Opinion ID: 4199786
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Use of Current Law in Assessing Harmlessness

Text: 14 To decide whether Defendant’s Florida robbery convictions qualify him as an armed career criminal, we look to the substantive law concerning the force clause as it currently stands, not the law as it was at the time of sentencing. Critically, this means that we must consider the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the force clause in Johnson I. We do so for two reasons. First, in general, judicial interpretations of substantive statutes receive retroactive effect. See, e.g., Harper v. Va. Dep’t of Taxation, 509 U.S. 86, 97 (1993) (When this Court applies a rule of federal law to the parties before it, that rule is the controlling interpretation of federal law and must be given full retroactive effect in all cases still open on direct review and as to all events, regardless of whether such events predate or postdate our announcement of the rule.); see also Rivers v. Roadway Express, Inc., 511 U.S. 298, 312–13 (1994) (A judicial construction of a statute is an authoritative statement of what the statute meant before as well as after the decision of the case giving rise to that construction.). Although the Supreme Court has sometimes been careful to limit that principle to cases on direct review, it has also applied the principle in collateral challenges. See, e.g., Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 618–21 (1998) (applying a judicial construction of a statute that post-dated the habeas petitioner’s conviction to determine whether the petitioner had been misinformed . . . as to the 15 elements of [the] offense before pleading guilty); see also Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 351–52 (2004) (noting that [n]ew substantive rules generally apply retroactively, even to convictions that are already final). Second, if this were Defendant’s first § 2255 motion, there is no doubt that we would consider the current law to assess harmlessness. In Reina-Rodriguez, we held that a non-constitutional, substantive [judicial] decision concerning the reach of ACCA that post-dated the time when the movant’s conviction became final applied in an initial § 2255 proceeding. 655 F.3d at 1187–90. In reaching that conclusion, we rejected the Government’s argument that the relevant decision could not apply retroactively. New substantive rules generally apply retroactively, including decisions that narrow the scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its terms. Id. at 1188–89 (quoting Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 351). The reason to apply substantive rules retroactively to cases on collateral review is that decisions that narrow the scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its terms necessarily raise the risk that people who have been convicted of violating that statute—or whose punishment has been enhanced for violating that statute—stand[] convicted of an act that the law does not make criminal or face[] a punishment that the law cannot impose upon [them]. Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 352 (internal quotation marks omitted). 16 That reason applies with equal force to a second or successive petition or motion. The habeas petitioner filing a second or successive petition or motion who claims to have been convicted of a crime that was not a crime is at no less risk of being erroneously imprisoned than a habeas petitioner filing a first petition or motion. Accordingly, once the bar to considering a second or successive petition or motion has been overcome, the analysis of the merits is the same as if the petitioner were bringing a first petition or motion. Indeed, the Tenth Circuit has noted that, if a court hears a second-or-successive § 2254 petition on its merits, the standards are no different than hearing a first § 2254 petition on its merits. Case v. Hatch, 731 F.3d 1015, 1038 n.12 (10th Cir. 2013).