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Page Number: 13.0

8 

JONES v. HENDRIX 

Opinion of the Court 

depend  on  the  saving  clause  or  proceed  under  §2241  “di-
rectly.”  Compare Brief for Petitioner 31 and Brief for Re-
spondent 37–38 with Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Cu-
riae  17–18.    It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  case  in  which  this
logical  distinction  would  make  any  practical  difference. 
That said, were it not for the saving clause, a literal reading 
of §2255(e) might be thought to bar any “application for a
writ  of  habeas  corpus  in  behalf  of  a  [federal]  prisoner,”
§2255(e), whether or not it challenged the “sentence . . . im-
posed,”  §2255(a).    If  nothing  else,  then,  the  saving  clause 
guards against the danger that §2255(e) might be construed 
to bar manner-of-detention challenges even though they are
not within §2255’s substantive scope. 

B 
In 1996, Congress enacted AEDPA, which made signifi-
cant reforms to the process of federal-court postconviction 
review for both state and federal prisoners.  Most relevant 
here, AEDPA strictly limited “second or successive” §2255
motions to those that “contain— 

“(1)  newly  discovered  evidence  that,  if  proven  and 
viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be suf-
ficient  to  establish  by  clear  and  convincing  evidence
that no reasonable factfinder would have found the mo-
vant guilty of the offense; or

“(2) a new rule of constitutional law, made retroac-
tive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court,
that was previously unavailable.”  §2255(h). 

Importantly, AEDPA left the text of §2255(e) unchanged.
But  AEDPA’s  new  second-or-successive  restrictions  indi-
rectly gave rise to a novel application of the saving clause. 
Mere months before AEDPA’s enactment, this Court de-
cided  Bailey  v.  United  States,  516  U. S.  137  (1995).    That 
case interpreted the offense of “us[ing]” a firearm “during
and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking