Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02427/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02427-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Benjamin C. Price
Petitioner
United States of America
Respondent

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 15-2427 

BENJAMIN C. PRICE, 

Applicant, 

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Respondent. 

____________________ 

On Motion for an Order Authorizing the District Court 

 to Entertain a Second or Successive Motion for 

Collateral Review.

____________________ 

SUBMITTED JULY 7, 2015 — DECIDED AUGUST 4, 2015 

____________________ 

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and SYKES and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges. 

WOOD, Chief Judge. In 2006, a jury convicted Benjamin 

Price, a convicted felon, of possessing a gun in violation of 

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Turning to the Armed Career Criminal 

Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), the court concluded that 

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Price had three qualifying convictions and imposed a sentence of 250 months in prison. This court affirmed. United 

States v. Price, 520 F.3d 753 (7th Cir. 2008). 

In 2009, Price filed his first collateral attack pursuant to 

28 U.S.C. § 2255. In his motion, he challenged the sentencing 

court’s determination that he qualified under ACCA as an 

armed career criminal. The Supreme Court’s decision in Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137 (2008), he argued, demonstrated that the sentencing court improperly relied on his 

prior convictions for criminal recklessness to enhance his 

sentence under ACCA’s residual clause because his prior 

crimes fell outside the scope of that clause. The district court 

denied relief, and we affirmed. Price v. United States, 434 F. 

App’x 550 (7th Cir. 2011). 

Price now asks this court to authorize the district court to 

entertain a successive collateral attack, 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3), 

in which he proposes to assert a claim under Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). Johnson holds that the imposition of an enhanced sentence under the residual clause of 

ACCA violates due process because the clause is too vague 

to provide adequate notice. Id. at 2557. We invited the government to respond, and it has done so. We now conclude, 

consistently with the government’s position, that Johnson

announces a new substantive rule of constitutional law that 

the Supreme Court has categorically made retroactive to final convictions. 

Under § 2255(h)(2), a court of appeals must deny authorization to pursue a second or successive motion for collateral 

relief unless the applicant’s proposed claim relies on “a new 

rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously 

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No. 15-2427 3

unavailable.” Price easily meets three of the four requirements. Johnson announces a new rule: It explicitly overrules 

the line of Supreme Court decisions that began with Begay, 

and it broke new ground by invalidating a provision of 

ACCA. See Chaidez v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 1103, 1107 

(2013) (“[A] case announces a new rule if the result was not 

dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s 

conviction became final.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Johnson rests on the notice requirement of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and thus the new rule 

that it announces is one of constitutional law. Moreover, the 

Johnson rule was previously unavailable to Price. He raised 

and lost a different (though related) argument under the law 

as it stood during his first collateral attack, in which he relied on Begay and Sykes v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2267 (2011), 

to argue that his convictions for criminal recklessness fell 

outside the scope of ACCA’s definition of a crime of violence. Price, 434 F. App’x at 554–55. He never alleged then 

that ACCA’s residual clause itself was unconstitutionally 

vague. This explains why 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(1), to the extent 

that it is applicable, does not bar Price’s application: he has 

never presented this claim before. In any case, the United 

States has not cited § 2244(b)(1) and thus has waived its ability to rely on it. Until Johnson was decided, any successive 

collateral attack would have been futile. 

The remaining question we must address is whether the 

Supreme Court has “made” Johnson retroactive to cases on 

collateral review. Tyler v. Cain holds that under 

§ 2244(b)(2)(A)—the state-prisoner corollary of 

§ 2255(h)(2)—the retroactivity determination must be made 

by the Supreme Court. 533 U.S. 656, 662 (2001). In Tyler, the 

Court explained that “‘made’ means ‘held’ and, thus, the reCase: 15-2427 Document: 5 Filed: 08/04/2015 Pages: 8
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quirement is satisfied only if this Court has held that the 

new rule is retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review.” Id.; see also Simpson v. United States, 721 F.3d 875, 876 

(7th Cir. 2013) (“The declaration of retroactivity must come 

from the Justices.”). Justice O’Connor, in a concurring opinion whose rationale was endorsed by the four dissenting justices, noted that the Supreme Court could make a rule retroactive “through multiple holdings that logically dictate the 

retroactivity of the new rule.” Tyler, 533 U.S. at 668 

(O’Connor, J., concurring); see id. at 670–73 (Breyer, J., dissenting, joined by Stevens, Souter, & Ginsburg, JJ.). Accordingly, she wrote, “[i]f we hold in Case One that a particular 

type of rule applies retroactively ... and hold in Case Two 

that a given rule is of that particular type, then it necessarily 

follows that the given rule applies retroactively ... . In such 

circumstances, we can be said to have ‘made’ the given rule 

retroactive.” Id. at 668–69. She emphasized, however, that 

“the holdings must dictate the conclusion.” Id. at 669. The 

Court makes “a rule retroactive within the meaning of 

§ 2244(b)(2)(A) only where the Court’s holdings logically 

permit no other conclusion than that the rule is retroactive.” 

Id. 

In Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004), the Court 

summarized the various ways in which new rules affect cases. When the Court announces a new rule, “that rule applies 

to all criminal cases still pending on direct review.” Id. at 

351. For convictions that are already final, however, new 

rules apply only in limited situations: 

New substantive rules generally apply retroactively. This includes decisions that narrow the 

scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its 

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terms ... as well as constitutional determinations that place particular conduct or persons 

covered by the statute beyond the State’s power to punish. ... 

New rules of procedure ... generally do not 

apply retroactively. ... [W]e give retroactive effect to only a small set of “‘watershed rules of 

criminal procedure’ implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding.” 

Id. at 351–52 (quoting Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 495 (1990)); 

see also Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989) (discussing the 

ground rules for retroactivity for constitutional procedural 

rules). 

When the new rule is substantive, it is easy (as Justice 

O’Connor pointed out in Tyler) to demonstrate the required 

declaration from the Supreme Court confirming that the rule 

is retroactive: “When the Court holds as a new rule in a subsequent case that a particular species of primary, private individual conduct is beyond the power of the criminal lawmaking authority to proscribe, it necessarily follows that this 

Court has ‘made’ that new rule retroactive.” Tyler, 533 U.S. 

at 669; see also Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 351–52 (“New substantive rules generally apply retroactively ... because they ‘necessarily carry a significant risk that a defendant stands convicted of an act that the law does not make criminal’ or faces 

a punishment that the law cannot impose upon him.”) (quoting Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 620 (1998)). This is 

entirely consistent with Teague, which also recognized that 

new substantive rules are categorically retroactive. (The matter is not so “straightforward with respect to the second 

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Teague exception ... for ‘watershed rules of criminal procedure,’” Tyler, 533 U.S. at 669–70 (O’Connor, J., concurring) 

(quoting Teague, 489 U.S. at 311), but the case before us does 

not present any such proposed rule.) 

Several courts of appeals have adopted Justice 

O’Connor’s Tyler analysis to determine whether a recent decision by the Supreme Court satisfies the standards for authorization under § 2255(h)(2) and its state-prisoner corollary, § 2244(b)(2)(A). The Eleventh Circuit authorized a prisoner to pursue a second collateral attack under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002) (holding that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of a capital sentence on a mentally disabled defendant), because Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 

302 (1989), made Atkins retroactive. In re Holladay, 331 F.3d 

1169, 1172–73 (11th Cir. 2003). Other courts have applied the 

Tyler analysis to deny authorization, specifically looking to 

the Teague exceptions for new substantive rules or watershed 

procedural rules to see if the Court has made a new rule announced in a subsequent decision retroactive by “logical necessity” and concluding it had not. See United States v. Redd, 

735 F.3d 88, 91 (2d Cir. 2013) (Teague did not make Alleyne v. 

United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151 (2013), retroactive) (per curiam); 

In re Zambrano, 433 F.3d 886, 887–89 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (United 

States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005)); Paulino v. United States, 

352 F.3d 1056, 1058–59 (6th Cir. 2003) (Richardson v. United 

States, 526 U.S. 813 (1999)); Cannon v. Mullin, 297 F.3d 989, 

993–94 (10th Cir. 2002) (Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002)); 

In re Turner, 267 F.3d 225, 228–30 (3d Cir. 2001) (Apprendi v. 

New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000)). 

Johnson, we conclude, announced a new substantive rule. 

In deciding that the residual clause is unconstitutionally 

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vague, the Supreme Court prohibited “a certain category of 

punishment for a class of defendants because of their status.” Saffle, 494 U.S. at 494. A defendant who was sentenced 

under the residual clause necessarily bears a significant risk 

of facing “a punishment that the law cannot impose upon 

him.” Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 352. There is no escaping the 

logical conclusion that the Court itself has made Johnson categorically retroactive to cases on collateral review. Because 

Price has made a prima facie showing that he may be entitled 

to sentencing relief under Johnson, we GRANT Price’s application and AUTHORIZE the district court to consider a successive collateral attack presenting this claim. 

We add a cautionary note in closing. Our review of 

Price’s substantive claim is necessarily preliminary, and as 

we just noted, our holding is limited to the conclusion that 

Price has made a prima facie showing of a tenable claim under Johnson. The district court will have the opportunity to 

examine the claim in more detail as the case proceeds. That 

court is authorized under § 2244(b)(4) to dismiss any claim 

that it concludes upon closer examination does not satisfy 

the criteria for authorization. The judge is likely to be familiar with the case (or to become familiar easily) because 

§ 2255 motions must be filed in the applicant’s sentencing 

court, which has access to the criminal record and familiarity 

with the case. Our conclusions are tentative largely because 

of the strict time constraints under which we must review 

these applications. Tyler, 533 U.S. at 664 (“It is unlikely that a 

court of appeals could make such a determination in the allotted time [30 days] if it had to do more than simply rely on 

Supreme Court holdings.”). For example, we do not know 

whether Price has other qualifying convictions that were not 

considered at sentencing because, at that time, the three on 

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which the court relied were sufficient. If he is successful in 

vacating his sentence under Johnson, the parties will be free 

to argue this and any other pertinent questions on resentencing. 

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