Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 55.0

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

23 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

tention to override that value (assuming that it actually in-
tended to completely foreclose new legal innocence claims).
Congress did not do so; yet the majority reads its silence to
accomplish that same extraordinarily inequitable result.12 
The practical consequences that inure from the majority’s
reading also undercut substantially the negative inference
upon  which  the  majority  relies.    We  have  consistently
warned  that  courts  should  “resis[t]  an  interpretation  of
[AEDPA]  that  would  ‘produce  troublesome  results’  [and] 
‘create  procedural  anomalies.’ ”  Panetti,  551  U. S.,  at  946 
(quoting Castro v. United States, 540 U. S. 375, 380 (2003)).
The majority does not speak to this at all, but its interpre-
tation of §2255 produces bizarre outcomes. 

First, there is the quirky procedural anomaly that arises
due to the fact that statutory innocence claims are fully au-
thorized in the postconviction review context.  This Court’s 
recognition that a statute covers a narrower scope of crimi-
nal conduct than was previously acknowledged falls within 
the narrow subset of criminal law decisions that are fully 
retroactive, meaning that a federal prisoner can rely upon 
that new determination whether his case is still on direct 
review or not.  Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 351– 
352  (2004);  Bousley,  523  U. S.,  at  620–621.    But  reading
§2255(h) to bar a successive petition raising legal innocence
would  mean  that  most  prisoners  who  would  (remarkably) 
be eligible for such retroactive relief would turn out to have
no mechanism for actually requesting it.  A strange practi-
cal conundrum, to say the least.

Inferring that §2255(h) bars legal innocence claims when
brought  in  a  successive  petition  also  produces  stunningly 
disparate  results  that  bear  no  relationship  to  Congress’s 

—————— 

12 Theoretically, Jones had “an” opportunity to raise his claim.  But, in 
my view, it was not a meaningful one.  Well-established Circuit prece-
dent barred the claim at the time of Jones’s direct appeal and first peti-
tion.  See n. 9, supra.  Jones has never had any opportunity, meaningful 
or otherwise, to rely on Rehaif’s authoritative construction.