Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01793/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01793-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jakeffe Holt
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-1793

JAKEFFE HOLT,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 15 C 11891 — Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 16, 2016 — DECIDED DECEMBER 13, 2016

____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and HAMILTON, Circuit 

Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. About a decade ago, Jakeffe 

Holt was convicted of possessing a firearm despite prior 

convictions that barred gun ownership. 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1). 

Several of those convictions led the district court to deem 

him an armed career criminal, 18 U.S.C. §924(e), and impose 

a 200-month sentence.

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2 No. 16-1793

Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), holds that 

the residual clause in §924(e)(2)(B)(ii) is unconstitutionally 

vague. Holt then launched a collateral attack on his sentence 

under 28 U.S.C. §2255. Section 924(e) applies to persons with 

three prior violent felonies or serious drug offenses. The district court had counted a burglary conviction toward this 

number. Holt argued that this was a mistake. The district 

court rejected this argument and denied Holt’s petition. 2016 

U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48063 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 11, 2016). While Holt’s 

appeal was pending we held that the version of the Illinois 

burglary statute under which he had been convicted is indeed not a “violent felony” because it does not satisfy the 

definition of “burglary” used in Mathis v. United States, 136 S. 

Ct. 2243 (2016), for indivisible statutes. See United States v. 

Haney, 840 F.3d 472 (7th Cir. 2016).

This development led us to ask for supplemental briefs 

on the question whether Mathis and Haney apply retroactively on collateral review under §2255. The United States has 

conceded that they do. Without the armed career criminal

enhancement, Holt’s maximum sentence would have been 

120 months under §924(a)(2). Section 2255(a) allows a district 

court to reduce a sentence that exceeds the statutory maximum, and substantive decisions such as Mathis presumptively apply retroactively on collateral review. See, e.g., Davis 

v. United States, 417 U.S. 333 (1974); Montgomery v. Louisiana, 

136 S. Ct. 718 (2016).

But here Holt encounters a snag: This is his second §2255 

proceeding. A second or successive collateral attack is permissible only if the court of appeals certifies that it rests on 

newly discovered evidence (which Holt’s does not) or “a 

new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on 

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No. 16-1793 3

collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously 

unavailable.” 28 U.S.C. §2255(h)(2). See also 28 U.S.C. 

§2244(b). Johnson is a new rule of constitutional law, and in 

Welch v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1257 (2016), the Supreme 

Court made Johnson’s rule retroactive. Holt asked for leave to 

pursue a second collateral attack based on those precedents, 

and we granted his application. But his current argument 

rests on Mathis and Haney, not on Johnson and Welch.

Haney, as a decision of this court, cannot satisfy 

§2255(h)(2), and Mathis has not been declared retroactive by 

the Supreme Court—nor is it a new rule of constitutional 

law. Mathis interprets the statutory word “burglary” and 

does not depend on or announce any novel principle of constitutional law. Section 2255(h)(2) therefore does not authorize a second §2255 proceeding. See Dawkins v. United States, 

829 F.3d 549, 551 (7th Cir. 2016) (arguments that rest on 

Mathis do not justify second or successive collateral attacks). 

While conceding that Holt would prevail in an initial collateral attack, the United States insists that he is not entitled to 

relief in this second §2255 proceeding.

Holt submits that, despite appearances, his collateral attack really rests on Johnson. Although we stated in Stanley v. 

United States, 827 F.3d 562 (7th Cir. 2016), that Johnson does 

not affect sentence enhancements under the elements clause 

of §924(e)(2)(B)(ii), we noted that, before Johnson, some defendants may have refrained from objecting to the classification of particular convictions under the elements clause because, even if these offenses lacked actual or threatened violence as an element, they still would have been treated as violent felonies under the residual clause. 827 F.3d at 565. By 

knocking out the residual clause Johnson thus opened the 

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door to arguments based on the limits of the elements 

clause. So Holt’s argument goes. Stanley itself did not draw 

this conclusion, however, because Johnson did not interpret 

the elements clause or declare it unconstitutional.

This aspect of Holt’s argument treats §924(e)(2)(B) as having only two clauses: elements and residual. Show that a 

given conviction does not satisfy the elements clause and 

you kick it into the residual clause, where Johnson applies. 

The problem is that §924(e)(2)(B) has three clauses, not two. 

Here is its full text:

[T]he term “violent felony” means any crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, or any act of juvenile 

delinquency involving the use or carrying of a firearm, knife, or 

destructive device that would be punishable by imprisonment 

for such term if committed by an adult, that—

(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened 

use of physical force against the person of another; or

(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious 

potential risk of physical injury to another[.]

Romanette (i) is the elements clause. Romanette (ii) comprises two clauses: “is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use 

of explosives” and “otherwise involves conduct that presents 

a serious potential risk of physical injury to another”. The 

second of these, the residual clause, contains the only language that Johnson held unconstitutionally vague. The possibility that after Johnson defendants may have a stronger incentive to contest the classification of convictions under the 

elements clause—in the hope of moving them to the residual 

clause and thus eliminating them from the set of violent felonies—has nothing to do with Holt’s situation. His burglary 

conviction was classified as a violent felony under the burCase: 16-1793 Document: 43 Filed: 12/13/2016 Pages: 6
No. 16-1793 5

glary clause. Nothing in Johnson, Welch, or Stanley affects the 

proper treatment of burglary convictions. So Holt’s second 

collateral attack cannot rest on Johnson.

Section 2255(h), which requires advance appellate approval of a second or successive collateral attack, incorporates 28 U.S.C. §2244 by reference. Section 2244(b)(3)(E) 

reads: “The grant or denial of an authorization by a court of 

appeals to file a second or successive application shall not be 

appealable and shall not be the subject of a petition for rehearing or for a writ of certiorari.” Thus we cannot treat the

prosecutor’s supplemental brief as implying a request that 

we rehear, and rescind, the certificate authorizing a second 

collateral attack. But §2244(b)(4) adds: “A district court shall 

dismiss any claim presented in a second or successive application that the court of appeals has authorized to be filed unless the applicant shows that the claim satisfies the requirements of this section.” This means that someone in Holt’s 

position must show the district court that the requirements 

for a second collateral attack have been satisfied, and that

issue is reviewable on appeal in the ordinary course.

Section 2255(h) permits a court of appeals to authorize a 

successive collateral attack, though success is subject to a 

time limit in §2255(f)(3). A petitioner has only one year from 

the date a constitutional right is first recognized by the Supreme Court. For Johnson that date was June 26, 2015. But 

appellate permission under §2255(h) does not become possible until the Supreme Court itself declares the newly recognized right to be retroactive. That was done in Welch, which 

was issued on April 18, 2016. Less than three months remained for prisoners to file, and appellate courts to consider, 

applications seeking permission to file Johnson-based second 

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or successive collateral attacks. Once any given application is

filed, the court of appeals has only 30 days to grant or deny 

it. 28 U.S.C. §2244(b)(3)(D). It may be difficult to get access to 

any given prisoner’s full record of convictions within that 

time to see whether the residual clause matters to a sentence 

enhancement. These tight deadlines led us to authorize any 

second or successive collateral attack that arguably rested on 

the residual clause. We relied on the fact that, if we authorized a new collateral proceeding, the district judge could 

gather all of the necessary information and make an independent decision under §2244(b)(4), a decision open to plenary appellate review.

That’s what happened after Holt filed his §2255(h) application. We authorized the second collateral attack after a 

necessarily abbreviated review. The district judge then saw 

that Holt’s claim for relief depends on the meaning of “burglary” rather than the meaning of the Constitution, and she

denied the petition. The judge acted before the Supreme 

Court released Mathis and before we issued Haney, so she 

did not appreciate that Holt’s burglary conviction had indeed been misclassified when he was sentenced, but she understood that the argument being made was statutory rather 

than constitutional and did not rest on Johnson or any other 

retroactive rule of constitutional law. It follows that Holt is 

not entitled to relief in this, his second §2255 proceeding.

Whether he might be entitled to relief under 28 U.S.C. §2241, 

should he pursue that route in the district where he is confined (he is being held at USP Canaan in Pennsylvania), is a 

question we need not consider.

AFFIRMED

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