Supreme Court of the United States

“ Statutes of limitations merely govern the timeframe for bringing a claim. AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions, by contrast, “constitute a modified res judicata rule,” Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996) , and thus embody Congress’ judgment regarding the central policy question of postconviction remedies—the appropriate balance between finality and error correction. Insisting on a heightened standard of clarity in this context would effectively mean adopting a presumption against finality as a substantive value. We decline to do so. ”

“ The majority advances an entirely different theory of the work that §2255 (e) does with respect to the postconviction review scheme—a theory that I do not find even remotely persuasive. Opting for the narrowest possible view of Congress’s intent regarding the saving clause, the majority generally claims that the saving clause only authorizes the filing of a habeas petition if filing a §2255 motion would be “impossible or impracticable.” ”

“ The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy those conditions does not mean that he can bring his claim in a habeas petition under the saving clause. It means that he cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen finality over error correction in his case. ”

“ Second, I am suspicious of the majority’s choice to resort to inferential reasoning at all, given that this Court has long held that we will not read a statute to displace access to “the great writ” unless Congress has been clear about its intention to accomplish this result. Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall. 85, 95, 102 (1869) . The clear-statement rule is plainly applicable here, and the majority offers the flimsiest of explanations for its decision to deviate from its application at the threshold of today’s interpretation. ”

“ Congress has expressly overridden operation of the saving clause with respect to those two provisions, because it has clearly expressed its intent to narrow the scope of postconviction relief where a federal prisoner brings a successive petition raising a claim of new evidence or new constitutional law. [4] “A legislature may adopt a policy different from that embodied in the general saving statute.” ”

“ A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence. ”

“ Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, 654 (1884) (“Whether the indictment sets forth in comprehensive terms the offence which the statute describes and forbids ... is in every case a question of law ... within [the trial court’s] jurisdiction”) ; Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. 18, 20–21 (1876) (“It would be an assumption of authority for this court, by means of the writ of habeas corpus, to review every case in which the defendant attempts to controvert the criminality of the offence charged in the indictment”) . ”

“ So, the majority’s “straightforward” determination that this statute does preclude a prisoner in Jones’s position from filing a successive petition to assert a legal innocence claim (which it reaches by refusing to follow the procedural norm that would have correctly framed the issue as a matter of congressional intent relative to clear-statement principles) appears to stem from the Court’s own views concerning finality, not the will of Congress. ”

“ ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]
Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan, dissenting.
We respectfully dissent. As Justice Jackson explains, today’s decision yields disturbing results. See post, at 23–25 (dissenting opinion) . A prisoner who is actually innocent, imprisoned for conduct that Congress did not criminalize, is forever barred by 28 U. S. C. §2255 (h) from raising that claim, merely because he previously sought postconviction relief. It does not matter that an intervening decision of this Court confirms his innocence. ”

“ First, there is the quirky procedural anomaly that arises due to the fact that statutory innocence claims are fully authorized in the postconviction review context. This Court’s recognition that a statute covers a narrower scope of criminal conduct than was previously acknowledged falls within the narrow subset of criminal law decisions that are fully retroactive, meaning that a federal prisoner can rely upon that new determination whether his case is still on direct review or not. ”

“ Several Courts of Appeals found a workaround for those prisoners in the saving clause. With minor differences in reasoning and wording, they held that §2255 was “inadequate and ineffective” under the saving clause—and that §2241 was therefore available—when AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions barred a prisoner from seeking relief based on a newly adopted narrowing interpretation of a criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal, and first §2255 motion. ”

“ Thus, assuming, arguendo, that the historical grounding of the particular type of claim Jones sought to bring even matters, the majority is mistaken when it contends that a statutory innocence claim (including one brought in a successive petition) is not sufficiently historical to warrant application of our clear-statement rule. ”

“ Nothing in the whole of §2255 suggests that Congress ever considered the scenario presented in this case—one in which a prisoner who has already filed a postconviction motion suddenly gets a new claim of legal innocence (after his first petition was filed) based on a development in Supreme Court case law. Therefore, it is not at all clear that Congress determined that such an individual is simply out of luck. ”

“ To reach today’s conclusion, then, the majority draws a “negative inference” that Congress intended for §2255’s “second or successive” bar to preclude successive filings that contain legal innocence claims. Ante, at 10. But the majority’s inferential reasoning is highly problematic in at least two respects.
First, negative inferences drawn without proper context can be notoriously unreliable. And, as detailed below, there are myriad reasons for skepticism here. Section 2255 (h) ’s anti-claim-splitting purpose is one. ”

“ Properly interpreted, a §2255 motion is only “inadequate or ineffective” when the potential procedural bar does not provide a prisoner with any meaningful opportunity to present a claim. And that circumstance does not exist any time a procedural limitation in §2255 screens out a claim. For example, if an individual does not raise his legal innocence claim in a §2255 motion in a timely fashion, see §2255 (f) , he cannot resort to the saving clause to file a habeas petition ”

“ After escaping §2255 through the saving clause, nonconstitutional claims would no longer be subject to AEDPA’s other express procedural restrictions: the 1-year limitations period, see §2255 (f) , and the requirement that a prisoner obtain a certificate of appealability before appealing an adverse decision in the District Court, see §2253 (c) (1) . [3] We generally “resist attributing to Congress an intention to render a statute so internally inconsistent.” ”

“ Even if the majority was right with respect to its assumption that founding-era practices bear on whether the clear-statement rule applies here, historical practice plainly undermines its assertion that legal innocence claims are of recent vintage. ”

“ Reference to Congress’s interest in “finality” cannot explain this odd unequal treatment. Under the Court’s interpretation, a prisoner whose conviction became final 30 years ago can assert a Rehaif claim if he never previously filed a §2255 motion, whereas someone whose conviction became final 2 years ago cannot if he has already had a §2255 petition adjudicated. [13]
Interpreting §2255 (h) as completely foreclosing successive petitions bringing statutory innocence claims also places prisoners in an untenable catch-22 that cannot be what any rational Congress actually intended. ”

“ If the majority is right that (by virtue of §2255 (h) ) prisoners like Jones are now unable to bring a successive §2255 petition to make the same kind of legal innocence claim that they could have brought prior to AEDPA, then Congress’s enactment of §2255 (h) has dramatically altered the legal landscape in a manner that seems, at best, inconsistent with its original intent. To repeat: The saving clause expresses a congressional intent to maintain equivalence between what a prisoner could claim before and after §2255 (h) ”

“ Not once does its opinion make direct mention of the fact that the claim the majority says §2255 (h) silently precludes is one that implicates core values because it involves legal innocence. Instead, the majority repeatedly describes Jones’s bid for access to the postconviction review process as bringing a mere “statutory” claim. Ante, at 2, 12, 21, 23. [18] But statutory claims that suggest a person’s innocence are different in kind from more run-of-the-mill statutory claims, such as a technical, nonprejudicial violation of a criminal procedure rule. ”

“ Jones’s legal innocence claim fits that mold.
I am also deeply troubled by the constitutional implications of the nothing-to-see-here approach that the majority takes with respect to the incarceration of potential legal innocents. See Part III, infra. Apparently, legally innocent or not, Jones must just carry on in prison regardless, since (as the majority reads §2255) no path exists for him to ask a federal judge to consider his innocence assertion. ”

“ Because §2255 is the ordinary vehicle for a collateral attack on a federal sentence, the straightforward negative inference from §2255 (h) is that a second or successive collateral attack on a federal sentence is not authorized unless one of those two conditions is satisfied. ”

“ Large, 332 U. S. 174 (1947) , read together, dictate that only an intervening decision of this Court, rather than a Court of Appeals, can work such a change in the law as to justify an otherwise-barred §2241 petition. But this attempt to articulate an additional limiting principle for the Government’s theory requires turning the cases inside out. In Davis, where this Court allowed a statutory claim to proceed under §2255, the relevant narrowing decision came from the Ninth Circuit. See 417 U. S., at 341 (discussing United States v. Fox, 454 F. 2d 593 (CA9 1971) ) . ”

“ To understand why Congress meant for Jones to be able to invoke the saving clause and bring his statutory innocence claim in a habeas petition filed under §2241, a firm grasp of the text, history, and intended operation of §2255 (e) is required. ”

“ When the Suspension Clause was adopted, and for a long time afterward, Jones’ Rehaif claim would not have been cognizable in habeas at all.
At the founding, a sentence after conviction “by a court of competent jurisdiction” was “ ‘in itself sufficient cause’ ” for a prisoner’s continued detention. Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 8) (quoting Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193, 202 (1830) ) . ”

“ Under this Court’s §2255 precedent, Bailey’s narrowing interpretation was grounds for a collateral attack by federal prisoners who had been convicted under the Courts of Appeals’ broader interpretations. See Davis, 417 U. S., at 342–347 (holding a claim of legal error based on an intervening change in statutory interpretation cognizable under §2255) . Many prisoners with Bailey claims, however, had already exhausted their first §2255 motion, and Bailey’s statutory holding plainly did not satisfy either of §2255 (h) ’s conditions for a second or successive motion. ”

“ But resolving that debate is unnecessary because Jones’s claim implicates even the majority’s crabbed view of the Suspension Clause. ↑ See, e.g., Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 376–377 (1880) (noting that a court’s “authority” to “try and imprison” an individual stems from a particular statute and therefore a court has “no jurisdiction” if the law does not lawfully apply to the prisoner) ; Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 136 (1807) (“ [A] s the crime with which the prisoners stand charged has not been committed, the court can only direct them to be discharged”) ”

“ Medium, 766 F. 3d 1271, 1280 (CA11 2014) (Pryor, J., concurring) (explaining that “ [t] he ‘detention’ of a prisoner encompasses much more than a criminal ‘sentence’ ”) . The briefs before us debate whether these types of challenges depend on the saving clause or proceed under §2241 “directly.” Compare Brief for Petitioner 31 and Brief for Respondent 37–38 with Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae 17–18. It is difficult to imagine a case in which this logical distinction would make any practical difference. ”

“ But the authority to determine the facts and the law in an individual case, and to render a final, binding judgment based on those determinations, stands at the core of the judicial power. See Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995) ; Watkins, 3 Pet., at 202–203. A court does not usurp legislative power simply by misinterpreting the law in a given case. See id., at 206 (“If its judgment was erroneous, a point which this court does not determine, still it is a judgment”) .
Next, Jones points to Fiore v. ”