Opinion ID: 4470958
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Competing Views

Text: Neither the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Wheeler nor the dissent in this case persuades us to take a different view. The Fourth Circuit found “no need to read [§ 2255(e)’s] savings clause as dependent only on a change in Supreme Court law” because its text (unlike § 2255(h)(2)’s text) does not identify a new Supreme Court case as a prerequisite for § 2255 to be considered “inadequate or ineffective.” Wheeler, 886 F.3d at 428–29. True enough. But we still must decide what § 2255(e)’s general “inadequate or ineffective” language means. Even if our precedent requires us to overlook that this general phrase is connected to the words “to test,” we still should interpret the phrase in the way that best comports with the rest of § 2255. See Star Athletica, 137 S. Ct. at 1010. And § 2255(h)(2) requires a new Supreme Court decision before triggering the right to a second or successive § 2255 motion. We would read this limit right out of the statute if we held that the limit also rendered § 2255 “inadequate or ineffective” under § 2255(e) so as to permit the filing of a § 2241 petition instead. The Fourth Circuit, by comparison, thought that § 2255(h)(2)’s requirement of a new Supreme Court decision “cut[] the other way.” Wheeler, 886 F.3d at 428. It said: “Congress could have made savings clause relief dependent only on changes in Supreme Court constitutional law by using the identical language in § 2255(e), but it did not.” Id. at 428–29. The court thus replaced the harmonious-reading canon with a “discordant-reading” canon. Under its logic, Congress also could have made savings clause relief dependent only on a federal prisoner’s compliance with § 2255(f)’s time limits. Does its failure to do so mean that courts may hold that those time limits render § 2255 “inadequate or ineffective” under § 2255(e)? We think not. Courts should read § 2255(e)’s general “inadequate or ineffective” phrase in a manner that harmonizes it with the rest of § 2255, not in a manner that creates conflicts in the statutory scheme. For centuries, courts have recognized that “[i]f any section [of a law] be intricate, obscure, or doubtful, the proper mode of discovering its true meaning is by comparing it with the other sections, and finding out the sense of one clause by the words or obvious intent of the No. 18-6299 Hueso v. Barnhart Page 20 other.” Scalia & Garner, supra, at 167 (quoting 1 Edward Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, or a Commentary upon Littleton § 728, at 381a (1628; 14th ed. 1791)). The Fourth Circuit failed to do so. The Fourth Circuit also said that § 2255(e) applies to those who have already been “denied” relief under § 2255, so Congress meant for it to cover “those prisoners filing a successive § 2255 motion.” Wheeler, 886 F.3d at 429. We do not dispute that § 2255(e)’s language covers those who have had one § 2255 motion denied if they show that § 2255’s remedy is inadequate or ineffective. But we fail to see how that fact favors the Fourth Circuit’s conclusion that they may rely on new circuit cases over our conclusion that they must rely on new Supreme Court cases. To its credit, the dissent in this case does confront our concern that interpreting § 2255(e)’s “inadequate or ineffective” language to include statutory changes from the circuit courts would treat the limits in § 2255(f)(3) and (h)(2) as a nullity. The dissent says those limits would bar most untimely or successive § 2255 motions (and so would not be superfluous) because only a narrow subset of circuit changes would trigger § 2255(e): those showing statutory errors that are “sufficiently grave to be deemed a miscarriage of justice or a fundamental defect.” Dissent at 30 (quoting Hill, 836 F.3d at 595). This response confirms the textual problem with the dissent’s view. As noted, the Supreme Court has long held that a statutory error “does not provide a basis for collateral attack”—whether under § 2241, § 2254, or § 2255—“unless the claimed error constituted ‘a fundamental defect which inherently results in a complete miscarriage of justice.’” Addonizio, 442 U.S. at 186 (quoting Hill, 368 U.S. at 428); see Reed v. Farley, 512 U.S. 339, 353–55 (1994). Well before Congress’s 1996 amendments, a federal prisoner needed to satisfy this fundamental-defect requirement when raising statutory errors in collateral attacks. After those amendments, a prisoner still must satisfy this fundamental-defect element even if the prisoner files a timely first-in-time § 2255 motion. If satisfying that preexisting mandate also automatically overcomes Congress’s second-or-successive limits in § 2255(h) or its time limits in § 2255(f), those limits do no additional work. We refuse to read the limits out of the statute in this way. No. 18-6299 Hueso v. Barnhart Page 21 Again to its credit, the dissent recognizes the incongruity of allowing a prisoner to raise a successive statutory claim based on a new circuit decision under § 2241 when the prisoner must rely on a new Supreme Court decision to raise a successive constitutional claim under § 2255(h)(2). Dissent at 31–32. The dissent reconciles this oddity not by requiring new Supreme Court decisions for both statutory and constitutional claims (as we do), but by suggesting that even new constitutional circuit decisions can render § 2255 “inadequate or ineffective” under § 2255(e). We are not aware of any other opinion that has suggested that a new constitutional decision by a circuit court could render § 2255 inadequate or ineffective and trigger another round of litigation under § 2241. Yet, as the dissent rightly notes, that is the logical implication of Wheeler’s holding, despite § 2255(h)(2)’s plain text requiring “a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court,” for successive litigation under § 2255. For this reason, too, we think that our reading best implements § 2255’s text and structure. In sum, Hueso must identify a new Supreme Court decision to show that § 2255’s remedy is inadequate or ineffective. He thus may not rely on the Ninth Circuit’s decision in ValenciaMendoza or the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Simmons as the basis for his habeas claim.