Court Opinion

ID: 9601695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:49:01.942641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:42:24.384993
License: Public Domain

ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The court today resolves that a man who under our circuit law is innocent of the federal crime for which he has been imprisoned, should remain in prison on the chance that the Supreme Court will disagree with our understanding of the law and deem his conduct a crime. It is the antithesis of our justice system to hold that an innocent man should be imprisoned for fear that a guilty man will go free. Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 325, 115 S.Ct. 851, 130 L.Ed.2d 808 (1995) (“Indeed, concern about the injustice that results from the conviction of an innocent person has long been at the core of our criminal justice system. That concern is reflected ... in the ‘fundamental value determination of our society that it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.’ ”). Yet that is what the court has chosen today, and I respectfully dissent.
The majority declares that the question of Morales’ innocence is in limbo because there is an intercircuit split, which the Supreme Court may resolve next year in a case in which it has granted certiorari. But the definition of actual innocence cannot hinge on the status of certiorari petitions in the Supreme Court, and an inter-circuit split should not preclude an actual innocence claim on the possibility that the Supreme Court in the future may hear the issue and decide differently. Until the Supreme Court tells us otherwise, our cases should control, and under our case-law, he has a meritorious claim of actual innocence. In addition to revealing an unsettling level of insecurity about the soundness of our own decisions, the majority’s reliance on the certiorari status of other cases poses all kinds of problems, including the real possibility that the Supreme Court will subsequently decide that certio-rari was improvidently granted, or will otherwise fail to reach the merits when the claim is heard. Moreover, it is inconceivable that we would pursue the same path in a case with a circuit split but no similar case pending before the Supreme Court. In that case, the defendant faces the same circuit split, and there is still the possibility that within a year or less the Supreme Court would reject our cases. Yet, that defendant would be set free, and this one is not. The law should not tolerate such arbitrariness. That, of course, assumes that the majority would not require that defendant to wait as well. It appears that whether a defendant may proceed with his claim of actual innocence or not depends on whether we think the Supreme Court will rule on a case in the future, perhaps only the near future. In any case, it allows a defendant with a claim of actual innocence to languish in prison indefinitely awaiting a Supreme Court action that might never occur.
*674There is simply no support in any case-law for interjecting such a consideration into the analysis of whether a defendant may proceed on a claim of actual innocence. Until the Supreme Court actually decides an issue, we should follow our circuit’s decisions concerning statutory interpretation, and under that law he has a valid claim of innocence. Moreover, this is different from Davenport — which is the only case cited by the majority for its novel proposition — because in this case there is no split between the circuit in which he is incarcerated and the circuit in which he was convicted. In re Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 612 (7th Cir.1998). We are both the circuit of conviction and incarceration here, so there is no concern about which law applies to the claim of actual innocence.
Recognizing that under our law, Morales has a valid claim of actual innocence may be only one of the steps. Many courts, including our own — although the courts have not always been consistent — have held that a § 2241 is available only when there is both a valid claim of actual innocence and the petitioner has not had an unobstructed opportunity to present the claim prior to this time. Compare Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir.2002) (holding that “§ 2255 is ‘inadequate or ineffective’ only when a structural problem in § 2255 forecloses even one round of effective review — and then only when the claim being foreclosed is one of actual innocence.”); Ivy v. Pontesso, 328 F.3d 1057, 1060 (9th Cir.2003) (“it is not enough that the petitioner is presently barred from raising his claim of innocence by motion under § 2255. He must never have had the opportunity to raise it by motion.”); with Cooper v. United States, 199 F.3d 898, 901 (7th Cir.1999) (noting that a conviction of a non-existent crime is “in anyone’s book ... a clear miscarriage of justice,” and that “a valid claim of actual innocence would be enforceable under § 2241 without regard to time limits under § 2255 if relief under that section was not, for some reason, available.”); see also Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 623, 630, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998) (procedurally defaulted claim could nevertheless be raised if petitioner could establish that the constitutional error probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent). The majority conveys the impression that if the Supreme Court upholds Scialabba, Morales can proceed with a new petition, but the majority fails to explain why the reasoning in this opinion in rejecting the § 2241 petition would not equally doom the later petition in establishing that he had an unobstructed opportunity to present the claim prior to this.
Although the majority does not explain that, I agree that a § 2241 petition is available because he did not have an unobstructed opportunity to present the claim prior to this time. Scialabba was decided after the one-year time period expired for the filing of his § 2255 petition, and for purposes of an actual innocence claim, that should be enough. Stephens, Jr. v. Al Herrera, 464 F.3d 895, 898 (9th Cir.2006). We should not foreclose review of a claim of actual innocence solely because a defendant did not anticipate any novel argument that could possibly be made. See, e.g., Bousley, 523 U.S. at 622, 118 S.Ct. 1604 (recognizing that a claim may be so novel that its legal basis is not reasonably available to counsel). That would encourage the kind of scattershot approach to litigation that vexes the courts already. It would also mean that the creativity of a defendant’s attorney, if he even has one, or the sheer luck of timing would be the definitive factor in who remains in prison for a non-existent crime and who gets out. This case illustrates it precisely, as his co-defendants had pending § 2255 petitions at *675the time Scialabba was decided, and therefore were able to successfully raise the claim in the § 2255 petition and have long been released. Instead, the question should be whether, once the claim was recognized and available in this court, the petitioner had an unobstructed opportunity to present it. He did not, and therefore should be allowed to proceed with it at this time. See Kramer v. Olson, 347 F.3d 214, 217 (7th Cir.2003) (recognizing that a defendant “must first show that the legal theory he advances relies on a change in law that postdates his first § 2255 motion ... and ‘eludes permission in section 2255 for successive motions’ ”); Abdullah v. Hedrick, 392 F.3d 957, 959 (8th Cir.2004) (holding that Abdullah had an unobstructed opportunity to raise the claim because after the case was decided establishing his actual innocence, he failed to raise it properly in a pending § 2255 petition). As we stated in Cooper v. United States, 199 F.3d 898, 901 (7th Cir.1999), a conviction of a non-existent crime is “in anyone’s book ... a clear miscarriage of justice,” and as we have the authority to redress it, I see no reason why we should fail to do so at this time. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.