Page:Jones v. Hendrix.pdf/43

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Cite as: 599 U. S. ____ (2023)

11

Jackson, J., dissenting

claims—which, importantly, the statute does not mention. To put it bluntly: Congress knows how to speak clearly when it wants to disrupt the continuity of claims that are available to prisoners before and after it enacts legislation that addresses postconviction review procedures. And rather than providing any such clear statement as to how an intervening claim of statutory innocence should be treated vis-à-vis §2255(h)’s second or successive bar, Congress was conspicuously silent.^[1]

C

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.” Ante, at 6, 11. And in the majority’s telling, that circumstance only occurs, say, if the courthouse where a §2255 motion would have otherwise been filed has burned to the ground or been carried away

↑ The text of §2255(h) says nothing about legal innocence claims, let alone clearly expresses an intent to narrow the scope of available postconviction relief for that category of claims, in contrast to what the statute says about claims of new evidence or new constitutional rules. Congress could have easily stated somewhere in §2255(h) or §2244 that “no circuit or district judge shall be required to consider a second or successive motion premised only on statutory claims, even claims suggesting innocence,” or that “a court of appeals shall not certify or authorize a second or successive §2255 petition that raises a statutory claim only.” Yet nothing close to this kind of language, or distinction, appears on the face of the statute. Nor does an intent to foreclose statutory innocence claims appear in the legislative history of §2255(h), even though that history does clearly reflect a congressional intent to narrow the scope of postconviction relief for the categories expressly mentioned in §§2255(h)(1) and (2) (like new evidence claims), see, e.g., 141 Cong. Rec., at 15040, 15042 (statement of Sen. Levin).

[1] The text of §2255(h) says nothing about legal innocence claims, let alone clearly expresses an intent to narrow the scope of available postconviction relief for that category of claims, in contrast to what the statute says about claims of new evidence or new constitutional rules. Congress could have easily stated somewhere in §2255(h) or §2244 that “no circuit or district judge shall be required to consider a second or successive motion premised only on statutory claims, even claims suggesting innocence,” or that “a court of appeals shall not certify or authorize a second or successive §2255 petition that raises a statutory claim only.” Yet nothing close to this kind of language, or distinction, appears on the face of the statute. Nor does an intent to foreclose statutory innocence claims appear in the legislative history of §2255(h), even though that history does clearly reflect a congressional intent to narrow the scope of postconviction relief for the categories expressly mentioned in §§2255(h)(1) and (2) (like new evidence claims), see, e.g., 141 Cong. Rec., at 15040, 15042 (statement of Sen. Levin).

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