Opinion ID: 219133
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Jurisdiction of the District Court

Text: I address first the issue of the jurisdiction of the district court to consider Alaimalo's third successive petition without a certificate issued by the Court of Appeals authorizing him to do so. While the issue is not free from doubt, Wofford v. Scott, 177 F.3d 1236, 1241 (11th Cir.1999), I accept for present purposes the majority's holding that Alaimalo was entitled to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 without obtaining such a certificate. This he has already done. The issue here turns on the jurisdiction of the district court to entertain his fourth petition raising the same issue as two of his previous petitions, without a certificate authorizing its filing. Section 2244 provides that: No circuit or district judge shall be required to entertain an application for a writ of habeas corpus to inquire into the detention of a person pursuant to a judgment of a court of the United States if it appears that the legality of such detention has been determined by a judge or court of the United States on a prior application for a writ of habeas corpus, except as provided in section 2255. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(a) (emphasis added). On its face and subject to the except clause, § 2244(a) would appear to grant a district judge discretion to decline a successive application for a writ of habeas corpus, although it does not compel him to do so. Indeed, the Supreme Court so held in Sanders v. United States 373 U.S. 1, 12, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963), although it did so in the context of an earlier version of § 2244(a), amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), which did not contain the except as provided in section 2255 clause. Instead, the discretion of the district court to decline to entertain a second or successive petition raising the same claim was conditioned on a finding that the ends of justice would not be served by a consideration of the merits of the petition. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(a) (1994) (amended 1996). The specific provision of AEDPA that deleted the ends of justice clause in § 2244(a), expressly stated that it was making a conforming amendment to § 2244(a) to add a cross-reference to § 2255. See AEDPA, 104 P.L. 132, § 106(a), 110 Stat. 1214, 1220 (1996). Significantly, AEDPA amended § 2255 to delete a provision, comparable to the opening clause of § 2244(a), which gave the sentencing court discretion to decline to entertain a second or successive petition for similar relief on behalf of the same prisoner, and it added the requirement of a certificate of authorization for second or subsequent petitions, contained in 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h). See AEDPA, 104 P.L. 132, § 105, 110 Stat. 1214, 1220 (1996). These changes suggest that Congress intended to compel a district judge to entertain a second or successive application pursuant to § 2241 that challenges a judgment of conviction only when the petitioner had obtained a certificate of authorization of the kind that § 2255(h) requires as a condition to the filing of a second or successive petition pursuant to that section. Moreover, the fact that § 2255(h) applies by its terms to successive motions brought pursuant to § 2255 is not determinative because Congress incorporated the certificate of authorization requirement by reference in the except as provided clause of § 2244(a). A contrary holding, which would allow the filing of a second or successive challenge to a judgment of conviction pursuant to § 2241, without a certificate of authorization, would lead to an extraordinarily anomalous, if not absurd, result. This is so because the normal, if not exclusive, procedure for a federal prisoner to challenge the validity of a judgment of conviction is by a motion pursuant to § 2255. A second or successive § 2255 petition may not be considered by the district court unless petitioner obtains a certificate authorizing the district court to do so. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h). The scope of the § 2241 remedy, as it relates to challenges to the validity of a judgment of conviction, is the same as the scope of the § 2255 remedy. Compare 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c)(3) with 28 U.S.C. § 2255(b); and see Kinder v. Purdy, 222 F.3d 209, 214 (5th Cir.2000); Wofford, 177 F.3d at 1239. Indeed, the Supreme Court has held that § 2255 was intended simply to provide in the sentencing court a remedy exactly commensurate with that which had previously been available by habeas corpus in the court of the district where the prisoner was confined. Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 427, 82 S.Ct. 468, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962). [T]he sole purpose [of § 2255] was to minimize the difficulties encountered in habeas corpus hearings by affording the same rights in another and more convenient forum. United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 205, 219, 72 S.Ct. 263, 96 L.Ed. 232 (1952). Under these circumstances, there would be no logical reason for Congress to distinguish between § 2255 motions and § 2241 habeas corpus applications for the purpose of permitting a prisoner to file a second or successive petition challenging his conviction without a certificate of authorization. See Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 15, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963) (Since the motion procedure [pursuant to § 2255] is the substantial equivalent of federal habeas corpus, we see no need to differentiate the two for present purposes.). Consistent with this analysis, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has held that the effect of the changes made by AEDPA, particularly the addition of the except as provided by section 2255 clause to 2244(a), is to channel[ ] all successive collateral attacks on a federal court's conviction or sentence into the prior-approval mechanism of § 2244(b)(3). Collateral attacks that do not address the conviction or sentence are unaffected by this channeling apparatus (although § 2244(a) bars successive petitions under § 2241 directed to the same issue concerning execution of a sentence). Valona v. United States, 138 F.3d 693, 695 (7th Cir. 1998) (Easterbrook, J.). Significantly, in Barapind v. Reno, 225 F.3d 1100 (9th Cir.2000), we applied the Seventh Circuit's analysis in Valona in the course of holding that § 2244(a) did not bar a § 2241 habeas petition filed by an INS detainee. We observed that, [a]s noted by the Seventh Circuit, § 2244(a) prevents a federal inmate from using § 2241 `to call into question the validity of a conviction or sentence that has already been subject to collateral review.' Barapind, 225 F.3d at 1111 (quoting Valona, 138 F.3d at 694). Barapind 's challenge to a decision of the BIA was not precluded because it did not call into question the validity of a conviction or sentence and because § 2244(a) [only] bars successive petitions seeking review of the propriety of a detention `pursuant to a judgment of a court of the United States.' Id. at 1111 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2244(a)).