Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 40

8 

JONES v. HENDRIX 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

postconviction relief deliberately and clearly, thereby une-
quivocally  expressing  its  intent  to  do  so.    See  Holland  v. 
Florida, 560 U. S. 631, 646 (2010); infra, at 25–28. 

All this means that today (as in 1948) the saving clause 
is best interpreted as allowing for the filing of a habeas pe-
tition under §2241 where a claim that was cognizable prior
to AEDPA cannot be brought under §2255, unless Congress 
has clearly expressed its intent to foreclose that particular
claim. 

B 
That brings us to the situation at issue here.  When Con-
gress  amended  §2255  by  enacting  AEDPA,  it  legislated 
against  a  legal  background  in  which  a  federal  prisoner
could bring a statutory innocence claim in a §2255 petition.
The majority does not dispute this.  See ante, at 18–19.  Nor 
could it, because this Court made crystal clear in 1974 in 
Davis that statutory innocence claims are legally cogniza-
ble in a §2255 motion.  417 U. S., at 343–347.3 

Moreover,  prior  to  AEDPA’s  enactment,  a  federal  pris-
oner could bring such a postconviction claim of statutory in-
nocence in a successive petition.  This Court had generally
restricted  successive  postconviction  filings  by  the  1990s, 
but a prisoner who had previously filed at least one petition
could  still  file  another  one  in  order  to  assert  innocence. 
That was because any bar to the filing of a successive peti-
tion was typically lifted if enforcing that bar would result
in a “miscarriage of justice.”  McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 
467,  494–495  (1991);  Hertz  &  Liebman  §28.4[g],  at  1757;
see  Brief  for  Respondent  22–24.    And  under  our  settled 
—————— 

3 In this regard, Davis merely acknowledged what had been true since 
the founding.  See infra, at 31–34; Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 333, 
343–345  (1974);  see  also  L.  Litman,  Legal  Innocence  and  Federal  Ha-
beas, 104 Va. L. Rev. 417, 488, n. 334 (2018) (“[A]t the time Section 2255 
was  enacted,  federal  prisoners  could  raise  a  claim,  in  successive  peti-
tions,  that  they  were  mistakenly  convicted  or  sentenced  because  of  an 
error of statutory interpretation”).