Source: http://circuit9.blogspot.com/2016/04/welch-building-blocks-for-retroactively.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 00:22:25+00:00

Document:
For defenders, the retroactive application of Johnson to clients serving unconstitutional Armed Career Criminal Act sentences seemed like a no brainer. In Johnson, the Supreme Court held that the ACCA’s residual clause was unconstitutionally vague. Our clients serving sentences based on convictions that were ACCA predicates under the residual clause were serving unconstitutional sentences. Because the change in the scope of who is covered under the ACCA is substantive, Johnson applies retroactively to ACCA sentences. In other words, a final ACCA conviction is remediable either as a first § 2255 motion, a second or successive motion under § 2255(h)(2), or as a sentencing innocence claim under § 2241 (as outlined in this post-Johnson blog post and article).
The Career Offender statute requires that persons with the requisite predicate convictions “shall” have guidelines “at or near the maximum term authorized.” 28 U.S.C. § 994(h). The Career Offender guideline then defines predicate convictions to include the identical residual clause held unconstitutional in Johnson because of its indeterminacy. Many courts have been reluctant to make retroactive remedies available for prisoners serving unconstitutional Career Offender sentences. Seizing upon that reluctance, the government has advocated a hyper-technical view that, regardless of the gross effect of Career Offender designations on the ultimate sentence, the unconstitutional designation is merely a procedural hiccup rather than a substantive problem because the sentence remains within the statutory maximum.
The functional analysis declared in Welch destroys that argument. In LaBonte, the Supreme Court held that the Career Offender guideline cannot ameliorate the harsh effect required by the Career Offender statute. And the result of falling within the Career Offender guideline is drastic: the offense level can skyrocket and the Criminal History Category, no matter how low otherwise, automatically becomes a VI, the worst class of offenders. U.S.S.G. § 4B1.1(b). The same drastic effect pervades other guideline enhancements based on prior “crimes of violence” like the +6 or +10 enhancements in U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1. We have been arguing that Johnson renders an unconstitutional Career Offender sentence just as retroactively remediable as an unconstitutional ACCA sentence. In both contexts, Johnson “narrows the the scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its terms,” Schriro, 542 U.S. at 351-52, it “alters the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes,” id. at 352, and “prohibit[s] a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense,” Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 494 (1990).
Under Welch, the functional effect of Johnson on Career Offender status makes it a substantive decision that has retroactive effect under Teague in cases on collateral review.
For pending cases that depend on whether Johnson applies retroactively to sentences imposed based on Career Offender designation, we need to provide courts with Welch as supplemental and controlling authority in favor of retroactivity. For those cases not yet filed, Welch is a reminder to provide our Career Offender clients affected by Johnson with petitions for relief prior to Johnson’s one-year anniversary on June 25, 2016.

References: § 2255
 § 2255
 § 2241
 § 994
 § 4
 § 2
 v.