the length — is what people get wrong.

Table 1. Deadlines after a federal conviction: trigger, length, source, and whether it can be extended.

What you are filing	What starts the clock	How long	Source	Extendable or tollable?
Notice of appeal from the criminal judgment	Entry of the judgment or order appealed, or the government’s notice of appeal — whichever is later	14 days	Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A)	Yes. The district court may extend up to 30 more days on excusable neglect or good cause, with or without a motion — Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(4)
Notice of appeal where a post-trial motion was filed	Entry of the order disposing of the last remaining motion, or entry of the judgment of conviction — whichever is later	14 days	Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(3)(A)	Same 30-day extension
Petition for certiorari on direct review	Entry of the court of appeals’ judgment — not the issuance of the mandate	90 days	Sup. Ct. R. 13	Yes. A Justice may extend “for a period not exceeding sixty days” for good cause — 28 U.S.C. §2101(c)
Motion for new trial on newly discovered evidence	“the verdict or finding of guilty” — not sentencing	3 years	Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(b)(1)	Yes, for good cause or excusable neglect under Fed. R. Crim. P. 45(b)(1). It is also a claim-processing rule the government can forfeit — Eberhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 12 (2005)
Motion for new trial on any other ground	“the verdict or finding of guilty”	14 days	Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(b)(2)	Same
Motion to correct a clear error in the sentence	The oral announcement of the sentence — Rule 35(c) defines “sentencing” that way	14 days	Fed. R. Crim. P. 35(a)	No
Motion to reduce the sentence for substantial assistance	Sentencing	1 year, with three narrow exceptions for later-arising information	Fed. R. Crim. P. 35(b)	The defendant cannot file this at all — it is the government’s motion
§2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence	The latest of: finality of the judgment; removal of an unconstitutional governmental impediment; the date the Supreme Court initially recognized a new retroactive right; or the date the facts could have been discovered with due diligence	1 year	28 U.S.C. §2255(f)(1)–(4)	Not extendable in advance. Equitable tolling is available in narrow circumstances
Notice of appeal from the denial of a §2255 motion	Entry of the district court’s order	60 days	Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B); DOJ Justice Manual 2-4.121	Yes. Rule 4(a)(5) extension (30 days / 14 days after the order, whichever is later); Rule 4(a)(6) reopening for 14 days on lack of notice
Certificate of appealability	Entry of the final order in the §2255 case	The district court “must issue or deny” one when it enters a final order	Rule 11(a), Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings	A denial is renewed in the court of appeals, not appealed
Petition for certiorari from a §2255 denial	Entry of the court of appeals’ judgment	90 days	Sup. Ct. R. 13; DOJ Justice Manual 2-4.121	28 U.S.C. §2101(c) 60-day extension
Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) motion in the §2255 civil case	Entry of the judgment or order	1 year for reasons (1), (2), (3); a “reasonable time” for the rest	Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1)	No — the rule’s own note says this limit “may not be enlarged under Rule 6(b)”
Compassionate-release motion under §3582(c)(1)(A)	You may file after full exhaustion or “the lapse of 30 days from the receipt of such a request by the warden,” whichever is earlier	No filing deadline	18 U.S.C. §3582(c)(1)(A)	Not applicable — and filing one does not toll §2255(f)

Table 1 is general information, not legal advice. Trigger dates depend on the docket in your own case, and several rows have exceptions this table cannot capture.

What is the deadline to appeal a federal conviction?

Fourteen days. Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A) requires that “[i]n a criminal case, a defendant’s notice of appeal must be filed in the district court within 14 days after the later of: (i) the entry of either the judgment or the order being appealed; or (ii) the filing of the government’s notice of appeal.”

Three details inside that sentence account for most missed appeals.

It runs from entry, not from the sentencing hearing. The clock starts when the clerk enters the judgment on the docket, which is often a day or several days after the judge announces the sentence in open court. Rule 4(b)(2) also protects an eager filer: “[a] notice of appeal filed after the court announces a decision, sentence, or order—but before the entry of the judgment or order—is treated as filed on the date of and after the entry.” Filing early is safe. Filing late is not.

Post-trial motions move it. Under Rule 4(b)(3)(A), if a defendant timely files certain motions under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the notice of appeal “must be filed within 14 days after the entry of the order disposing of the last such remaining motion, or within 14 days after the entry of the judgment of conviction, whichever period ends later.” The word doing the work is timely. An untimely post-trial motion does not reset anything.

If you are one day late, the extension is real but it is not automatic. Rule 4(b)(4) provides that “[u]pon a finding of excusable neglect or good cause, the district court may—before or after the time has expired, with or without motion and notice—extend the time to file a notice of appeal for a period not to exceed 30 days from the expiration of the time otherwise prescribed by this Rule 4(b).” That is a maximum of 44 days from entry of judgment, and only if a judge makes the finding.

The 10-day figure you will find online is the old rule

A large amount of published material — including federal opinions — states the criminal appeal deadline as 10 days. That was correct before the 2009 time-computation amendments to the Federal Rules. United States v. Leijano-Cruz, No. 05-50280 (5th Cir. Dec. 27, 2006), for example, sets the then-operative text out in full: “In a criminal case, a defendant’s notice of appeal must be filed in the district court within 10 days after the later of: (i) the entry of either the judgment or the order being appealed; or (ii) the filing of the government’s notice of appeal.”

That text is no longer the rule. The current rule says 14. If a source you are relying on says 10 days, check its date before you count anything from it — and if you are reading a case, remember that a court quoting the rule is quoting the version in force when it wrote.

When does my conviction become final?

Finality is a different question from the appeal deadline, and it is the trigger for the §2255 clock most movants are on. Clay v. United States, 537 U.S. 522 (2003), supplies the rule:

“For the purpose of starting the clock on §2255’s one-year limitation period, a judgment of conviction becomes final when the time expires for filing a petition for certiorari contesting the appellate court’s affirmation of the conviction.”

Read that with the three ordinary case postures in mind.

You appealed, lost, and did not seek certiorari. Clay is squarely your case. Finality attaches when the 90-day certiorari window closes — not when the court of appeals issues its mandate. Clay was explicit about the difference, noting that “[t]he time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari runs from the date of entry of the judgment or order sought to be reviewed, and not from the issuance date of the mandate (or its equivalent under local practice),” quoting Sup. Ct. R. 13(3). Counting from the mandate is one of the most common ways a §2255 motion arrives late.

You appealed and sought certiorari. Clay recorded, without deciding, that the courts of appeals “have uniformly concluded that, if a prisoner petitions for certiorari, the contested conviction becomes final when the Supreme Court either denies the writ or issues a decision on the merits.”

You never appealed at all. Clay did not decide this posture. The courts of appeals have generally held that the conviction becomes final when the time to file a notice of appeal expires — which, under current Rule 4(b)(1)(A), is 14 days after entry of judgment. Because that is circuit law rather than Supreme Court law and the arithmetic is unforgiving, this is a date to confirm against your own docket rather than assume.

Clay also placed finality in a larger frame worth quoting for anyone comparing sources: “Finality attaches when this Court affirms a conviction on the merits on direct review or denies a petition for a writ of certiorari, or when the time for filing a certiorari petition expires.”

Computing the specific date from the specific events in your case — including the day-counting conventions and the weekend-and-holiday rules — is the job of the sibling page, 2255 statute of limitations. This page tells you which clocks exist; that one does the arithmetic on the §2255 clock.

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

One year — but the year does not necessarily start where you think. 28 U.S.C. §2255(f) provides that “[a] 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion under this section,” and that “[t]he limitation period shall run from the latest of”:

1. “the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes final”;
2. “the date on which the impediment to making a motion created by governmental action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if the movant was prevented from making a motion by such governmental action”;
3. “the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review”; or
4. “the date on which the facts supporting the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.”

Three consequences follow, and each of them costs people motions.

“The latest of” is a floor, not a menu. If two triggers apply, you get the later one. That is a benefit, not a burden — but it also means you cannot assume trigger (1) governs simply because it is listed first.

Trigger (3) starts when the right was recognized, not when it was made retroactive. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in federal post-conviction practice, and the Supreme Court decided it directly. Dodd v. United States, 545 U.S. 353 (2005), held that §2255(f)(3) “unequivocally identifies one, and only one, date from which the 1-year limitation period is measured: ‘the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court.'” The retroactivity clause is a condition on whether the subsection applies at all, and “that clause has no impact whatsoever on the date from which the 1-year limitation period in ¶ 6(3) begins to run.” The Court acknowledged where that leads: “Although we recognize the potential for harsh results in some cases, we are not free to rewrite the statute that Congress has enacted.” Justice Stevens, in dissent, put the practical problem plainly — the reading “would make it possible for the limitations period to expire before the cause of action accrues.”

In plain terms: when the Supreme Court decides a case that might help you, your year starts that day, even if no court has yet said the decision is retroactive, and even if the retroactivity fight takes two years to resolve. Whether a given decision reaches an already-final conviction at all is covered at retroactive Supreme Court decisions.

Trigger (4) is about diligence, not discovery. The text is “could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence” — not “were discovered.” A movant who learns a fact three years late still has to explain why a diligent person would not have learned it sooner.

If the year has already run, the doctrine that can sometimes save a late motion is at equitable tolling. It is narrow, and it is not a substitute for filing on time.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The first document we build in any post-conviction engagement is not a motion. It is a one-page date sheet: date of the oral pronouncement, date of entry of judgment, date the notice of appeal was filed or the day the window closed, date of the court of appeals’ judgment, whether certiorari was sought and when it was resolved, and the earliest date each claim’s facts were reasonably discoverable. Almost every strategic question after that is answerable from those lines. And the sheet routinely surfaces the thing nobody asked about — a claim sitting on a later §2255(f)(4) trigger than the rest of the motion, or a certiorari window that closed on a different day than the client assumed.

Does filing for compassionate release stop the §2255 clock?

No. This warning matters because the fact pattern is common and the loss is total.

Read §2255(f) again. The period runs from the latest of four dates: finality, removal of a governmental impediment, Supreme Court recognition of a new retroactive right, or the date facts could have been discovered with diligence. None of those four dates is affected by the filing or the pendency of any other motion. There is no tolling provision in §2255(f) for a pending motion of any kind. A movant who files under 18 U.S.C. §3582(c)(1)(A) and waits for a ruling is not buying time; the §2255 year keeps running underneath.

The exposure is structural. Section 3582(c)(1)(A) has no filing deadline — a defendant may move after full exhaustion of administrative rights “or the lapse of 30 days from the receipt of such a request by the warden of the defendant’s facility, whichever is earlier.” Because there is no deadline on that motion, there is nothing to force a decision quickly, and briefing plus a ruling can consume a year or more. Meanwhile §2255(f) is indifferent.

The Supreme Court sharpened the point in Fernandez v. United States, 608 U.S. 411, 146 S. Ct. 1292 (2026), holding that “[a] prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through 28 U. S. C. §2255, not 18 U. S. C. §3582.” That is a holding about the vehicle, not about tolling — but it produces the same warning from the other direction. A defendant who packaged a challenge to the validity of his conviction inside a compassionate-release motion did not merely choose the wrong statute; he may also have spent the §2255 year doing it. What to do when that has already happened is the subject of 2255 after compassionate release denial.

The same logic applies to every other pending matter. A pending administrative request to the Bureau of Prisons does not toll §2255(f). Neither does a pending motion for compassionate release, a pending request for records, a pending search for counsel, or a pending prior §2255 motion.

How long do I have to appeal a §2255 denial?

Sixty days — and the reason is that a §2255 proceeding is treated as civil for the purpose of computing time to appeal, even though it lives on the criminal docket.

The Department of Justice states the rule in its own manual. DOJ Justice Manual 2-4.121 provides: “Proceedings under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and habeas corpus are treated as independent proceedings subject to the rules for civil cases for the purpose of computing time to appeal under the rules. This means that the time to appeal from the district court to the court of appeals is 60 days and the time to petition for a writ of certiorari is 90 days.”

Sixty days rather than thirty because the United States is a party. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B) provides that “[t]he notice of appeal may be filed by any party within 60 days after entry of the judgment or order appealed from if one of the parties is: (i) the United States; (ii) a United States agency; (iii) a United States officer or employee sued in an official capacity.”

The trap here runs in the opposite direction from the criminal-judgment trap. A movant who has just spent a year internalizing that a criminal appeal is 14 days may count 14 days from a §2255 denial and file three weeks early — harmless — or, far worse, may assume he blew the deadline on day 15 and stop. Sixty days is the number.

Two additional pieces of the sequence belong here.

A notice of appeal alone is not enough. You also need a certificate of appealability. Rule 11(a) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings requires the district court to issue or deny a COA when it enters a final order adverse to the movant. A denial is not itself appealed; the request is renewed in the court of appeals. The standard and the mechanics are at certificate of appealability.

Missing the 60 days is not always the end. Rule 4(a)(5) lets the district court extend the time if a party moves “no later than 30 days after the time prescribed by this Rule 4(a) expires” and shows excusable neglect or good cause, with the extension capped at “30 days after the prescribed time or 14 days after the date when the order granting the motion is entered, whichever is later.” Rule 4(a)(6) allows reopening for 14 days if the movant did not receive notice of entry within 21 days, moves within 180 days of entry or 14 days of receiving notice (whichever is earlier), and no party is prejudiced. Both are discretionary. Neither is a plan.

What is the deadline for a new trial motion?

Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(b) sets two deadlines, and the trigger for both is the same event — one many people get wrong.

Newly discovered evidence: three years. “Any motion for a new trial grounded on newly discovered evidence must be filed within 3 years after the verdict or finding of guilty.”

Everything else: fourteen days. “Any motion for a new trial grounded on any reason other than newly discovered evidence must be filed within 14 days after the verdict or finding of guilty.”

Both run from the verdict or finding of guilty — not from sentencing, and not from entry of judgment. In a case that went to trial and was sentenced months later, the three-year window opened on the day the jury returned its verdict. Counting from the judgment gives you a date that is months too generous.

Rule 33 also carries a stop sign for a case still on appeal: “[i]f an appeal is pending, the court may not grant a motion for a new trial until the appellate court remands the case.” You can file; the district court cannot grant.

Since the 2005 amendments, the court may extend these periods for good cause under Fed. R. Crim. P. 45(b)(1) — on a motion made before the time expires, or afterward if the failure to act was the result of excusable neglect — because Rule 45(b)(2) now bars extensions only for Rule 35. Eberhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 12 (2005), quoted the earlier version of the rule: courts “may not extend the time to take any action under [Rule 33], except as stated” in Rule 33 itself, citing Fed. R. Crim. P. 45(b)(2). Eberhart also holds, however, that Rule 33’s limits are claim-processing rules rather than jurisdictional ones — see the next section, because the distinction has real consequences.

Which vehicle a piece of new evidence actually belongs in — Rule 33, §2255, or something else — is a separate question with its own analysis, at newly discovered evidence.

Rule 35: fourteen days, and it is not your motion

Fed. R. Crim. P. 35 contains two very different provisions that share a number, and conflating them wastes a lot of people’s time.

Rule 35(a) is a fourteen-day error-correction window. “Within 14 days after sentencing, the court may correct a sentence that resulted from arithmetical, technical, or other clear error.” The trap is in the definition: Rule 35(c) provides that “[a]s used in this rule, ‘sentencing’ means the oral announcement of the sentence.” So this clock starts in the courtroom, not when the clerk enters judgment — which means Rule 35(a) can expire before the written judgment is even docketed. It is also narrow by design: arithmetical, technical, or other clear error, not a change of heart about the sentence.

Rule 35(b) belongs to the government. “Upon the government’s motion made within one year of sentencing, the court may reduce a sentence if the defendant, after sentencing, provided substantial assistance in investigating or prosecuting another person.” A defendant cannot file a Rule 35(b) motion. The government may move more than a year out in three defined situations — where the assistance involved information “not known to the defendant until one year or more after sentencing,” information provided within the year “but which did not become useful to the government until more than one year after sentencing,” or information whose usefulness “could not reasonably have been anticipated” until later and was promptly provided. When it does act under Rule 35(b), “the court may reduce the sentence to a level below the minimum sentence established by statute.”

This page covers Rule 35 as a deadline. Rule 35 as a sentence-reduction remedy — what substantial assistance means, how these motions are negotiated, what a defendant can realistically do to encourage one — belongs to the firm’s sentence-mitigation practice and is covered at rule 35 motion.

Which deadlines are jurisdictional, and which can be forfeited?

This is the distinction that decides what happens when a deadline is missed, and almost no competitor page addresses it. It is not academic: it determines whether a court must dismiss on its own, or whether the government has to raise the problem — and can lose the point by staying quiet.

The Supreme Court’s rule of decision comes from Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Servs. of Chicago, 583 U.S. 17 (2017):

“If a time prescription governing the transfer of adjudicatory authority from one Article III court to another appears in a statute, the limitation is jurisdictional; otherwise, the time specification fits within the claim-processing category.”

The consequences differ sharply. A jurisdictional defect “deprives a court of adjudicatory authority over the case, necessitating dismissal—a ‘drastic’ result,” and “is not subject to waiver or forfeiture.” A claim-processing rule, by contrast, is “subject to forfeiture if not properly raised by the appellee.”

Applied to the deadlines on this page:

The civil appeal deadline is jurisdictional. Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205 (2007), held: “Today we make clear that the timely filing of a notice of appeal in a civil case is a jurisdictional requirement,” and “[b]ecause this Court has no authority to create equitable exceptions to jurisdictional requirements, use of the ‘unique circumstances’ doctrine is illegitimate.” That matters directly here, because an appeal from a §2255 denial is a civil appeal governed by 28 U.S.C. §2107 and Rule 4(a). Hamer later clarified that Bowles‘s “mandatory and jurisdictional” phrasing “is a characterization left over from days when we were ‘less than meticulous’ in our use of the term ‘jurisdictional'” — but did not disturb Bowles‘s holding, because §2107 is a congressional time limit.

The criminal appeal deadline is not jurisdictional. Rule 4(b)’s limits appear in a court-made rule, not a statute, so under Hamer‘s test they are claim-processing rules. Circuits describe this consistently. The Second Circuit, in United States v. Harris, No. 22-2717 (2d Cir. Jan. 14, 2026), restates that Rule 4(b)’s time limits are “not jurisdictional and are therefore capable of forfeiture by the government,” while remaining “mandatory and inflexible” when the government “properly objects to the untimeliness of a defendant’s criminal appeal.” The Seventh Circuit, in United States v. Carter, No. 26-1406 (7th Cir. July 17, 2026), says the same: “Unlike in a civil case, the deadline to file a notice of appeal in a criminal case—with or without an extension—is not jurisdictional; instead, it is a claim-processing rule that the government may forfeit or waive.”

Rule 33’s limits are not jurisdictional either. Eberhart holds that “Rule 33 … is a claim-processing rule,” and that “where the Government failed to raise a defense of untimeliness until after the District Court had reached the merits, it forfeited that defense.” Claim-processing rules “assure relief to a party properly raising them, but do not compel the same result if the party forfeits them.”

Why this is not a reason to relax

The practical picture has been moving, and in a direction that helps late filers at the margins — but only at the margins.

In Harris, the Second Circuit found the government forfeited its objection to a notice of appeal filed nearly three years late, because it failed to raise untimeliness in a motion for summary affirmance responding to an Anders motion; the court leaned on how “obvious” the untimeliness was and expressly reserved whether forfeiture follows in every such posture. In Carter, the Seventh Circuit said it has “changed our policy and do[es] not address the timeliness of an appeal in a criminal case unless and until the government has raised the argument,” and held that where a notice arrives inside Rule 4(b)(4)’s 30-day window, the appeal should not be dismissed “until the district judge has made a finding on whether an extension of time is justified, even when the appellant has not filed a motion.” Carter also closed a door: “the docketing of an untimely notice of appeal does not implicitly extend the appeal deadline.”

Now the other side. In United States v. Benefield, No. 24-4242 (4th Cir. Jan. 28, 2025), the Fourth Circuit stated the rule that governs every case in which the government does its job: “[w]hen the Government promptly invokes the rule in response to a late-filed criminal appeal, we must dismiss.”

So the honest summary is this. Non-jurisdictional does not mean forgiving. It means your appeal survives only if the government chooses not to object or forgets to. That is not a litigation strategy. It is a lottery ticket you get handed after you have already lost the thing you controlled.

Which deadline applies if I have several claims?

Each claim can sit on its own clock, and a timely claim does not rescue an untimely one.

The statutory text points this way. Section 2255(f) says the period “shall run from the latest of” four triggers, and three of those four are inherently claim-specific: a governmental impediment that prevented this claim, the recognition of the right asserted, and the discoverability of “the facts supporting the claim or claims presented.”

The leading appellate treatment is Zack v. Tucker, 704 F.3d 917 (11th Cir. 2013) (en banc). Construing 28 U.S.C. §2244(d)(1) — AEDPA’s materially identical limitations provision for state prisoners — the Eleventh Circuit held: “the statute of limitations in AEDPA applies on a claim-by-claim basis in a multiple trigger date case.” It overruled its own prior decision in Walker v. Crosby, 341 F.3d 1240 (11th Cir. 2003), “to the extent it holds that § 2244(d)(1) provides a single statute of limitations that applies to the habeas corpus application as a whole and that individual claims within an application cannot be reviewed separately for timeliness.” The court’s reasoning was that an application-wide rule would let a single late-accruing claim revive claims that had been time-barred for years.

Two cautions belong with that. Zack is an Eleventh Circuit en banc decision in a §2254 case, so it is not automatically the rule in every circuit for §2255 — the structure of the two provisions is materially the same, but the question is one to confirm in your own circuit rather than assume. And because Zack overruled Walker, older material describing the Eleventh Circuit’s rule as application-wide is describing law that no longer exists there.

The practical consequence is the same either way, and it is the reason this section exists: do not assume that finding one late-accruing claim opens the door for everything else. If a new Supreme Court decision gives you a fresh §2255(f)(3) clock, that clock is for the claim built on that decision. Your unrelated ineffective-assistance claim is still measured from finality. This is also why the pleading decision is so consequential — a first §2255 motion is realistically the only one most movants get, because a second requires authorization from the court of appeals under the narrow gate described at second or successive 2255.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: From inside a facility, the deadline problem is rarely that someone did not care about the date. It is that the information needed to compute it — the docket sheet, the date of entry of judgment, whether counsel filed a notice of appeal, whether a certiorari petition was ever filed — is not in the person’s hands, and getting it takes weeks. The order of operations we use is: request the docket first, before anything else, because you cannot count from an event you cannot date. Requests for transcripts and counsel’s file come second; they take longer and they do not stop any clock. The legal judgment about what the dates mean is made by the firm’s attorneys, but the retrieval can and should start on day one.

Are these deadlines ever extended?

Some are, some are not, and the mechanisms are different enough that they are worth listing separately.

Criminal notice of appeal — yes, up to 30 extra days. Rule 4(b)(4) permits the district court, on a finding of excusable neglect or good cause, and “with or without motion and notice,” to extend “for a period not to exceed 30 days from the expiration of the time otherwise prescribed by this Rule 4(b).”

Civil notice of appeal (including from a §2255 denial) — yes, two ways. Rule 4(a)(5) requires a motion “no later than 30 days after the time prescribed by this Rule 4(a) expires” plus excusable neglect or good cause; the extension may not exceed “30 days after the prescribed time or 14 days after the date when the order granting the motion is entered, whichever is later.” Rule 4(a)(6) permits reopening for 14 days where the party “did not receive notice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 77(d) of the entry of the judgment or order sought to be appealed within 21 days after entry,” the motion is filed “within 180 days after the judgment or order is entered or within 14 days after the moving party receives notice … whichever is earlier,” and no party would be prejudiced.

Certiorari — yes. 28 U.S.C. §2101(c) provides that “[a] justice of the Supreme Court, for good cause shown, may extend the time for applying for a writ of certiorari for a period not exceeding sixty days.”

Rule 35(a) — no. Rule 33 — yes. Rule 45(b)(2) now bars extensions only for Rule 35. The language Eberhart quoted — courts “may not extend the time to take any action under [Rule 33], except as stated” in Rule 33 itself — was removed by the 2005 amendments, and Rule 45(b)(1) now lets the court extend a Rule 33 deadline for good cause, or after it runs for excusable neglect.

Rule 60(b) — no. Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1) requires a motion “within a reasonable time—and for reasons (1), (2), and (3) no more than a year after the entry of the judgment or order or the date of the proceeding,” and the rule’s own note states that “this time limit may not be enlarged under Rule 6(b).”

§2255(f) — not prospectively. No court can grant you an extension of the §2255 one-year period before you file; there is no such mechanism in the statute. What exists instead is equitable tolling, decided after the fact, on a showing of diligence plus an extraordinary circumstance that stood in the way. That doctrine, its two-part test, and the kinds of circumstances courts have and have not accepted are covered at equitable tolling. Treat it as a rescue, not a plan.

Does mailing from prison count as filing?

Yes, in the circumstances the rules define — and the mechanics matter more than the principle.

Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988), established the prison mailbox rule for a pro se prisoner’s notice of appeal, holding that such notices are “considered filed at the moment of delivery to prison authorities for forwarding” to the district court. The Court’s reasoning was practical: pro se prisoners “cannot take the steps other litigants can take to monitor the processing of their notices of appeal,” cannot travel to the courthouse, and cannot hand a filing to the Postal Service themselves. The Court also thought the rule administrable, because “reference to prison mail logs will generally be a straightforward inquiry, making filing turn on the date the pro se prisoner delivers the notice to prison authorities for mailing … a bright-line rule, not an uncertain one.”

The rule is now written into the procedural rules, with conditions.

For a §2255 motion, Rule 3(d) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings provides: “A paper filed by an inmate confined in an institution is timely if deposited in the institution’s internal mailing system on or before the last day for filing. If an institution has a system designed for legal mail, the inmate must use that system to receive the benefit of this rule. Timely filing may be shown by a declaration in compliance with 28 U.S.C. § 1746 or by a notarized statement, either of which must set forth the date of deposit and state that first-class postage has been prepaid.”

For a notice of appeal, Rule 4(c)(1) says the same in slightly different terms: the notice “is timely if it is deposited in the institution’s internal mail system on or before the last day for filing” and is accompanied by a §1746 declaration or notarized statement setting out the date of deposit and stating that first-class postage is prepaid, or by “evidence (such as a postmark or date stamp) showing that the notice was so deposited and that postage was prepaid.” The court of appeals also retains discretion “to permit the later filing of a declaration or notarized statement.”

Two conditions do the work in both rules, and both are frequently missed: use the legal-mail system if the institution has one, and attach the declaration. Without them, a filing mailed on the last day and received four days late is simply late, and there is often no way to prove otherwise. The full mechanics, including how courts handle disputes about deposit dates, are at prisoner mailbox rule.

What deadlines exist outside §2255?

The clocks on this page are not the only ones a person with a federal conviction lives under, and a few of the most important have no deadline at all — which is its own kind of trap, because a motion with no deadline never creates urgency.

Compassionate release under §3582(c)(1)(A) has no filing deadline, but it has a gate: a defendant may move only after “fully exhaust[ing] all administrative rights to appeal a failure of the Bureau of Prisons to bring a motion on the defendant’s behalf or the lapse of 30 days from the receipt of such a request by the warden of the defendant’s facility, whichever is earlier.” That 30-day lapse is a permission to file, not a deadline to file.

Rule 60(b) relief in the §2255 civil case carries the one-year outer limit for mistake, newly discovered evidence, and fraud, and a “reasonable time” requirement for everything else. A caution belongs here: a Rule 60(b) motion that actually attacks the underlying conviction rather than a defect in the §2255 proceeding itself is often treated as a second or successive §2255 motion, which puts it behind the second or successive 2255 gate no matter what it is captioned.

Coram nobis has no fixed deadline, because it is the vehicle for someone no longer in custody, for whom §2255 is unavailable entirely. Courts do expect a sound reason for delay. That route is covered at coram nobis.

A §2241 petition has no one-year period of its own, but after Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023), it is available to a federal prisoner in far narrower circumstances than most published material still suggests. The current state of the saving clause is at 28 U.S.C. § 2241.

Bureau of Prisons administrative remedies run on their own schedule under a separate regulatory system, with their own short response and appeal windows at each level. Those deadlines govern claims about conditions, sentence computation, and program eligibility — not the validity of a conviction or sentence — and none of them affects any clock in Table 1.

What if my deadline is days away?

Take these steps in this order. The sequence matters because some of them take weeks and some take minutes.

1. Get the docket sheet. You cannot compute a deadline from an event you cannot date. The date of entry of judgment, whether a notice of appeal was filed, and the date of the court of appeals’ judgment are all on it.
2. File something protective, correctly captioned. No court can extend §2255(f) prospectively; there is no motion for more time. A timely motion that pleads the claims you can support today preserves the filing date. Under Rule 2(b)(1) of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings you must specify all available grounds, so a placeholder that pleads nothing is worse than useless — but a real motion filed on the last day beats a better motion filed a week late.
3. Use the legal-mail system and attach the declaration. Rule 3(d) and Rule 4(c)(1) both require it, and a §1746 declaration takes five minutes to write.
4. Do not wait for records that have not arrived. Nothing about a pending records request, a pending FOIA response, or a pending search for counsel tolls anything.
5. Do not assume an amendment will save you later. Adding a claim after the year expires works only if it relates back to what you already pleaded, and the relation-back standard in this context is narrow.
6. Call a lawyer with the dates in hand. A firm can triage a deadline question quickly when the docket dates are in front of it, and very slowly when they are not.

The mechanics of getting a motion on file correctly — the form, where it goes, what has to accompany it — are at how to file a 2255 motion in federal court.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The engagement question we get closest to a deadline is whether it is “too late to be worth it.” That is the wrong frame, because two different things are being asked. Whether a claim is strong is a question we can only answer after reading the record, which takes time nobody has on day 350. Whether the filing date can be preserved is answerable immediately, and it is the one that cannot wait. When a client comes to us inside the last few weeks, the work splits: preserve the date first, develop the claim second. Those are separate projects, and treating them as one is how people end up with a well-researched motion that no court will read.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, running a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has more than 20 years of federal and appellate criminal defense experience, has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, and has sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has been admitted pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida.

She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and ranked by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, was named South Carolina Public Defender of the Year in 2010, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023). She serves as Board Chair of Justice 360 and as Co-Vice Chair of the NACDL Amicus Curiae Committee for the Fourth Circuit.

Deadline work is the least glamorous part of federal post-conviction practice and the part that decides the most cases. With offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the firm represents clients nationwide — post-conviction filings go to the court that imposed the sentence, wherever that is.

Schedule a federal post-conviction deadline review

If you are not certain which clocks are running in your case, that uncertainty is itself the problem worth solving first. A deadline review is a defined, short piece of work: pull the docket, fix the dates, and identify every deadline that is open, closed, or about to close.

Schedule directly, or call (843) 620-1100. The firm handles federal post-conviction matters in every district and circuit. If you already know the §2255 clock is the one you need, go straight to 2255 statute of limitations to compute the date, or to federal 2255 motion lawyer for what post-conviction representation involves.

Frequently Asked Questions About Post-Conviction Deadlines

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026