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JONES v. HENDRIX

Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., dissenting

(1952).

With that understanding in mind, consider a prisoner who, having already filed a motion for postconviction relief, discovers that a new decision of this Court establishes that his statute of conviction did not cover his conduct. He is out of luck under §2255, because §2255(h) will bar his claim. But that claim is cognizable at habeas, where we have long held that federal prisoners can collaterally attack their convictions in successive petitions if they can make a colorable showing that they are innocent under an intervening decision of statutory construction. See Davis, 417 U. S., at 344–347; McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 493–495 (1991). Congress did not abrogate that principle in §2255(h). Thus, we have precisely the kind of mismatch the saving clause was designed to address.

In this case, the petitioner says he is that prisoner, with that mismatch. But the Court of Appeals never considered that question, laboring under a mistaken view of the saving clause that, like the majority’s, assigns it almost no role. Accordingly, we would remand for the lower courts to consider the petitioner’s claim under the proper framework. See Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005).