Court Opinion

ID: 9494953
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:51:23.276091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:44.221982
License: Public Domain

WIDENER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the remand.
Because the district courts in this circuit, for the last 30 years since Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972), on pain of instant reversal, have liberally construed the post-conviction applications for relief by prisoners, whether state or federal, in my opinion, changing the rules of procedure at this stage of the game without advising the district courts explicitly a satisfactory form for compliance with our decision, is less a service to the district courts than they should expect from us.
Our two-page-plus requirements, slip Part II, p. 7-8, are, perhaps necessarily, expressed partly in generalities and in legal language not easily construed. As such, I suggest they will lead to and encourage boundless litigation. Absent explicit directions to the prisoner, in my opinion a far preferable remedy would be that adopted by the First Circuit in Raineri v. United States, 233 F.3d 96 (1st Cir.2000), and by the Seventh Circuit in Henderson v. United States, 264 F.3d 709 (7th Cir.2001). Both of those cases hold that when a district court, at its own instance, without notice, converts a prisoner’s request for post-conviction relief into a § 2255 motion, the motion as sua sponte converted will not count as a first petition or motion for habeas corpus or like relief under § 2244(b)(3)(A) and § 2255.