IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 16-14556-J

________________________

IN RE: CHARLES CLAYTON,

Petitioner.

__________________________

Application for Leave to File a Second or Successive

Motion to Vacate, Set Aside, 

or Correct Sentence, 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)

_________________________

Before: MARTIN, ROSENBAUM, and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges. 

ORDER:

Charles Clayton seeks permission to file a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion based 

on Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). Because Mr. Clayton 

previously filed a § 2255 motion, his new motion must be “certified as provided in 

section 2244 by a panel of the appropriate court of appeals to contain . . . a new 

rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the 

Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(2). “The 

court of appeals may authorize the filing of a second or successive application only 

if it determines that the application makes a prima facie showing that the 

application satisfies the requirements of this subsection.” Id. § 2244(b)(3)(C). Mr. 

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Clayton was sentenced in 2010 using United States Sentencing Guidelines § 4B1.1. 

This court has held that Johnson does not apply to sentences that were based on 

USSG § 4B1.1. See United States v. Matchett, 802 F.3d 1185, 1196 (11th Cir. 

2015). Mr. Clayton has therefore not made “a prima facie showing” that his 

motion will meet § 2255(h)’s requirements for second or successive § 2255 

motions. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(D). 

APPLICATION DENIED.

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MARTIN, Circuit Judge, with whom JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judge, joins, 

concurring in result:

Six years ago Charles Clayton was sentenced to 30 years in prison for

possessing a kilogram of cocaine with intent to distribute. The criminal law he 

violated required a sentence of at least 10 years. But beyond the statute, Mr. 

Clayton faced the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which call for longer 

prison sentences for defendants who had been convicted of certain crimes earlier in 

their lives. Specifically, Mr. Clayton was sentenced based on a guideline that sets

a longer sentence for defendants whose earlier crime “involves conduct that 

presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” USSG 

§ 4B1.2(a)(2). After Mr. Clayton was sentenced in 2010, the Supreme Court told 

us that these identical 13 words in the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) are so 

vague as to violate the Due Process Clause of our Constitution. See Johnson v. 

United States, __ U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015). 

Since Johnson was decided, prisoners sentenced based on these words in the 

Sentencing Guidelines have come into federal courts seeking the same relief 

Johnson has given to prisoners sentenced based on the same words in the statute. 

Every other court of appeals has either held or assumed that Johnson makes the 

language in § 4B1.2(a)(2) of the Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional.

1

 Our 

 1 See United States v. Soto-Rivera, 811 F.3d 53 (1st Cir. 2016); United States v. Welch, 

__ F. App’x __, 2016 WL 536656 (2d Cir. Feb. 11, 2016); United States v. Townsend, __ Fed. 

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court alone has held otherwise. See United States v. Matchett, 802 F.3d 1185 

(11th Cir. 2015). Over nine months ago Mr. Matchett asked this court to rehear his 

case, but we have yet to rule on his petition for rehearing. Because no ruling has 

issued on his petition and because the Supreme Court has now granted certiorari in

a case that will evaluate this court’s ruling in Matchett,

2 I will write in Mr. 

Clayton’s case to highlight the problems Matchett has caused people like him since

it issued on September 21, 2015. 

While I’m at it, Mr. Clayton’s case also gives an opportunity to describe 

other ways our court has limited the reach of Johnson for people who may be 

serving unlawful sentences imposed in the federal courts of Alabama, Florida, and 

Georgia. Generally a person who finds himself serving an illegal sentence can 

seek relief by filing what is known as a § 2255 motion. Mr. Clayton filed a § 2255 

 

Appx. __, 2015 WL 9311394 (3d Cir. Dec. 23, 2015); United States v. Frazier, 621 F. App’x 166 

(4th Cir. 2015); Order, United States v. Estrada, No. 15-40264 (5th Cir. Oct. 27, 2015); United 

States v. Pawlak, __ F.3d. __, 2016 WL 2802723 (6th Cir. May 13, 2016); Ramirez v. United 

States, 799 F.3d 845 (7th Cir. 2015); United States v. Taylor, 803 F.3d 931 (8th Cir. 2015); 

United States v. Benavides, 617 F. App’x 790 (9th Cir. 2015); United States v. Madrid, 805 F.3d 

1204 (10th Cir. 2015); Order, In re Booker, No. 16-3018 (D.C. Cir. June 10, 2016). 

2 See Beckles v. United States, No. 15-8544, 2016 WL 1029080 (U.S. June 27, 2016). In 

that regard, I note that our court has expanded the ruling in Matchett. While Matchett ruled in a 

case for which the inmate was sentenced under the advisory guidelines, our court relied on 

Matchett to hold that prisoners can’t even make “a prima facie showing” that Johnson applies to 

the pre-Booker mandatory guidelines. See In re Griffin, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3002293 (11th 

Cir. May 25, 2016). Three of my colleagues have explained in detail “why [they] believe Griffin

is deeply flawed and wrongly decided” even if Matchett is correct. In re Sapp, No. 16-13338-J, 

2016 WL 3648334, at *3 (11th Cir. July 7, 2016) (Jordan, Rosenbaum, and Jill Pryor, J.J., 

concurring). I share their view. I add that Travis Beckles was sentenced after Booker, which 

means the Supreme Court’s ruling in his case might not address the mandatory guidelines issue

the Eleventh Circuit decided in Griffin. 

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motion in 2013. The statute governing § 2255 motions, the Antiterrorism and 

Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), restricts a prisoner’s ability to file 

more than once. Specifically, AEDPA allows a prisoner who already filed one

§ 2255 motion to file another (what the statute refers to as a “second or successive” 

motion) only if he first applies for and gets permission from the court of appeals. 

Mr. Clayton filed one of these applications. When courts of appeals get these 

applications AEDPA directs us to “certif[y]” whether the applicant made “a prima 

facie showing” that his § 2255 motion will “contain . . . a new rule of constitutional 

law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court.” 28 

U.S.C. §§ 2244(b)(3)(C), 2255(h). In the last couple of months, this court has 

received hundreds of these applications from prisoners who want relief based on 

the Supreme Court’s ruling in Johnson. 

In deciding these applications, we have been doing far more than what the 

statute directs. The judges of this court, myself included, have been combing 

through sealed records from the prisoner’s original sentence hearing and going 

ahead to make a decision about whether the prisoner will win if we let him file his 

§ 2255 motion in district court. We are making these decisions “without briefing 

or argument from a lawyer.” In re McCall, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3382006, at *2 

(11th Cir. June 17, 2016) (Martin, J., concurring). Most troubling of all, none of 

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these decisions can be appealed, even if it turns out we decided wrong. See 28 

U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E). 

I.

I first address this court’s Matchett ruling, which has had the effect of 

locking prisoners into harsh sentences that I understand every other circuit to be 

reexamining. Matchett affects a lot of people. In fiscal year 2014 alone, 2,269 

people in this country were sentenced using USSG § 4B1.1, known as the “career 

offender” guideline.3

 No matter how short a sentence the guidelines might 

otherwise call for a defendant to get, if he is designated as a career offender then he 

is placed in the worst class of offenders and the judge is expected to impose the 

maximum sentence. See United States v. LaBonte, 520 U.S. 751, 754, 117 S. Ct. 

1673, 1675 (1997) (“Pursuant to that Guideline, each defendant who qualifies for 

career offender status is automatically placed in criminal history ‘Category VI,’ the 

highest available under the Guidelines.”). To be clear, this drastic increase is 

required by statute. See 28 U.S.C. § 994(h) (“The Commission shall assure that 

the guidelines specify a sentence to a term of imprisonment at or near the 

maximum term authorized for categories of defendants . . . convicted of two or 

more prior felonies, each of which is . . . a crime of violence.”). 

 3 See http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quickfacts/Quick_Facts_Career_Offender_FY14.pdf. In over 90 percent of these cases, § 4B1.1 

“increased the guideline range.” Id. Also, two of the top five districts for § 4B1.1 sentences are 

in the Eleventh Circuit. See id. This is the latest data published by the Sentencing Commission. 

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The guidelines define the term “crime of violence” from 28 U.S.C. § 994(h) 

in three ways, one of which uses the 13 words the Supreme Court ruled 

unconstitutional in Johnson. See USSG § 4B1.2. The term “crime of violence” is 

also used in several other places in the Sentencing Guidelines, so these 13 words 

can trigger higher sentences by way of those provisions as well. See, e.g., id. § 

2K1.3 (the guidelines section for crimes involving explosives); id. § 2K2.1 (the 

section for firearm crimes, which can double a defendant’s guidelines range based 

on one “crime of violence” or triple or quadruple it based on two4

); id. § 2S1.1 (the 

section for laundering crimes); id. § 7B1.1 (the section for probation and 

supervised release violations).

Since 2005, the Sentencing Guidelines are no longer mandatory, meaning 

that sentencing judges can now impose sentences above or below the sentence 

 

4 For example, a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm who has 

two felony convictions from earlier in his life normally gets a sentencing range of 15 to 21 

months. See id. § 2K2.1(a)(7). If just one of those convictions meets the definition that Johnson

said was “nearly impossible to apply consistently,” 135 S. Ct. at 2560, the range becomes 41 to 

51 months. See USSG § 2K2.1(a)(4)(A). If both meet that definition, it becomes 63 to 78 

months. See id. § 2K2.1(a)(2). This fourfold increase is automatic even if the earlier convictions 

were themselves punished with as little as a year in state prison. See id. § 4B1.2(a). 

USSG § 2K2.1 may affect more people than the career offender guideline. The 

Sentencing Commission’s most recent published data shows that “[i]n fiscal year 2014, there 

were 5,498 offenders convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), accounting for 7.2% of all offenders 

sentenced under the guidelines.” See http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-andpublications/quick-facts/Quick_Facts_Felon_in_Possession_FY14.pdf. “For each of the past 

five years, more than half of offenders convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) were sentenced 

within the [guidelines] range.” Id. And as with § 4B1.1, two of the top five districts for § 922(g) 

cases are in the Eleventh Circuit. See id. And that’s just § 922(g). USSG § 2K2.1 is also used 

to calculate sentences for violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)–(p), (r)–(w), (x)(1), 923, 924(a), (b), 

(e)–(i), (k)–(o), 2332g, as well as 26 U.S.C. §§ 5685, 5861(a)–(l), 5871. See USSG App. A. 

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called for by the guidelines. Still, experience has shown us that sentencing judges

rarely use their discretion to impose sentences up to the level called for by the 

career offender penalty (§ 4B1.1) when that penalty doesn’t apply.

5

 Although I am 

sure he would prefer otherwise, Mr. Clayton’s case is a good example of the 

enormous impact § 4B1.1 can have. Mr. Clayton received a § 4B1.1 sentence 

based on a 1994 Florida conviction. Back in 1994, the Florida court punished Mr. 

Clayton for this crime by giving him a sentence of probation and a $250 fine. 

When Mr. Clayton was sentenced in federal court sixteen years later, this same 

Florida conviction had a far more harsh effect. Without that 1994 crime, Mr. 

Clayton’s sentencing range would have been 120 to 150 months in prison. But 

because the 1994 conviction required that he be sentenced as a career offender, his 

sentencing range became 360 months to life. The judge sentenced Mr. Clayton to 

360 months. 

A.

In explaining why the Supreme Court’s holding in Johnson doesn’t apply to 

the guidelines, the Matchett panel looked to the Seventh Circuit’s ruling in United 

States v. Tichenor, 683 F.3d 358 (7th Cir. 2012). Quoting Tichenor, the panel 

said: “Since the Guidelines are merely advisory, defendants cannot rely on them to 

 

5 For drug offenders like Mr. Clayton, less than 0.57% percent of defendants sentenced 

without § 4B1.1 get sentences as long as the lowest end of guideline range for defendants

sentenced under § 4B1.1. See http://www.src-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DataAnalyses-1.pdf.

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communicate the sentence that the district court will impose. Defendants’ inability 

to look to the Guidelines for notice underscores why . . . they cannot bring 

vagueness challenges against the Guidelines.” 802 F.3d at 1194 (quoting 

Tichenor, 653 F.3d at 365). But this view of the guidelines is at odds with how the 

Supreme Court views them, and in any event, it is perilous to now deduce this 

principle from Tichenor. A year after Tichenor was decided, the Supreme Court 

applied the Ex Post Facto Clause to the Sentencing Guidelines. See Peugh v. 

United States, __ U.S. __, 133 S. Ct. 2072 (2013). Like the vagueness doctrine, 

the Ex Post Facto Clause imposes a constitutional requirement of “fair notice.” 

Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 30, 101 S. Ct. 960, 965 (1981). 

Even though the guidelines are now advisory, Peugh reminded us that they 

“remain the starting point for every sentencing calculation in the federal system.” 

133 S. Ct. at 2083. In fact, “[18 U.S.C.] § 3553(a) explicitly directs sentencing 

courts to consider the Guidelines.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 50 n.6, 128 

S. Ct. 586, 596 n.6 (2007). So while judges can choose sentences outside what the 

guidelines recommend, the Supreme Court has emphasized “the centrality of the 

Guidelines in the sentencing process.” Molina-Martinez v. United States, 578 U.S. 

__, __, 136 S. Ct. 1338, 1346 (2016). Molina-Martinez explained that the 

guidelines are “the starting point for the district court’s decision and anchor the 

court’s discretion in selecting an appropriate sentence.” Id. at 1349; see also id. at 

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1342 (“The Sentencing Guidelines provide the framework for the tens of thousands 

of federal sentencing proceedings that occur each year.”); Peugh, 133 S. Ct. at 

2087 (“District courts must begin their sentencing analysis with the Guidelines . . .

and use them to calculate the sentencing range correctly; and those Guidelines will 

anchor both the district court’s discretion and the appellate review process.”).6

 

The guidelines have this “anchor” effect even when judges depart from 

them. “Even if the sentencing judge sees a reason to vary from the Guidelines, if 

the judge uses the sentencing range as the beginning point to explain the decision 

to deviate from it, then the Guidelines are in a real sense the basis for the 

sentence.” Peugh, 133 S. Ct. at 2083 (quotation omitted). “In less than one-fifth 

of cases since 2007 have district courts imposed above- or below-Guidelines 

sentences absent a Government motion. Moreover, the Sentencing Commission’s 

data indicate that when a Guidelines range moves up or down, offenders’ sentences 

move with it.” Id. at 2084 (citations omitted). Indeed a vague guideline can wreak 

harm on a defendant even before he is convicted of any crime. Id. at 2085 

(plurality opinion) (“[A] defendant charged with an increased punishment for his 

 6 The concept of an “anchor” effect makes sense. If a judge is told a sentencing range, 

her sentence is likely to be weighted toward that range no matter how far she might be permitted 

to depart from it. See Timur Kuran & Cass R. Sunstein, Availability Cascades and Risk 

Regulation, 51 Stan. L. Rev. 683, 705 (1999) (explaining how a number that appears early in a 

decision-making process “serves as a perceptual ‘anchor’” and distorts the ultimate decision even 

if the decision-maker has wide discretion); see also Stephanos Bibas & Susan Klein, The Sixth 

Amendment and Criminal Sentencing, 30 Cardozo L. Rev. 775, 779 (2008) (noting that the 

advisory federal guidelines “provide mental anchors, starting points that influence how judges 

think about cases and where they wind up”). 

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crime is likely to feel enhanced pressure to plead guilty. This pressure does not 

disappear simply because the Guidelines range is advisory; the defendant will be 

aware that the range is intended to, and usually does, exert controlling influence on 

the sentence that the court will impose.” (citation omitted)).7

 

Peugh outright rejected the idea the Matchett panel relied on – that the 

guidelines need not give notice because they are “purely advisory.” Id. at 2087 

(majority opinion). The Court wrote: “[i]t is simply not the case that the 

Sentencing Guidelines are merely a volume that the district court reads with 

academic interest in the course of sentencing.” Id. Rather, the guidelines are “the 

Federal Government’s authoritative view of the appropriate sentences for specific 

crimes.” Id. at 2085 (plurality opinion). And they announce “the most recent 

views of the agency charged by Congress with developing sentencing policy.” Id.

at 2087 (majority opinion). For these reasons the guidelines must “give fair 

warning of their effect and permit individuals to rely on their meaning.” Miller v. 

Florida, 482 U.S. 423, 430, 107 S. Ct. 2446, 2451 (1987) (quotation omitted) 

(applying the Ex Post Facto Clause to Florida’s advisory sentencing guidelines); 

see also Peugh, 133 S. Ct. at 2085 (plurality opinion) (“The [Ex Post Facto] Clause 

ensures that individuals have fair warning of applicable laws.”).

 7 Uncertainty about § 4B1.2’s meaning also distorts plea bargaining in state courts, where 

“[p]leas account for nearly 95% of all [felony] convictions.” Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 

372 & n.13, 130 S. Ct. 1473, 1485 & n.13 (2010). State defendants negotiating plea deals won’t 

likely know how their current conviction will impact a future § 4B1.2 sentence in federal court.

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Like the Ex Post Facto Clause, the vagueness doctrine must also apply to the 

Sentencing Guidelines. Just as the Ex Post Facto Clause ensures “fair warning,” 

the vagueness doctrine says no law can be “so vague that it fails to give ordinary 

people fair notice of the conduct it punishes.” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2556. The 

Matchett panel said Johnson does not apply because “advisory guidelines that 

inform a sentencing judge’s discretion [] cannot violate the notice requirement.” 

802 F.3d at 1195. Peugh tells us the opposite. Even if Peugh doesn’t set out 

exactly when the vagueness doctrine applies, it shows that the panel’s “notice is 

irrelevant” argument is not enough to shield the guidelines from constitutional 

scrutiny. And “notice is irrelevant” is the best defense the panel gave for its ruling.

The panel’s idea that notice is irrelevant for the Sentencing Guidelines 

seems to be based on its misreading of Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 128 

S. Ct. 2198 (2008). Irizarry held that Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal 

Procedure does not require a judge to say in advance of the sentence hearing what 

sentence she may impose. Id. at 709, 128 S. Ct. at 2200. In contrast, neither 

Peugh nor Johnson has anything to do with what a judge must say in any single 

case. Peugh and Johnson tackle the larger question of what notice is due the entire 

public about what punishment can be expected for a given offense. This notice is 

required from the “sentencing process long before the district court imposes the 

sentence.” Molina-Martinez, 136 S. Ct. at 1342. That’s why Peugh says that the 

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Guidelines must give notice of what conduct the courts will punish, even if a 

particular judge is not required to give advance warning about how she will use her 

discretion in a given case. 

The Matchett opinion ignores these lessons from Peugh and MolinaMartinez. Worse, the Matchett panel relied on precedent those cases abrogated.

For example, the panel purported to “join” the Sixth Circuit “insofar as we reject 

Matchett’s argument that advisory guidelines can be unconstitutionally vague.” 

802 F.3d at 1196. As it happens, the Sixth Circuit has itself considered this same 

argument and held “that the rationale of Johnson applies equally to the residual 

clause of the Guidelines.” United States v. Pawlak, __ F.3d. __, 2016 WL 

2802723 at *8 (6th Cir. May 13, 2016). The Matchett panel also twice quoted

from United States v. Wivell, 893 F.2d 156 (8th Cir. 1990). The Eighth Circuit has 

recognized that “[t]he reasoning in Wivell that the guidelines cannot be 

unconstitutionally vague because they do not proscribe conduct is doubtful after 

Johnson.” United States v. Taylor, 803 F.3d 931, 933 (8th Cir. 2015) (per curiam). 

And the Seventh Circuit, whose Tichenor opinion the Matchett panel quoted four 

times, has “proceed[ed] on the assumption that the Supreme Court’s reasoning [in 

Johnson] applies to section 4B1.2.” Ramirez v. United States, 799 F.3d 845, 856 

(7th Cir. 2015). Of the other courts cited by the panel, this leaves only the Fifth 

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Circuit, which has also vacated § 4B1.2 sentences because of Johnson. See infra

n.1. The Eleventh Circuit is all alone on this.

B. 

The Matchett panel got the Sentencing Guidelines wrong in this way. It got 

the vagueness doctrine wrong as well. It said “[t]he vagueness doctrine applies 

only to laws that prohibit conduct and fix punishments.” 802 F.3d at 1189. I say 

federal policy that causes certain conduct to be punished by more years in jail 

“prohibit[s] conduct and fix[es] punishments.” But even if I am wrong on this, we 

know that the Supreme Court has long applied the vagueness doctrine to all kinds 

of things that don’t “prohibit conduct and fix punishments.” For example, a half 

century ago Giaccio v. State of Pennsylvania, 382 U.S. 399, 86 S. Ct. 518 (1966), 

held unconstitutionally vague a statute that allowed juries to make acquitted 

defendants pay court costs “without any legally fixed standards.” Id. at 403, 86 

S. Ct. at 521. The Supreme Court distinguished the statute, which after all applied 

only to those acquitted, from laws that “impose[] forfeitures, punishments or 

judgments for costs.” Id. at 404, at 86 S Ct. at 522. This Pennsylvania statute 

neither prohibited conduct nor fixed punishment, but it was nonetheless 

unconstitutionally vague. 

The panel’s reasoning also defies Johnson itself. Johnson reminded us of

two ways in which vague laws can violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due 

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process of law: “Our cases establish that the Government violates this guarantee by 

taking away someone’s life, liberty, or property under a criminal law so vague that 

it fails to give ordinary people fair notice of the conduct it punishes, or so 

standardless that it invites arbitrary enforcement.” 135 S. Ct. at 2556. The 

Supreme Court then held that the 13 words of ACCA’s “residual clause” were 

unlawful in both these ways: “We are convinced that the indeterminacy of the 

wide-ranging inquiry required by the residual clause both denies fair notice to 

defendants and invites arbitrary enforcement by judges.” Id. at 2557. 

The Matchett panel gave no heed to these admonitions against “arbitrary 

enforcement.” Zero. Instead, the panel addressed only Johnson’s “notice” 

rationale, without ever mentioning the Court’s concern about “arbitrary 

enforcement by judges.” This matters because we have been instructed that the 

“arbitrary enforcement” concern is “the more important aspect of vagueness 

doctrine.” Kolendar v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 358, 103 S. Ct. 1855, 1858 (1983). 

Perhaps reflecting this lesson, every time Johnson told us why the residual clause 

is not lawful, it underscored the problem that the vague language of the clause led 

different judges to give similarly situated defendants widely varying sentences.

8

 

 8 See, e.g., 135 S. Ct. at 2558 (“[T]his Court’s repeated attempts and repeated failures to 

craft a principled and objective standard out of the residual clause confirm its hopeless 

indeterminacy.”); id. at 2559–60 (“This Court is not the only one that has had trouble making 

sense of the residual clause. The clause has created numerous splits among the lower federal 

courts, where it has proved nearly impossible to apply consistently.” (quotation omitted)); id. at 

2560 (“Nine years’ experience trying to derive meaning from the residual clause convinces us 

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But again, the panel made no effort to address this concern about arbitrariness, 

which the Supreme Court told us is “the more important aspect of vagueness 

doctrine.” 

If the panel had been willing to evaluate how the residual clause in the 

Sentencing Guidelines leads to “arbitrary enforcement by judges,” then the case 

would have easily resolved in Mr. Matchett’s favor. The Supreme Court has told 

us that overly vague laws violate our Constitution because they “delegate[] basic 

policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and 

subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory 

application.” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108–09, 92 S. Ct. 2294, 

2299 (1972). Or as Johnson put it, “the indeterminacy of the wide-ranging inquiry 

required by the residual clause” makes the clause unconstitutional because it 

“invites arbitrary enforcement by judges.” 135 S. Ct. at 2557. 

The risks of “discriminatory application” and “arbitrary enforcement” here 

should be obvious. Two judges who are sentencing defendants with identical 

records can arrive at different sentences based on each judge’s personal sense of 

what seems like a crime of violence. Judges will certainly try to apply pre-Johnson

 

that we have embarked upon a failed enterprise.”); id. at 2562 (“[T]he experience of the federal 

courts leaves no doubt about the unavoidable uncertainty and arbitrariness of adjudication under 

the residual clause.”); id. at 2563 (“Decisions under the residual clause have proved to be 

anything but evenhanded, predictable, or consistent.”). 

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residual clause opinions correctly when sentencing a person under USSG § 4B1.2.9

 

But Justice Scalia once said that he worried that, in the end, judges will have little 

choice but to “simply throw the opinions into the air in frustration, and give free 

rein to their own feelings as to what offenses should be considered crimes of 

violence.” Derby v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2858, 2859 (2011) (Scalia, J., 

dissenting from denial of certiorari). Of course we expect that judges will not act 

so ignobly. But “the due process protection against vague regulations does not 

leave the public at the mercy of noblesse oblige.” FCC v. Fox Television Stations, 

Inc., __ U.S. __, __, 132 S. Ct. 2307, 2318 (2012) (quotation omitted). Instead it 

bans any regulation that is “so standardless that it authorizes or encourages 

seriously discriminatory enforcement.” United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 

304, 128 S. Ct. 1830, 1845 (2008). 

C.

Also worrisome, the Matchett panel opinion forces this court and all courts 

sentencing human beings within the Eleventh Circuit to continue to apply and even 

add to the body of law that Johnson discredited. The panel recognizes that Johnson

“abrogated the previous decisions of the Supreme Court interpreting the residual 

clause.” 802 F.3d at 1195. But the panel nevertheless instructs courts that they 

 9

 As detailed in the next section, even though these cases were overruled by Johnson, 

courts in the Eleventh Circuit are required to keep applying them. See Matchett, 802 F.3d at 

1195–96 (“[S]entencing courts interpreting the residual clause of the guidelines must still adhere 

to the reasoning of cases interpreting the nearly identical language in [ACCA].).

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“must still adhere to the reasoning of [these] cases” when interpreting § 4B1.2. Id.

at 1195–96. Our court will thus continue to apply cases the Supreme Court derided 

as “anything but evenhanded, predictable, or consistent.” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 

2563. Indeed Johnson referenced several § 4B1.2 cases to illustrate how the 

residual clause “produces more unpredictability and arbitrariness than the Due 

Process Clause tolerates.” 135 S. Ct. at 2558. The Supreme Court even gave this 

court an unwanted tip of the hat, when it cited one of our § 4B1.2 opinions to 

declare that “[t]his Court is not the only one that has had trouble making sense of 

the residual clause.” Id. at 2559–60 (quotation omitted) (citing United States v. 

Whitson, 597 F.3d 1218 (11th Cir. 2010)). By my reading, the Supreme Court 

treated the problem with the residual clause in the statute as identical to the 

problem with the residual clause in the Sentencing Guidelines.10

Related to that point, the panel warned that applying the vagueness doctrine 

“would upend our sentencing regime” since “many [guidelines] provisions could 

be described as vague.” Id. at 1196. But the sky is not really falling. Johnson

does not invalidate everything that “could be described as vague.” The Court 

singled out a far more distinct problem: laws that require judges to apply overly 

 

10 Up until Matchett, this court also recognized that the two “residual clauses are 

identical” and treated them that way. United States v. Alexander, 609 F.3d 1250, 1253 (11th Cir. 

2010). Most notably, we did so on the flip side of the exact issue decided in Matchett. See

United States v. Chitwood, 676 F.3d 971, 978 n.3 (11th Cir. 2012) (noting that the Supreme 

Court’s rejection of a vagueness challenge to ACCA’s residual clause “appears to foreclose” a 

vagueness challenge to § 4B1.2’s residual clause). 

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19

vague standards “to a judicially imagined ‘ordinary case’ of a crime, not to realworld facts.” 135 S. Ct. at 2557; see also id. at 2558 (“It is one thing to apply an 

imprecise “serious potential risk” standard to real-world facts; it is quite another to 

apply it to a judge-imagined abstraction.”). In contrast, the guidelines base 

punishment almost exclusively on a defendant’s actual conduct.11 Consider the 

two provisions that the Matchett panel warned could next be deemed vague. See

802 F.3d at 1196. The first asks if the defendant used “sophisticated means” in 

committing the actual crime. USSG § 2B1.1(b)(10). The other asks if she played 

a “minor” role in the actual crime. Id. § 3B1.2(b). Johnson expressly condones 

standards that assess actual conduct in this way. See 135 S. Ct. at 2561 (“[W]e do 

not doubt the constitutionality of laws that call for the application of a qualitative 

standard such as ‘substantial risk’ to real-world conduct.”). I sincerely doubt that 

resentencing Mr. Matchett and others like him will “upend our sentencing regime.” 

Every other circuit has applied Johnson to the guidelines without any apparent 

trouble. 

 11 See United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 250, 125 S. Ct. 738, 759 (2005) (remedial 

opinion for the Court by Breyer, J.) (“Congress’ basic statutory goal—a system that diminishes 

sentencing disparity—depends for its success upon judicial efforts to determine, and to base 

punishment upon, the real conduct that underlies the crime of conviction.”). For more on the 

“real conduct” focus of the Sentencing Guidelines, see Stephen Breyer, The Federal Sentencing 

Guidelines and the Key Compromises Upon Which They Rest, 17 Hofstra L. Rev. 1, 12 (1988). 

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II.

The Matchett opinion is only one of many ways the Eleventh Circuit has 

uniquely “limited Johnson’s reach.” McCall, 2016 WL 3382006, at *2 (Martin, J., 

concurring). Today marks three months since the Supreme Court’s April 18 

decision in Welch v. United States, __ U.S. __, 136 S. Ct. 1257 (2016). In those 

three months, the Eleventh Circuit has ruled on over 1,159 applications for 

permission to file a successive § 2255 motion based on Johnson. These cases 

typically come to us as “nothing more than a form filled out by a prisoner.” 

McCall, 2016 WL 3382006, at *2 (Martin, J., concurring). Because we have so 

little to go on, “our court has been calling up each prisoner’s record” to decide, as 

though we ourselves are resentencing the prisoner, whether his record would 

qualify him for an ACCA sentence based on the parts of the statute that Johnson

left intact. Id. Having been a part of this process, I can now count at least five 

ways that this “massive effort to decide the merits of hundreds of habeas cases 

within 30 days each, all over a span of just a few weeks . . . sets our court apart.” 

Id. at *3. 

First, “[w]e were in the minority of courts that, from the beginning, said 

prisoners could not benefit from Johnson if they had already filed an earlier § 2255 

motion.” Id. That ruling “denied the application of Johnson to potentially 

hundreds of people based on pro se pleadings and without oral argument or 

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21

briefing.” In re Franks, 815 F.3d 1281, 1289 (11th Cir. 2016) (Martin, J., 

dissenting). The government (who, after all, jailed these prisoners in the first 

place) disagreed with our ruling and “respectfully urge[d] the Court to convene en 

banc to decide this important issue.” Id. at 1289 n.1. 

Second, even after the Welch decision (remarkably issued only nineteen 

days after the case was argued) abrogated our precedent, prisoners faced another 

obstacle. Only two months remained until the one-year limitations period for 

making Johnson claims ran out. In the Eleventh Circuit, over a hundred prisoners

tried to file Johnson applications before the Supreme Court decided Welch, most of 

them in the three months between the Welch certiorari grant and the day Welch

was decided. See In re Robinson, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 1583616, at *2–*5 (11th 

Cir. Apr. 19, 2016) (Martin, J., concurring) (listing 110 cases and dates). But 

“unlike all other circuits, the Eleventh Circuit refused to stay applications for 

successive § 2255 motions pending Welch.”12 A month before the Welch decision, 

the full Eleventh Circuit refused to vacate the case that Welch eventually 

abrogated. See In re Rivero, No. 15-13089 (Mar. 16, 2016). A few days later, the 

full court also vacated a panel opinion that allowed the court to stay Johnson

applications “until the Supreme Court decides Welch.” In re Johnson, 810 F.3d 

 

12 Brief of the Federal Public and Community Defenders and the National Association of 

Federal Defenders as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner, at 4 n.3, Jones v. United States, No. 

15-8629 (U.S. April 21, 2016). I have not verified this claim, but I see no reason to doubt it. 

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22

1247, 1253 (11th Cir. 2016). If either of those votes had gone the other way, 

hundreds of prisoners would have had more time to file their cases, and the judges 

of this court would have had more time to evaluate them. Instead, inmates had to 

re-file their applications, and this court had to decide the same cases again, this 

time in a crush of hundreds of new Johnson cases. Other courts took steps to avoid 

this problem. 

Third, “I am aware of no order from another court of appeals that combs 

through an applicant’s presentence investigation report to decide the merits of his 

yet-unfiled motion without ever hearing from a lawyer.” McCall, 2016 WL 

3382006, at *3 n.7 (Martin, J., concurring). A court of appeals is simply not

equipped to construct a new basis for a prisoner’s old sentence in this way. At the 

district court sentence hearing, unlike the pure paper review we are doing here, 

defense lawyers can point out factual errors in the PSI and otherwise educate the 

court about why the recommendations in the PSI might not be appropriate. None 

of that protection exists when prisoners apply to our court for permission to go to 

the district court to have their sentences reexamined.13 Also, when deciding these 

 

13 Prisoners filing applications in our court are confined to a short application form. This 

form, which can be seen at http://goo.gl/auE5HQ, does not allow applicants to recreate for us 

what facts were ultimately found by the sentencing judge, or what legal decisions the judge 

made. Instead, it gives prisoners exactly two lines to “[s]tate concisely every ground on which 

you now claim that you are being held unlawfully.” And it warns: “Do not submit separate 

petitions, motions, briefs, arguments, etc.” 

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23

cases, our court has over and over again failed to apply the Supreme Court’s 

current interpretation of ACCA.14 This appears to set us apart from our peers too.

Fourth, as far as I know, ours is the only court to force a decision on every 

one of these cases within 30 days of filing. We do this based on 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2244(b)(3)(D), which says: “The court of appeals shall grant or deny the 

authorization to file a second or successive application not later than 30 days after 

the filing of the motion.” Of course we never take lightly the word “shall” in a 

statute. But others who have considered this statute have concluded that “failure to 

comply with the thirty-day provision does not deprive this Court of the power to 

grant or deny a motion under § 2244(b)(3)(A)” because “the provision is hortatory 

or advisory rather than mandatory.” In re Siggers, 132 F.3d 333, 336 (6th Cir. 

 

14 This idea can be illustrated by this court’s treatment of the Supreme Court’s 2013 

ruling in Descamps, which explained the proper method for evaluating a person’s prior 

convictions. This is, of course, the question that comes up for people whose sentences violate 

Johnson. But in rushing to rule on so many of these cases in such a short period, this court has 

been erratic about whether and when Descamps applies in this context. The court’s first 

published opinion on this issue held that Descamps did not apply to a Johnson claim because the 

sentencing judge had cited the Taylor case when imposing sentence. See In re Thomas, __ F.3d 

__, 2016 WL 3000325, at *2 (11th Cir. May 25, 2016). Weeks later another panel held that 

Descamps does apply when we can’t tell which ACCA definition the sentencing judge had in 

mind (two ACCA definitions are just halves of one statutory subsection, so judges most often 

made no distinction). See In re Adams, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3269704, at *3 (11th Cir. June 15, 

2016). Later that afternoon a third panel ruled that “Descamps cannot serve as a basis” for any 

Johnson claim. See In re Hires, __ F.3d __, 2744, 2016 WL 3342668, at *5 (11th Cir. June 15, 

2016). Two days later, a fourth panel tried to reconcile the “tension” in these cases. Rogers, 

2016 WL 3362057, at *2 n.6. That same day another panel held that we can ignore Descamps

even for prisoners sentenced after Descamps. See In re Cook, No. 16-12745 (11th Cir. June 17, 

2016) (unpublished). Thomas, Adams, Hires, and Rogers are all published opinions, which 

means they set binding precedent. All of this precedent was established in a very short time 

period without any of the deliberation or adversarial presentation that goes into a normal appeal, 

and I’m afraid it shows.

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1997); see also In re Johnson, 810 F.3d 1247, 1249 (11th Cir. 2016) (“This Court 

has never decided if this 30-day timeframe is mandatory. All seven of the Courts 

of Appeals that have decided this question in a published opinion have said it is 

not.”). The Ninth Circuit recently observed about its experience deciding Johnson

applications: “Given the large volume of second or successive applications our 

court must process each month, it frequently takes us longer—sometimes much 

longer—than 30 days to rule.” Orona v. United States, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 

3435692, at *2 (9th Cir. June 22, 2016). I can’t help but think that if this court had 

taken the approach taken by others, our work on these cases would be both less 

frantic and more accurate. 

Fifth, another panel of this court recently held that “the federal habeas 

statute requires us to dismiss a claim that has been presented in a prior application”

to file a § 2255 motion. In re Baptiste, __ F.3d __, __, 2016 WL 3752118, at *2

(11th Cir. July 13, 2016). Baptiste was construing another provision of AEDPA, 

that is 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(1), which says any “claim presented in a second or 

successive habeas corpus application under section 2254 that was presented in a 

prior application shall be dismissed.” Of course, the § 2255 motions that I am 

talking about in this dissent are filed by federal prisoners. § 2255 motions are 

certainly not brought “under section 2254,” which governs petitions filed by state 

prisoners. But the Baptiste panel ruled that even though § 2244(b)(1) does not 

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mention § 2255 motions, it applies to them anyway, since “it would be odd [] if 

Congress had intended to allow federal prisoners” to do something state prisoners 

can’t do. Id.15 The panel thus held that the court must deny “leave to file a second 

or successive § 2255 motion presenting the same claims we have already rejected 

on their merits in a previous application.” Id. We have, of course, yet to see the 

full effect of Baptiste, but I hope it doesn’t work to bar relief for prisoners who ask 

us to look at their case again if we got it dead wrong the first time.

On the topic of this court’s singular approach, I add one more observation. 

Last month the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case of a Texas prisoner 

named Duane Buck. See Buck v. Stephens, No. 15-8049, __ S. Ct. __, 2016 WL 

531661 (U.S. June 6, 2016). The Court took the case even though the lower court 

ruled that Mr. Buck’s appeal was so meritless that he couldn’t even file it. Mr. 

Buck’s petition for certiorari asked: “did the United States Court of Appeals for the 

Fifth Circuit impose an improper and unduly burdensome Certificate of 

Appealability (COA) standard?” Our treatment of applications for successive 

§ 2255 motions may be even more troubling than the issue raised in Buck. Unlike 

 

15 There is nothing “odd” at all about giving different review to prisoners who are 

contesting convictions imposed by states in state courts compared to prisoners challenging

sentences we ourselves imposed in federal court. Comity requires the federal government to 

respect and defer to the processes put in place by state governments as well as the judgments of 

their courts. And anyway, state courts are able to fix their own mistakes. Federal courts 

imposed the sentences of prisoners in federal prisons, so those prisoners must look to us to fix 

our mistakes. Congress has long developed different standards for people challenging sentences 

imposed by state courts than for those challenging sentences imposed in federal court. 

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for the denial of a COA, AEDPA provides that “denial of an authorization . . . 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.” 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2244(b)(3)(E). This means no motion for reconsideration, no motion for en banc 

review, no appeal, and no petition for certiorari. The decisions we make in these 

cases are therefore, as a practical matter, not reviewable.16

A month after AEDPA became law, the Supreme Court held that these “new 

restrictions on successive petitions . . . do not amount to a ‘suspension’ of the 

writ.” Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651, 664, 116 S. Ct. 2333, 2340 (1996). Three 

Justices filed a concurrence warning that “the question whether the statute 

exceeded Congress’s Exceptions Clause power” might need to be revisited “if the 

courts of appeals adopted divergent interpretations of the gatekeeper standard.” Id.

at 667, 116 S. Ct. at 2342 (Souter, J., concurring). I hope someone better equipped 

 

16 This problem isn’t limited to Johnson claims. Our court recently denied a Johnson

application based on the “concurrent sentence doctrine,” which treats an illegal sentence as 

“harmless” if a prisoner is serving another sentence that is just as long as the illegal one. In re 

Williams, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3460899, at *5 (11th Cir. June 24, 2016). The Supreme Court 

has long warned that this doctrine is nothing more than a “rule of judicial convenience.” Benton 

v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 791, 89 S. Ct. 2056, 2061 (1969). And our court had never before 

“applied harmless error or the concurrent sentence doctrine in the context of an application to file 

a second or successive § 2255 motion.” Williams, 2016 WL 3460899, at *5. Without any 

briefing or advocacy on the question, Williams held that this doctrine barred a prisoner from 

even filing his § 2255 motion. Days later, a split panel used Williams to deny a pro se

application for permission to file a § 2255 motion based on Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. __, 132 

S. Ct. 2455 (2012). See In re Hernandez-Miranda, No. 16-12893 (11th Cir. June 28, 2016) 

(unpublished). Mr. Hernandez-Miranda was “a juvenile when he joined a conspiracy for which 

he was later sentenced to life without parole.” Id. at 13 (Martin, J., dissenting). Because of the 

restrictions on review of our rulings in this context, the panel’s order was the beginning and end 

of Mr. Hernandez-Miranda’s Eighth Amendment claim.

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than me will take this opportunity to look at whether the divergent views taken by 

this court require reexamination of this question asked by these Justices so soon 

after AEDPA was enacted. Twenty years later, I worry that our court’s harsh view

of our § 2244(b) gatekeeping role brings us perilously close to a suspension of the 

writ. 

Case: 16-14556 Date Filed: 07/18/2016 Page: 27 of 49 
ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, with whom JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judge, joins,

concurring:

Imagine a sentencing guideline that read, “A defendant is a career offender if 

‘[p]uddles do not ask for why not? It is cheese! Breath and wind. It is cheese.’” 

Boston Legal, “Word Salad Days” (2006), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770843

/quotes (last visited Apr. 28, 2016). Now imagine that based on the Guidelines 

range that that indecipherable language required, a district court sentenced a 

defendant to twice as much time as it otherwise would have. How could the 

sentencing court know that the guideline applied? How could the reviewing court 

know that the correct Guidelines calculation included an enhancement under that 

guideline? Surely doubling a defendant’s sentence based on nonsense would 

violate due process. But in United States v. Matchett, 802 F.3d 1185 (11th Cir. 

2015), we allowed defendants to continue to be sentenced to much more severe 

sentences than they would otherwise receive, based on the residual clause of the 

career-offender guideline, a guideline that the Supreme Court has found hardly 

more scrutable than the hypothetical one above.

No doubt criminal defendants do not have a due-process right to a sentence 

within a particular Sentencing Guidelines range. But Congress can, and essentially 

has, required courts to begin the sentencing process by correctly calculating the 

Guidelines range. The question here is whether, when the Supreme Court strikes 

language from a statute because it is unconstitutionally vague language and that 

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29

same language also appears in a guideline, we are constitutionally able to continue 

to apply that language in the sentencing process that Congress has mandated. The 

answer, unlike the challenged part of the career-offender guideline, is clear: we are 

not.

I concur in all but Section I.A of Judge Martin’s well-reasoned concurrence. 

I agree that the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. __, 

135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), holding the Armed Career Criminal Act’s (“ACCA”) 

residual clause unconstitutionally vague renders the exact same language in the 

Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional as well. 

I.

In Matchett, 802 F.3d 1185, the panel reached the opposite conclusion 

because it held that the vagueness doctrine does not apply to the Sentencing 

Guidelines. 802 F.3d at 1193-95. To reach that result, the panel first described the 

vagueness doctrine as “rest[ing] on [a] lack of notice.” Id. at 1194 (quoting 

Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 361, 108 S. Ct. 1853, 1857 (1988)). Then, 

the panel construed Irizarry v. United States, 553 U.S. 708, 128 S. Ct. 2198 (2008), 

as precluding due-process challenges to, essentially, anything having to do with 

sentencing under the Guidelines, based on the Supreme Court’s remark that that 

“[a]ny expectation subject to due process protection . . . that a criminal defendant 

would receive a sentence within the presumptively applicable Guidelines range did 

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30

not survive our decision in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S. Ct. 738, 

160 L. Ed. 2d 621 (2005), which invalidated the mandatory features of the 

Guidelines.” Matchett, 802 F.3d at 1194 (quoting Irizarry, 553 U.S. at 713, 128 S. 

Ct. at 2202). Finally, the panel quoted the Eighth Circuit’s decision in United 

States v. Wivell, 893 F.2d 156, 160 (8th Cir. 1990), for the proposition that 

“[b]ecause there is no constitutional right to sentencing guidelines . . . the 

limitations the Guidelines place on a judge’s discretion cannot violate a 

defendant’s right to due process by reason of being vague.” Matchett, 802 F.3d at 

1194-95 (quoting Wivell, 893 F.2d at 160).

A.

The problem with the first part of the panel’s analysis—that the vagueness 

doctrine “rest[s] on [a] lack of notice”—is that it is incomplete. The vagueness 

doctrine also protects against arbitrary enforcement by judges. Indeed, in Johnson

itself the Supreme Court held that the ACCA equivalent of the 13 words at issue 

here violated due process because it “both denies fair notice to defendants and 

invites arbitrary enforcement by judges.” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2557 (emphasis 

added).

B.

As for the second part of the panel’s analysis—that Irizarry precludes dueprocess challenges to all forms of sentencing error under the Guidelines—I 

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31

respectfully disagree. In Irizarry, under the advisory Guidelines, a defendant was 

sentenced above the correctly calculated Guidelines range. 553 U.S. at 712, 128 S. 

Ct. at 2201. He asserted that his due-process rights had been violated because the 

sentencing court varied upwards from the Guidelines range without providing him 

with prior notice. See id. The Supreme Court rejected his argument, explaining 

that under the advisory Guidelines, “neither the Government nor the defendant 

may place the same degree of reliance on the type of ‘expectancy’ [of a given 

sentence] that gave rise to a special need for notice [when the Guidelines were 

mandatory and the sentencing court departed from them].” Id. 553 U.S. at 713-14, 

128 S. Ct at 2202.

Put simply, Irizarry stands for only the proposition that a defendant has no 

due-process interest in receiving a sentence within the Guidelines range. But 

Irizarry says nothing about whether a defendant has a due-process right to a correct 

and fair sentencing process under the Sentencing Guidelines. And while the 

Supreme Court has not expressly spoken to such a right, the Court’s recent 

decisions strongly indicate that the right exists.

For starters, in Molina-Martinez v. United States, 578 U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 

1338 (2016), the Supreme Court recently explained that a district court that 

“improperly calculat[es]” a defendant’s Guidelines range makes a “significant 

procedural error,” id. at 1346 (quoting Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51, 128 

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32

S. Ct. 586, 597 (2007)) (quotation marks omitted)—so “particularly serious,” id., 

in fact, that the error generally qualifies in its own right as having “affected the 

defendant’s substantial rights.” Id.1

 

And that is not surprising, given that the Supreme Court has established that 

a correct and fair sentencing process necessarily begins with the correct calculation 

of the Guidelines range. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 50 & n.6, 128 S. Ct. 

586, 596 & n.6 (2007). Indeed, the Supreme Court has instructed that under 18 

U.S.C. § 3553(a), “district courts must begin their analysis with the Guidelines and 

remain cognizant of them throughout the sentencing process.” Id. at 50 n.6, 128 S. 

Ct. at 596 n.6 (emphasis added); see Peugh v. United States, 569 U.S. __, 133 S. 

Ct. 2072, 2083 (2013) (same). The correct Guidelines calculation “anchor[s] both 

the district court’s [sentencing] discretion and the appellate review process.” 

Peugh, 133 S. Ct. at 2087.

In other words, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that Congress has 

effectively legislated the requirement that a sentencing court start the sentencing 

process by first correctly calculating the Guidelines range. That makes § 3553(a) a 

“statute[ specifying the procedure for] fixing sentences.” See Johnson, 135 S. Ct. 

at 2556-57 (holding that the vagueness doctrine applies to statutes fixing 

 

1 If the Guidelines calculation error in Molina-Martinez that resulted in a difference of 7 

months’ imprisonment on the low end of the Guidelines range constitutes a “significant 

procedural error,” so too must an error in the application of the career-offender Guideline, which 

can double and sometimes even triple the otherwise-applicable Guidelines range.

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33

sentences). So to the extent that, as a part of the statutorily mandated sentencing 

process, § 3553(a) requires courts in calculating the Guidelines range to use a 

guideline that is “so standardless that it invites arbitrary enforcement,” the 

guideline must be struck down. See id. Failure to do so would render the 

sentencing process that § 3553(a) requires—determining the correct calculation of 

the Guidelines range—violative of due process because no court could reliably 

ascertain the correct calculation of the Guidelines range.

That is exactly the problem that the challenged language of the careeroffender guideline presents. How can a sentencing court correctly calculate the 

Guidelines range when it is forced to apply the “hopeless[ly] indetermina[te]” 

language of the career-offender guideline? Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2448. Courts 

had “trouble making sense” of the very same words when they tried to apply them 

under the ACCA’s residual clause. Id. at 2559-60. The Supreme Court observed 

that “[n]ine years’ experience trying to derive meaning from the residual clause 

convince[d it] that [it] ha[d] embarked upon a failed enterprise.” Id. at 2560. This 

“‘black hole of confusion and uncertainty’ that frustrates any effort to impart 

‘some sense of order and direction,’” id. at 2562 (quoting United States v. Vann, 

660 F.3d 771, 787 (4th Cir. 2011) (Agee, J., concurring)), does not somehow 

magically become clearer or more meaningful because the words appear in the 

guideline, rather than in the ACCA.

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34

Because of this muddle, a sentencing court cannot ascertain whether the 

challenged part of the career-offender guideline even applies when the guideline is 

raised, so the court necessarily cannot correctly calculate the Sentencing 

Guidelines range. As a result, the sentencing court cannot comply with the 

sentencing process’s virtual statutory requirement that the sentencing court first 

correctly calculate the applicable Guidelines range. 

And the confusion only grows on appeal. Determining whether a sentence 

imposed by a district court was procedurally reasonable requires appellate courts to 

first ascertain whether the district court correctly calculated the applicable 

Guideline range. But we are no more skilled in applying “hopeless[ly] 

indetermina[te]” language than district courts.

C.

Finally, with regard to the third part of the Matchett panel’s analysis—that 

the Sentencing Guidelines cannot be challenged as vague because no constitutional 

right to sentencing guidelines exists—I again respectfully disagree. True, 

“legislatures remain free to decide how much discretion in sentencing should be 

reposed in the judge or jury in noncapital cases.” Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 

603, 98 S. Ct. 2954, 2964 (1978). But legislatures cannot, as Matchett would 

apparently hold, cabin the sentencing discretion of judges by mandating that they 

calculate a defendant’s sentence using unconstitutionally vague language. 

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35

This would be another case entirely if sentencing judges could choose to 

wholly disregard the unconstitutionally vague career-offender guideline in 

calculating sentences. They cannot. Instead, district courts must begin the 

sentencing process by correctly calculating a defendant’s Guidelines range. 

Peugh, 133 S. Ct. at 2083. Under Matchett, that means that Congress has 

essentially required district courts to apply unconstitutionally vague language in 

sentencing defendants. But it could not do that. Due process may not require 

sentencing guidelines, but it does prohibit Congress from requiring judges to apply 

unconstitutionally vague language in correctly calculating a defendant’s sentence 

under any guidelines it chooses to enact.

II.

At bottom, statutorily, courts are required to begin every sentencing by 

correctly calculating the Guidelines range. Yet the Supreme Court has recognized 

that courts cannot reliably know whether the challenged language of the careeroffender Guideline applies in any given case. As a result, they cannot possibly 

know whether a correct calculation of the Guidelines range should or should not 

include such an enhancement. But in Matchett, we nonetheless required 

sentencing courts to impose the enhancement and ourselves to uphold it, anyway. 

Trying to divine meaning from the word salad that is the challenged portion of the 

career-offender guideline guarantees an arbitrary and unfair sentencing process in 

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36

violation of due process. For these reasons, I respectfully disagree with our 

holding in Matchett.

Case: 16-14556 Date Filed: 07/18/2016 Page: 36 of 49 
JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judge, with whom ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, joins, 

concurring in result:

The Supreme Court has told us that it violates the Constitution’s guarantee 

of due process to fix a sentence based on a person’s having committed a prior 

violent felony defined as “involv[ing] conduct that presents a serious potential risk 

of physical injury to another.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) (containing the socalled “residual clause” of the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”)); Johnson v. 

United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015) (striking the residual clause as 

unconstitutionally vague). This definition of “violent felony,” the Supreme Court 

said, is “so shapeless a provision” that any attempt “to derive meaning from” it 

necessarily will be “a failed enterprise.” Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2560.

Since the Supreme Court decided in Johnson that this language is 

unconstitutionally vague, we have repeatedly misinterpreted and misapplied that 

decision. As a result of our erroneous application of Johnson, in this Circuit 

thousands of people remain incarcerated who were sentenced under the very same 

language. Charles Clayton is one of these people. 

I.

Mr. Clayton was sentenced not under the residual clause in the ACCA, but 

under an identical clause that appears in the career offender sentencing 

enhancement of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, U.S.S.G. §§ 4B1.1, 

4B1.2(a)(2) (amended 2016). The career offender enhancement, just like the 

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ACCA, applies when a defendant sentenced in federal court has been convicted of 

three violent felonies.1

 Just like the ACCA, which lengthens a defendant’s 

maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment to a minimum sentence of 15 years, 

the career offender enhancement has the effect of significantly increasing a 

defendant’s sentence. For Mr. Clayton, it meant that instead of a likely sentence of 

120 to 150 months, he faced a likely sentence of at least 360 months. The 

sentencing judge in Mr. Clayton’s case found that he previously had been 

convicted of a crime that “involve[d] conduct that present[ed] a serious potential 

risk of physical injury to another” and imposed a 360 month sentence—more than 

twice what Mr. Clayton likely otherwise would have served. U.S.S.G. 

§ 4B1.2(a)(2).

Mr. Clayton has asked this Court for the opportunity to request relief from 

the district court because he was subject to a much higher sentence due to 13 words 

the Supreme Court has held to violate an individual’s constitutional rights. But we 

nonetheless must deny him the opportunity to even bring his claim to the district 

court’s attention because this Court has erected barriers to Mr. Clayton and 

thousands of others despite the Supreme Court’s unambiguous holding in Johnson. 

 

1 The ACCA enhancement applies when a person convicted of being a felon in 

possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), previously has been convicted of 

three violent felonies or serious drug offenses. The career offender enhancement applies when a 

person convicted of a violent felony or drug offense previously has been convicted of two such 

offenses. Either way, three convictions are required to impose an enhancement.

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II.

In throwing up these sorts of barriers, this Court consistently got it wrong. 

For starters, shortly after Johnson was decided, a panel of this Court limited 

severely the reach of that ruling by making relief unavailable to any inmate who 

previously had filed a motion to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. See 

In re Rivero, 797 F.3d 986 (11th Cir. 2015). The Supreme Court explained over a 

decade ago that a new substantive rule of constitutional law is retroactively 

applicable to cases under review in habeas proceedings. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 

U.S. 348, 351-52 (2004) (applying Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989)2

). The 

Rivero panel acknowledged that in Johnson the Supreme Court announced a new 

substantive rule of constitutional law. 797 F.3d at 989. 

But the panel refused to apply Johnson retroactively for two separate, newly 

formulated reasons. First, the panel held that Johnson could not be retroactively 

applicable, even to ACCA cases like Johnson itself, because “Congress could

impose the punishment in Johnson if Congress did so with specific, not vague, 

language.” Id. at 991. And second, the Rivero panel held that for Johnson’s rule 

to be retroactively applicable to the career offender enhancement in the sentencing 

guidelines, under which Gilberto Rivero had been sentenced, the Supreme Court 

 

2 Teague set forth a general principle that new rules of law should not be applied 

retroactively. See Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 351-52. New substantive rules, however, do apply 

retroactively. Id. at 352.

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must also have held specifically that the guidelines are subject to vagueness 

challenges (which it had not). Id. 

The Rivero panel’s holdings contradicted what the Supreme Court had 

already told us about retroactivity principles. And the panel provided no basis in 

Supreme Court precedent to justify these two newly minted barriers to relief for 

those sentenced based upon language the Supreme Court had just told us was 

unconstitutionally vague. As to the first holding, the Supreme Court previously 

implicitly rejected the idea that the prospect of Congressional intervention could 

limit the retroactive applicability of a new substantive rule.3

 As to the second 

holding in Rivero, nothing in the Supreme Court’s body of retroactivity law so 

much as hinted at a requirement beyond what Justice O’Connor described in Tyler 

 

3

 See Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614 (1998). In Bousley, the Supreme Court 

declined to apply the general principle that new rules are not retroactive. Id. at 619-21. Kenneth 

Bousley was convicted in 1990 of “using” a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). Id. at 

616. After the Eighth Circuit affirmed his conviction, Mr. Bousley filed for collateral relief. Id.

at 617. While his appeal from the district court’s denial of habeas relief was pending, the 

Supreme Court held in Bailey v. United States that § 924(c)(1)’s “use” prong required the 

government to prove “active employment of the firearm.” 516 U.S. 137, 144 (1995). Because 

Mr. Bousley contended that he merely possessed a firearm during his offense, he argued based 

on Bailey that his conduct failed to qualify under § 924(c). Bousley, 523 U.S. at 617-18. 

Amicus, arguing against retroactivity (because the government agreed with Mr. Bousley that he 

could benefit from Bailey’s rule) urged the Supreme Court to apply a Teague bar to Mr. 

Bousley’s claim. The Supreme Court declined, holding that Bailey necessarily was available to 

Mr. Bousley on collateral review because Bailey announced a new substantive rule. Id. at 620-

21; see United States v. Peter, 310 F.3d 709, 711 (11th Cir. 2002) (citing Bousley for the 

proposition that “[d]ecisions of the Supreme Court construing substantive federal criminal 

statutes must be given retroactive effect”). As I explained in dissent in Rivero, Congress was in 

the process of amending § 924(c)(1) to recriminalize the conduct the Court in Bailey held to fall 

outside the statute’s scope. Rivero, 797 F.3d at 999 (Jill Pryor, J., dissenting). Ultimately, the 

so-called “Bailey Fix Act” passed, but this had no bearing on the Supreme Court’s retroactivity 

decision in Bousley. Id. at 999-1000.

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v. Cain: “[I]f we hold in Case One that a particular type of rule applies 

retroactively to cases on collateral review and hold in Case Two that a given rule is 

of that particular type, then it necessarily follows that the given rule applies 

retroactively to cases on collateral review.” 533 U.S. 656, 668-69 (2001) 

(O’Connor, J., concurring); see In re Holladay, 331 F.3d 1169, 1172-73 (11th Cir. 

2003) (applying Justice O’Connor’s test to hold that the Supreme Court had 

“made” the rule announced in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), barring the 

execution of intellectually disabled persons, retroactively applicable). Although 

the Rivero panel acknowledged that Justice O’Connor’s retroactivity test applied, it 

failed to employ the test as Justice O’Connor constructed it.

Nonetheless, because of Rivero, from August 2015 until April 2016 we 

denied relief to every inmate whose Johnson-based request to file a second or 

successive § 2255 motion we decided. We even continued to deny inmates the 

opportunity to seek relief after the Supreme Court accepted certiorari in a case in 

which it would decide the issue of Johnson’s retroactivity. See Welch v. United 

States, 136 S. Ct. 790 (2016) (granting petition for certiorari).4

In Welch, the Supreme Court told us that we were wrong to hold that the rule 

announced in Johnson did not apply retroactively. 136 S. Ct. 1257, 1268 (2016). 

 

4 As Judge Martin explains in her concurrence, we were the only Circuit in the nation to 

have routinely refused to hold in abeyance inmates’ applications pending the Welch retroactivity 

decision. 

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Welch was a case from our Circuit. Mr. Welch had filed a first § 2255 motion 

before Johnson was decided, challenging his ACCA sentence, which was based on 

the residual clause of that statute. Id. at 1263. The district court denied Mr. Welch 

relief, and he sought a certificate of appealability (“COA”) from this Court. Id. 

Even though he notified our Court that Johnson was pending in the Supreme Court 

and requested that his motion be held pending the Supreme Court’s decision, his 

motion for a COA was denied. Id. “Less than three weeks later,” the Supreme 

Court observed in overruling us on Johnson’s retroactivity, “this Court issued its 

decision in Johnson.” Id. We had denied Mr. Welch any opportunity for relief 

knowing that Johnson soon would be decided.5

 

The Supreme Court in Welch flatly rejected this Court’s Rivero holding that 

Johnson’s rule was not retroactive. It noted that it had already rejected the 

argument that its decisions might not be retroactively applicable if Congress could 

“enact a new version of the residual clause that imposes the same punishment on 

the same persons for the same conduct, provided the new statute is precise enough 

to satisfy due process.” Id. at 1267; see Rivero, 797 F.3d at 991 (relying upon this 

reasoning). The “clearest example” the Court pointed out, was its prior decision in 

Bousley, which held a new rule to be retroactive “even though Congress could (and 

 

5 And, of course, had Mr. Welch sought permission from us to file a second § 2255 

motion based on Johnson, we would have denied him based on Rivero.

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later did) reverse [the rule announced in] Bailey by amending the statute.” Welch, 

136 S. Ct. at 1267 (emphasis added); see supra note 3.

Welch was an ACCA case, and it did not speak to the guidelines. But the 

Supreme Court issued another decision this term that fatally undermines the Rivero

panel’s alternative holding too. See Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 

(2016). Remember, the Rivero majority acknowledged that the Johnson rule was a 

new substantive rule of constitutional law. 797 F.3d at 989. In Montgomery, the 

Supreme Court stated in no uncertain terms that “courts must give retroactive effect

to new substantive rules of constitutional law.” 136 S. Ct. at 728 (emphasis 

added). So although the Rivero panel required that for Johnson’s rule to apply 

retroactively to the guidelines there be a third case holding that the guidelines

could be void for vagueness, Montgomery reminded us that the inquiry is simpler. 

By the Rivero panel’s own analysis, the Johnson rule was a new substantive rule of 

constitutional law. Under Montgomery, that means the rule must be given 

retroactive effect. Montgomery ends the analysis there.6 In short, we were wrong 

again. 

 

6 The Rivero panel’s observation that the guidelines must also be subject to a vagueness 

challenge in order for Mr. Rivero to obtain relief is not wrong (although I disagree with Rivero’s 

suggestion, later born out in Matchett, that the guidelines cannot be unconstitutionally vague). 

Rather, the observation was wrongly imported into the retroactivity analysis. That inquiry 

belongs instead in an examination of whether any particular inmate has a meritorious Johnson

claim. There is no precedential support for the proposition that these two inquiries somehow are 

related.

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III.

Even before the Supreme Court could decide Montgomery or Welch, this 

Court erected yet another barrier to relief for individuals like Mr. Clayton who 

were sentenced under the very words the Johnson Court struck as unconstitutional. 

In United States v. Matchett, a panel of this Court held that the rule in Johnson did 

not apply to individuals sentenced under the advisory guidelines because those 

guidelines are not subject to the Due Process Clause’s vagueness doctrine. 802 

F.3d 1185, 1193-94 (11th Cir. 2015). For the reasons articulated in Judge Martin’s 

and Judge Rosenbaum’s concurrences in this case, I believe Matchett was wrongly 

decided. In my view, which I share with my colleagues, Matchett’s holding was 

not grounded in the Constitution, the text of the career offender guideline, or any 

other solid legal foundation. Rather, the Matchett panel simply decreed that the 

advisory guidelines, unlike the ACCA, do not “fix punishments” and therefore are 

not subject to the limitations of due process. Id. at 1195. But in yet another case 

this term, the Supreme Court underscored that “the Guidelines are not only the 

starting point for most federal sentencing proceedings but also the lodestar.” 

Molina-Martinez v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1338, 1346 (2016). “The Guidelines 

inform and instruct the district court’s determination of an appropriate sentence. In 

the usual case, then, the systemic function of the selected Guidelines range will 

affect the sentence.” Id.; see also id. at 1349 (“[The guidelines] serve as the 

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starting point for the district court’s decision and anchor the court’s discretion in 

selecting an appropriate sentence.”). By any honest reading, the guidelines fix 

punishments. As such, in my view, their application must comport with due 

process.

Matchett’s reach in this Circuit is extensive. Now, no person whose 

advisory sentencing guidelines range was affected by the clause the Supreme Court 

held to be unconstitutionally standardless in Johnson may obtain relief, no matter 

how long he has been incarcerated or how diligently he has tried to preserve his 

claims. Bewilderingly, the Matchett panel erected this barrier even though the 

United States—the party responsible for the continued incarceration of career 

offenders—agreed with Mr. Matchett that the residual clause of the career offender 

guideline was unconstitutionally vague in light of Johnson. See Matchett, 802 F.3d 

at 1194.

IV.

This Court’s penchant for deciding these fundamentally important issues in 

orders on requests for authorization to file—in the absence of any substantive, 

adversarial briefing—is frustratingly familiar. We have received over 1,800 

requests for authorization to file a second or successive § 2255 motion since Welch

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was decided.7

 When an inmate makes such a request, we do not receive briefing 

from the parties. In nearly all of these cases, we never hear from the government. 

And at best, we receive a skeletal description of claims from the movant. At least 

as troublingly, the decisions we make are almost completely insulated from 

review.8

 I believe that in light of the limited time and resources we have to grant 

or deny authorization and the effective finality of our decision if we deny it, we 

should avoid making new substantive law in this procedural context. 

Unfortunately, not all of my colleagues share my view. In fact, a panel of 

this Court recently extended Matchett’s holding to cover individuals sentenced 

when the guidelines were mandatory rather than merely advisory. See In re 

Griffin, No. 16-12012, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3002292 (11th Cir. May 25, 2016). I 

have previously expressed my view of why this decision was deeply flawed. See 

In re Sapp, No. 16-13338, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3648334, at *2-7 (Jordan, 

Rosenbaum, and Jill Pryor, concurring). This is not the only time since Johnson

was decided that we have taken a previous decision of our Court and extended it in 

the successive § 2255 motion context without any adversarial testing or 

opportunity for further review. See In re Williams, Nos. 16-13013, 16-13232, __ 

 

7 By my rough calculation, approximately one third of inmates making such requests 

were seeking relief from their guidelines-based sentences.

8 See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E) (“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.”).

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F.3d __, 2016 WL 3460899, *4 (extending the “concurrent sentence doctrine,” a 

rule the Supreme Court long ago said offers nothing more than “a rule of judicial 

convenience,” 9 to the second or successive § 2255 motion context); In re Hires, 

No. 16-12744, __ F.3d __, 2016 WL 3342668, *4 (11th Cir. June 15, 2016) 

(extending the holding in Turner v. Warden Coleman FCI (Medium), 709 F.3d 

1328 (11th Cir. 2013) , that a conviction under Florida’s aggravated assault statue 

qualifies as a violent felony to the post-Johnson context without analyzing whether 

it qualifies notwithstanding Johnson and other Supreme Court precedent since 

Turner that would bear on the issue).

Instead of blazing new trails in the second or successive § 2255 motion 

context, the only issue we should decide is whether, under our existing precedent, 

the applicant has made a prima facie showing that his sentence was based on 

crimes that met the ACCA’s definition of “violent felony” before Johnson but no 

longer do.10 

 

9 Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 789-91 (1969).

10 Cf. In re Leonard, Nos. 16-13528, 16-13804, 16-13857, slip op. at 29-30 & n.11 (11th 

Cir. July 13, 2016) (Martin, J., concurring) (explaining that the question in the context of a 

request for authorization to file a successive § 2255 motion “should simply be whether [an 

inmate’s] sentence was based on crimes that met ACCA’s ‘violent felony’ definition before 

Johnson but no longer do,” and noting that the answer “should be ‘no’ only if a sentence clearly 

was based on ‘serious drug offenses’ or crimes that we have held are ‘violent felonies’ after 

Johnson” in light of facts the sentencing court found).

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V.

When it comes to Matchett, we soon may be told we are wrong again. On 

the last day of this year’s term, the Supreme Court accepted certiorari in Beckles v. 

United States, No. 15-8544, 2016 WL 1029080 (U.S. June 27, 2016). Beckles is 

yet another Johnson case that originated in this Circuit. This time, the petitioner 

was sentenced as a career offender under the advisory guidelines (just like Mr. 

Clayton and Mr. Matchett) rather than under the ACCA. So the Supreme Court, in 

deciding Beckles, will decide the very issue that Matchett concerns.

If we simply asked whether, on our existing precedent, the applicant has 

made a prima facie showing that his sentence was based on crimes that met the 

definition of “violent felony” before Johnson but no longer do, we undoubtedly 

would be granting authorization to file second or successive § 2255 motions in 

more cases. At least then these many individuals who may be serving 

unconstitutional sentences would have a shot at meaningful review, first in the 

district court and then in this Court on appeal (and maybe even ultimately in the 

Supreme Court).

I recognize that the number of requests for authorization we have received in 

the wake of Johnson has been extremely taxing on our Court. We have been 

inundated with thousands of filings in addition to our regular court work. And I 

understand that published orders from this Court that categorically foreclose relief 

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to whole groups of individuals, like Matchett and Griffin, may lessen that burden 

on district courts, too. But such prudential concerns are not reasons to refuse to 

remedy constitutional violations. As judges we are not sworn to shield district 

courts; rather, we are sworn to uphold the Constitution and vindicate the individual 

rights that the Constitution protects. 

If the Supreme Court decides Beckles in Mr. Clayton’s favor, he may be able 

to file another request for authorization under § 2255. So too may the hundreds of 

others who have tried since Johnson, only to be turned away by this Court based 

upon Matchett. I hope next time around we will avoid the mistakes I have 

identified. And I hope that, rather than being behind the march of justice, we, as 

our nation’s designated guardians, will be at the front.

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