Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 51.0

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

19 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

brings a claim that arose after the time in which the pris-
oner would or could have filed his first petition.  Ibid. (au-
thorizing successive petitions raising “newly discovered ev-
idence”  or  “a  new  rule  of  constitutional  law”  (emphasis
added)).

In light of this key observation, the majority’s assumption 
that  §2255(h)  bars  Jones’s  claim  is  significantly  hobbled. 
Jones’s  statutory  innocence  claim  is  also  “new”—in  the 
sense that it was not available to him when his first §2255 
petition was filed.9  And Jones’s claim shares other features 
of the circumstances that Congress exempted from the “sec-
ond  or  successive”  general  prohibition  as  well—including 
that  it  implicates  innocence,  see  §2255(h)(1),  and  stems
from a retroactively applicable Supreme Court opinion, see 
§2255(h)(2).  Nor does the filing of Jones’s successive peti-
tion  implicate  any  anti-claim-splitting  rationale,  as  Jones 
did not manipulatively withhold his legal innocence claim 
during his initial §2255 proceedings.  Indeed, he could not 
possibly have done so, since this Court did not decide Rehaif 
v. United States, 588 U. S. ___ (2019), which provided the 
basis  for  his  claim,  until  nearly  two  decades  after  Jones
filed his first petition.

In  short,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  Congress  that  ex-
pressly  authorized  “new”  claims  involving  innocence  or 
those that arise from developments in Supreme Court case 

—————— 

9 Prior to this Court’s holding in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U. S. ___ 
(2019),  well-established  Circuit  precedent  had  barred  Jones’s  claim. 
United States v. Jones, 266 F. 3d 804, 810, n. 5 (CA8 2001) (citing United 
States v. Kind, 194 F. 3d 900, 906 (CA8 1999)).  After Jones’s conviction 
became final, this Court decided Rehaif, which interpreted the elements 
of Jones’s crime of conviction more narrowly than some Courts of Appeals
had, and thereby recognized a potential basis for Jones and other similar
defendants to claim legal innocence.  And because Rehaif was a Supreme 
Court ruling that changed the scope of a criminal statute, it applied ret-
roactively to individuals (like Jones) whose convictions had become final
at the time it was issued.  Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 351–352 
(2004); Bousley v. United States, 523 U. S. 614, 620–621 (1998).