Page:Jones v. Hendrix.pdf/50

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JONES v. HENDRIX

Jackson, J., dissenting

was “essentially giving one bite out of the apple to drastically reduce the ability to have successive petitions unless there is some egregious action that is learned about after the petition is filed, the first petition.” Id., at 15027.^[1]

Thus, Congress enacted §2255(h) to prevent prisoners from engaging in manipulative filing practices—such as claim splitting, i.e., the inefficient business of prisoners with time on their hands doling out their existing postconviction claims in a series of successive motions filed in court seriatim. See Sanders, 373 U. S., at 18 (noting that a prisoner may “deliberately withhol[d]” or “deliberately abando[n]” claims in a first postconviction petition “in the hope of being granted two hearings rather than one”).^[2] And, tellingly, because Congress was focused on that problem—not attempting to impose “finality” writ large—it did not bar all successive petitions; to the contrary, it proceeded to identify particular circumstances in which another collateral challenge would be authorized. §§2255(h)(1)–(2).

Additional doubts about the majority’s negative inference surface when one recognizes that the two circumstances Congress carved out of the successive-petition bar share an important common thread: Both situations relate to the newness of the claim that the prisoner seeks to assert in a successive petition. That is, both prongs of §2255(h) that authorize a successive petition do so where a petitioner

↑ See also H. R. Rep. No. 101–681, pt. 1, p. 111 (1990) (explaining that the purpose of a predecessor bill was “to promote finality” but also “to ensure that habeas corpus petitioners have one fair opportunity to present their Federal claims to the Federal courts”).
↑ It appears that, in enacting restrictions on successive petitions, Congress was primarily worried about successive petitions filed by state prisoners on death row, because a petition could delay the execution of a death sentence. See Stevenson, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 723–730. Indeed, the law is called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That concern does not apply to a situation like Jones’s, since he is not serving a death sentence, and nothing about a successive petition delays the execution of his sentence of imprisonment.

[1] See also H. R. Rep. No. 101–681, pt. 1, p. 111 (1990) (explaining that the purpose of a predecessor bill was “to promote finality” but also “to ensure that habeas corpus petitioners have one fair opportunity to present their Federal claims to the Federal courts”).

[2] It appears that, in enacting restrictions on successive petitions, Congress was primarily worried about successive petitions filed by state prisoners on death row, because a petition could delay the execution of a death sentence. See Stevenson, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 723–730. Indeed, the law is called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That concern does not apply to a situation like Jones’s, since he is not serving a death sentence, and nothing about a successive petition delays the execution of his sentence of imprisonment.

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