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2 

JONES v. HENDRIX 

Syllabus 

access  to  needed  evidence  and  “aggravated”  by  the  concentration  of
federal prisoners in certain judicial districts that therefore faced “an 
inordinate number of habeas corpus actions.”  United States v.  Hay-
man, 342 U. S. 205, 212–214, 219.  To make this change effective, Con-
gress  generally  barred  federal  prisoners  “authorized”  to  file  a  §2255
motion  from  filing  a  petition  under  §2241.  But—in  a  provision  of 
§2255(e) now known as the saving clause—Congress preserved access 
to §2241 in cases where “the remedy by motion is inadequate or inef-
fective to test the legality of [a prisoner’s] detention.” 

Congress later enacted AEDPA, which, as relevant here, barred sec-
ond or successive §2255 motions unless based on either “newly discov-
ered  evidence,”  §2255(h)(1),  or  “a  new  rule  of  constitutional  law,” 
§2255(h)(2).  Some courts faced with AEDPA’s second-or-successive re-
strictions held that §2255 was “inadequate and ineffective” under the 
saving clause when AEDPA’s restrictions barred a prisoner from seek-
ing relief based on a new interpretation of a criminal statute that cir-
cuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal,
and first §2255 motion.   

Section  2255(e)’s  saving  clause  does  not  authorize  that  end-run 
around AEDPA.  The clause preserves recourse to §2241 in cases where 
unusual circumstances make it impossible or impracticable to seek re-
lief in the sentencing court, as well as for challenges to detention other 
than collateral attacks on a sentence.  But §2255(h) specifies the two 
limited conditions in which federal prisoners may bring second or suc-
cessive collateral attacks on their sentences.  The inability of a pris-
oner with a statutory claim to satisfy §2255(h) does not mean that the
prisoner may bring the claim in a §2241 petition.  Pp. 3–12.

(b) Jones and the United States each advance unpersuasive theories 
of when and why §2255(h)’s exclusion of statutory claims sometimes 
renders  §2255  inadequate  or  ineffective  for  purposes  of  the  saving 
clause.  Pp. 12–25.

(1) Jones argues that §2255 is necessarily “inadequate or ineffec-
tive to test” a prisoner’s claim if the §2255 court fails to apply the cor-
rect substantive law.  But the saving clause is concerned with the ad-
equacy  or  effectiveness  of  the  remedial  vehicle  (“the  remedy  by 
motion”), not  any court’s asserted errors of law.  Next, Jones argues 
that courts of equity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal reme-
dies  in  a  broad  range  of  circumstances;  to  the  extent  relevant  to
§2255(e), this proves at most that a variety of practical obstacles might
trigger the saving clause, cf. Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23, not that 
the clause offers an exemption from AEDPA’s limits on second or suc-
cessive  collateral  attacks.    Jones  further  argues  that  the  saving 
clause’s use of the present tense (“is inadequate or ineffective”) means 
that §2241 is available whenever a prisoner is presently unable to file