194
Per Curiam
Per Curiam.
Our per curiam opinion issued today in a civil case, Lawrence v. Chater, ante, p. 163; contains a general discussion of the considerations that properly influence this Court in deciding whether to grant a petition for certiorari, vacate the judgment below, and remand the case (GVR) for further consideration in light of potentially pertinent matters which it appears that the lower court may not have considered. Here, we apply that analysis to a criminal case, again finding that the particularities of the case before us merit a GVR.
Stutson, the petitioner in this case, is currently serving a federal prison sentence of 292 months for cocaine possession. He has had no appellate review of his legal arguments against conviction and sentence. The District Court held that his appeal was untimely and that the untimeliness was not the result of "excusable neglect" within the meaning of Rule 4(b) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, because his lawyer's office mailed his notice of appeal so that it arrived one working day late for the 10-day deadline, and at the Court of Appeals, when it should have been sent to the District Court. The District Court's opinion did not advert to our decision in Pioneer Investment Services Co. v. Brunswick Associates Ltd. Partnership, 507 U. S. 380 (1993), rendered one day before Stutson's brief was due in the District Court and not cited in the briefs before that court. In Pioneer, we held that a party could in some circumstances rely on his attorney's inadvertent failure to file a proof of claim in a timely manner in bankruptcy proceedings as "excusable neglect" under the bankruptcy rules.
Stutson appealed the District Court's ruling. In their briefs to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the parties disputed the applicability of Pioneer's liberal understanding of "excusable neglect" to the Rule 4(b) criminal appeal context, the Government contending that it applied only in bankruptcy cases. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court and dismissed Stutson's appeal without
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