Court Opinion

ID: 9492731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:49:08.299938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:28.021211
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Anthony Gray-Bey is serving a sentence of 256 months’ incarceration for conspiring to distribute cocaine, possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, using a telephone to facilitate his drug business, and using a firearm during and in relation to drug trafficking. His convictions and sentences have been affirmed, see United States v. Goines, 988 F.2d 750 (7th Cir.1993), and a collateral attack under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 was unsuccessful. Gray-Bey v. United States, 156 F.3d 733 (7th Cir.1998). On December 8, 1999, Gray-Bey filed an application for leave to commence a second proceeding for collateral relief. Congress has set a deadline for action: “The court of appeals shall grant or deny the authorization to file a second or successive application not later than 30 days after the filing of the motion.” 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(D), applied to federal prisoners by 28 U.S.C. § 2255 ¶ 8. That time expires today, January 7, 2000. But my colleagues do not “grant or deny” the requested authorization. Instead they issue an order directing the Clerk to appoint counsel for Gray-Bey and specifying four issues that briefs should address. We lack authority to depart from an Act of Congress, so I record my disagreement.
Section 2244(b)(3)(D) is explicit: “The court of appeals shall grant or deny the authorization to file a second or successive application not later than 30 days after the filing of the motion.” “Shall,” not “should” or “endeavor to” or “make progress toward”; this statute does not leave wriggle room. The court shall grant or deny the application within 30 days. In this construction “shall” means “must”. Context may show that a particular “shall” is synonymous with “may,” see Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 432 n.9, 115 S.Ct. 2227, 132 L.Ed.2d 375 (1995), but replacing “shall” with “may” in § 2244(b)(3)(D) makes the passage vapid. In its context, the “shall” of § 2244(b)(3)(D) is a mandate to judges, not a grant of permission or a first-party expression of futurity (“I shall go to the opera tonight”) that is subject to alteration. How could Congress have been clearer? If “shall grant or deny ... not later than 30 days” is not mandatory, what language could be mandatory? Would it help if the word “must” had been used instead? That word has fewer senses, see Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modem Legal Usage 939-42 (2d ed.1995), but it is not statutory ambiguity that undergirds the majority’s disposition.
Other circuits, whose decisions the majority cites, don’t fret about shadings among “must,” “shall,” and “should.” They simply balk at deadlines. In re Vial, 115 F.3d 1192 (4th Cir.1997) (en banc), the first of the decisions to disregard § 2244(b)(3)(D), offers this defense, which I quote in full: “[W]e exceeded the 30-day time limitation established by 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(D) for decisions on requests for permission to institute a second or *872successive § 2255 proceeding. We are convinced, however, that the importance of the issue presented justified the delay.” 115 F.3d at 1194 n. 3. This “explanation” is shocking; the court ignores the text and asserts a right to violate a statute. The Constitution adopts a different hierarchy; statutes are superior to judges’ views about wise policy. See Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 255, 108 S.Ct. 2369,101 L.Ed.2d 228 (1988); United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 736-37,100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980). The second circuit takes the same general approach as the fourth, with a more extended effort to justify elevating judicial views over legislative ones. Galtieri v. United States, 128 F.3d 33, 36-37 (2d Cir.1997). Like the fourth circuit, Galtieri confesses that it is not interpreting § 2244(b)(3)(D); the court instead claims a common-law power to disregard it in pursuit of better adjudication. Yet whether lengthier adjudication is “better” is the very question to which § 2244(b)(3)(D) speaks. Like many recent decisions of the Supreme Court, § 2244(b)(3)(D) instantiates the principle that dispatch has value. Both Congress and the Justices want to reduce the period during which the validity of a conviction is open to question. Galtieri observes that more time leads to fewer substantive errors, which may well be true; but how to reconcile the quest for accuracy with other competing objectives is a legislative task, traditionally implemented through devices such as statutes of limitations and outer periods for action. Congress has concluded that, once a prisoner has had a direct appeal and one full collateral attack, further proceedings must be abbreviated. That decision is entitled to our respect and obedience, whether we approve it or not.
Only the sixth circuit has offered a reason compatible with legislative supremacy under the Constitution. In re Siggers, 132 F.3d 333, 336 (6th Cir.1997), holds that § 2244(b)(3)(D) is unenforceable because it does not specify the consequence of delay. The court believed that statutes are directory rather than mandatory when no consequence is attached to disobedience, and if this is so then the 30 days indeed may be exceeded — for the meaning of all legal texts depends on a background of interpretive principles. Congress could have said something like “if 30 days pass without action, then the application is denied automatically.” Because it did not do this, Siggers holds, a court may exceed the time limit with impunity. The first circuit agrees with Siggers, see Rodriguez v. Superintendent, 139 F.3d 270, 272 (1st Cir. 1998), reiterated in dictum in United States v. Barrett, 178 F.3d 34, 42 n. 2 (1st Cir.1999), but I do not, because I do not think that “no stated consequence means non-mandatory” is a background norm of interpretation in federal law.
Siggers’ approach implements Holmes’s bad-man theory that law’s meaning lies in the penalties for noncompliance. Holmes’s approach is a useful heuristic, but much of our law is based on a contrary premise: that rules are effective, and must be implemented in good faith, even if there is no stated penalty. See Kurowski v. Krajewski 848 F.2d 767, 774-75 (7th Cir.1988). The first amendment says “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech” (there’s that word again), and Art. I, § 2, cl. 3 specifies that a census “shall b’e made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years” (a “shall” plus a deadline); no one believes that the Constitution’s failure to spell out what happens if Congress contravenes these rules means that Congress is entitled to contravene them! The United States “shall” publish “from time to time” a statement of accounts. Art. I, § 9, cl. 7. When holding that no one has standing to obtain judicial review of a claim that the United States has violated this rule, the Supreme Court emphasized that political actors nonetheless are obliged to follow it. United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 179, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974). Claims under the Guaranty Clause, Art. IV § 4, are not justiciable, but *873the lack of enforcement does not imply that the political branches may ignore their obligations. Surely courts would not say that, because no statute attaches a penalty to judges’ failure to apply correct rules of law on collateral review, judges are free to disregard the entire Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (of which § 2244 is a part). Yet that proposition is logically identical to Siggers’ treatment of § 2244(b)(3)(D).
The omission of a consequence from § 2244(b)(3)(D) means only that the courts must select a consequence in common-law fashion. Perhaps the right remedy is mandamus by a higher court. Perhaps it is the dismissal of the application, after the fashion of Carlisle v. United States, 517 U.S. 416, 116 S.Ct. 1460, 134 L.Ed.2d 613 (1996); United States v. Addonizio, 442 U.S. 178, 99 S.Ct. 2235, 60 L.Ed.2d 805 (1979); United States v. Kimberlin, 776 F.2d 1344 (7th Cir.1985); and Gaertner v. United States, 763 F.2d 787 (7th Cir. 1985) — though I could understand a holding that delay does not deprive the court of authority to grant the application eventually. Cf. Brock v. Pierce County, 476 U.S. 253, 106 S.Ct. 1834, 90 L.Ed.2d 248 (1986) (observing that the remedy for delay in administrative law need not be the elimination of the agency’s power to act, but not questioning the proposition that a statutory deadline is nonetheless binding). Perhaps the best response to the short time for action is a generous attitude toward the uncertainty that abbreviated de-cisionmaking produces (applications should be granted in close cases). Perhaps, to the contrary, courts should take a stingy attitude: a request for leave to conduct a third round of litigation could be denied unless within 30 days the court comes to believe that it has fair chance of success. All of these are possible, and judges reasonably could disagree about which to choose. But a deadline without an explicit penalty for delay is still a deadline, which must be followed, however difficult it may be to decide how to proceed.
Last year we encountered another statute, effective two days after § 2244, specifying a time limit. One part of the Prison Litigation Reform Act provides that prospective relief concerning the operation of prisons is automatically stayed 30 days after a party moves to modify the decree. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(2). The sixth circuit held in Hadix v. Johnson, 144 F.3d 925, 944-46 (6th Cir.1998), that § 3626(e)(2) is subject to equitable alteration by federal courts. Addressing the same issue, we disagreed with Hadix, concluding instead that the language of § 3626(e)(2) is too clear to permit common-law modifications. French v. Duckworth, 178 F.3d 437, 441-43 (7th Cir.1999), cert. granted, — U.S. -, 120 S.Ct. 578, 145 L.Ed.2d 481 (1999). That seems to me equally true of § 2244(b)(3)(D). The panel in French went on to hold that § 3626(e)(2) is unconstitutional, a conclusion with which I disagreed, see 178 F.3d at 448-53 (dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc). Right or wrong substantively, French shows the proper way to reason about a time limit for judicial action. We took § 3626(e)(2) seriously, even though that meant its doom.
Our failure to act on Gray-Bey’s application is more regrettable than the declaration of unconstitutionality in French, for the Supreme Court will have the last word on § 3626(e)(2). But “[t]he grant or denial of an authorization by a court of appeals to file a second or successive application shall not be appealable and shall not be the subject of a petition for rehearing or for a writ of certiorari.” 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E). Perhaps this language, unlike § 2244(b)(3)(D), does leave wriggle room: the “grant or denial” is not reviewable, but a refusal to issue a timely decision may be reviewed by mandamus or a petition for certiorari before judgment. Perhaps, even though the “grant or denial of an authorization” is not reviewable, any relief provided by the district court ultimately is subject to review of antecedent issues, including the question whether au*874thorization should have been granted. Perhaps, too, the Supreme Court’s decision in French may cast light on the propriety of my colleagues’ action. As a practical matter, however, a court’s failure to implement § 2244(b)(3)(D) in a given case is conclusive: the time it would take the Solicitor General or comparable state official to file a petition for mandamus, and the Supreme Court to issue a writ, may exceed the additional time before the court issues a decision.
Although the majority cites Vial, Sig-gers, Galtieñ, and Rodñguez, it does not endorse their reasoning (as opposed to their'results). Instead it offers a broader proposition, which amounts to the conclusion that Congress just can’t set deadlines for litigation — not because the Constitution liberates judges from time limits (the conclusion of French) but because judges frequently exercise equitable powers concerning many statutes that include the word “shall.” I grant that occasionally the word “shall” is non-mandatory when read in context, but I do not think that cases such as Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Edüd 669 (1971), and Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 63 S.Ct. 1098, 87 L.Ed. 1424 (1943), which deal with comity among judicial systems, offer much help on the question whether a statute saying that a court “shall” do something “not later than 30 days” permits the court to take more than 30 days. Time limits traditionally have been strictly enforced in federal law. E.g., Browder v. Director, Department of Corrections, 434 U.S. 257, 98 S.Ct. 556, 54 L.Edüd 521 (1978); United States v. Locke, 471 U.S. 84, 105 S.Ct. 1785, 85 L.Ed.2d 64 (1985); Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow u Gilbertson, 501 U.S. 350, 111 S.Ct. 2773, 115 L.Edüd 321 (1991); Carlisle; Addonizio.
Congress did not repeal the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651, when enacting § 2244(b)(3)(D), a fact that my colleagues deem significant, but no one thinks that § 1651 is a license to ignore statutory rules. Pennsylvania Bureau of Correction v. United States Marshals Service, 474 U.S. 34, 106 S.Ct. 355, 88 L.Ed.2d 189 (1985), holds that § 1651 does not permit a court to disregard 28 U.S.C. § 2243. I cannot imagine why judges would have more power to modify § 2244 than they do to modify § 2243. Section 2266, another part of the aedpa, also is illuminating: that statute allows judges to extend deadlines when certain conditions are satisfied; § 2244(b)(3)(D) does not. Ordinary principles of interpretation lead to the conclusion that the circumstances justifying an extension under § 2266 do not justify extra time under § 2244(b). Otherwise what’s the point of the differences between the two statutes?
In the end, the majority’s approach rests on the proposition that federal judges have discretion to depart from federal statutes for good reasons — and that judges, rather than the political branches, define which reasons are “good.” Few propositions could be more subversive of the rule of law. Pennsylvania Bureau of Correction is one among many cases denying that federal courts have any such power. The equitable-discretion approach taken in Radix (and by the Solicitor General in French) is far more circumscribed and cannot be reworked to fit § 2244(b)(3)(D). It is that courts may issue injunctions preserving the status quo unless Congress cancels that authority expressly. Although § 3626(e)(2) says that the existing injunction is automatically stayed once 30 days have run, it does not preclude judges from issuing another, identical injunction under their general equitable powers pending further litigation. That seems to me too much an evasion of § 3626(e)(2) to be sound. (Likewise, the maneuver in Triestman v. United States, 124 F.3d 361, 366-67 (2d Cir.1997), of denying the application pro forma and immediately granting rehearing in order to afford more time for decision is a transparent evasion of § 2244(b)(3)(D) because the court’s order does not reflect an actual decision as opposed to a bookkeeping entry. Galtieñ *875has the virtue of candor, and the second circuit apparently ceased using Triest-man’s approach after deciding Galtieri.)
Right or wrong, reliance on equitable discretion to preserve the status quo offers no support for my colleagues’ action today. There is no longstanding “general equitable power” to authorize applications for second or successive collateral attacks— the norm is that one is sufficient — and there is no status quo to “preserve” by equitable relief; § 2244(b) is a novelty that must be understood on its own terms. Moreover, the Solicitor General has stressed in French that equitable discretion to extend the 30-day period depends on a strong substantive claim for ongoing relief. My colleagues do not conclude that Gray-Bey has a strong claim that is likely to prevail on further consideration. His claim is weak and readily may be decided now.
His initial problem — one that does not make my colleagues’ list of four issues to be briefed — is time. Section 2255 ¶ 6 provides:
A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion under this section. The limitation period shall run from the latest of—
(1) the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes final;
(2) the date on which the impediment to making a motion created by governmental action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if the movant was prevented from making a motion by such governmental action;
(3) the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review; or
(4) the date on which the facts supporting the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.
Only subsection (3) might authorize Gray-Bey’s application in December 1999, more than six years after his conviction was affirmed (and more than three years after Congress added the one-year period of limitations to the law of collateral attack). But the “right” that Gray-Bey wants to assert “was initially recognized by the Supreme Court” on December 6, 1995, in Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 116 S.Ct. 501, 133 L.Ed.2d 472 (1995), more than four years before Gray-Bey filed his application. Far from being unavailable to Gray-Bey until now, Bailey came in time for Gray-Bey to present it on his first collateral attack. Gray-Bey lost not because Bailey is prospective only, but because he neglected to make the argument in the district court even though certiorari had been granted in Bailey on April 17, 1995, and the issue had been percolating for years. 156 F.3d at 742-MS.
Gray-Bey now points to Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998), which held that implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) (the statute construed in Bailey) can lead to constitutional problems cognizable on collateral attack. Improper advice to a defendant pleading guilty could make the plea unintelligent, Bousley held; similarly, a trial record that lacks evidence adequate to establish all elements of the offense (as Bailey defines them) could support collateral relief to avoid imprisoning an innocent person. But these are not new principles of constitutional law. Davis v. United States, 417 U.S. 333, 94 S.Ct. 2298, 41 L.Ed.2d 109 (1974), establishes that actual innocence justifies collateral relief under § 2255, cf. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), and the rule that involuntary guilty pleas may be set aside is even older. More than a year before Bousley, we applied these principles in collateral attacks based on Bailey. E.g., Stanback v. United States, 113 F.3d 651 (7th Cir.1997). Gray-Bey’s first collateral attack failed solely because he should have *876raised the issue sooner; that conclusion is incompatible with his current submission that 1997 or 1998 was too soon to invoke Bailey. Nothing that happened in 1998 restarts the time for a collateral attack. The initial principle of Bailey, which is the crucial time under § 2255 ¶ 6, dates from 1995, and the retroactivity rules predate Bousley.
The questions that my colleagues flag for counsel’s attention also have straightforward answers. Logically the initial question (though it is No. 4 in the majority’s list) is whether a § 2255 petition is necessary, or whether instead Gray-Bey may use 28 U.S.C. § 2241, to which the time limits and prior-authorization rules do not apply. The answer must be that § 2255 is the required route. Section 2241 is unavailable “unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255 ¶ 5. Judicial emphasis must be on “test”: a § 2255 motion is not “inadequate or ineffective” merely because the petitioner loses. Nor do the changes made by the aedpa, which limit the number of § 2255 motions (and the time to file them) render § 2255 inadequate or ineffective to test the lawfulness of detention. No one is entitled to more than one collateral attack.
In re Davenport, 147 F.3d 605, 609 (7th Cir.1998), requires us to ask whether Gray-Bey’s initial § 2255 motion gave him “a reasonable opportunity to obtain a reliable judicial determination of the fundamental legality of his conviction and sentence.” In Davenport this court held that when the basis of the claim has not been legally established at the time of the first petition, the prisoner has not received a reasonable opportunity. The first petition filed by Sherman Nichols (one of two petitioners in Davenport) was resolved before the Supreme Court issued Bailey, and the law in this circuit was contrary to the way Bailey interpreted the word “use” in § 924(c)(1). Nichols therefore could not have obtained relief by a § 2255 petition. Gray-Bey, however, is differently situated.
Gray-Bey filed his first § 2255 petition before Bailey, but final decision came later. Had Gray-Bey properly preserved an argument about the meaning of “use” in § 924(c)(1), it would have been decided by this court, under correct principles of law, on his first § 2255 petition. Had we erred, the Supreme Court could have corrected us by certiorari. The reason Gray-Bey did not receive a decision was his own default. It is impossible to say that “the remedy by motion [under § 2255] is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention” when the only shortcoming is the petitioner’s omission of an issue. That omission is not a problem in the remedy; it is a problem in litigation strategy. It is, indeed, a fatal problem, for when Bousley held that Bailey can support collateral review, the Justices stressed that the legal arguments must have been presented to the district court — and they added that the-weight of existing precedent against a position does not justify omission. Bousley, 523 U.S. at 622-23, 118 S.Ct. 1604.
Next in logical sequence, if Gray-Bey’s application were timely, would be the question whether a successive petition may be justified under § 2255 ¶ 8(2) on the ground that Bailey is “a new rule of constitutional'law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” Bousley, which was decided while Gráy-Bey’s prior appeal was pending, holds that Bailey claims maybe raised on collateral review, and that Bailey may be applied retroactively to at least some cases (though perhaps Bousley himself was not a beneficiary, having forfeited his claim). There is a nice question about the scope of § 2255 ¶ 8(2): Does the successive petition have to assert reliance on a “new rule,” or is an old rule newly made retroactive enough? From Gray-Bey’s perspective, however, Bailey is not a “new rule”, as I have already observed; he argued it in 1997 *877when briefing his appeal. Had we rejected that claim on the ground that Bailey does not apply retroactively, then it would be tempting to say that Bousley reopens the door. But because Gray-Bey lost on forfeiture rather than the merits, one would think that the kind of new rule adequate to start a new period must be one that retroactively changes the law of forfeiture, rather than a decision making explicit that Bailey “applies.”
We need not wrestle this one to the ground, however, because Bousley does not make retroactive a new rule “of constitutional law”. Bailey resolved an issue of statutory interpretation, and Bousley observed that the proper understanding of § 924(c)(1) may lead to collateral relief to the extent that a statutory error gives rise to a constitutional flaw. In Bousley itself the potential flaw was an involuntary guilty plea (made involuntary by the fact that the defendant did not know the elements of the offense to which he was pleading). This is related to the approach our court earlier adopted for Bailey issues in Stanback. Similarly a statutory problem could give rise to a constitutional one if the record did not contain enough evidence to permit a rational trier of fact to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. As Bousley observed, however, defendants trying to take advantage of that possibility have a heavy burden, for they must show not only that the record fails to establish “use” but also that they did not “carry” the weapon, the other way to commit the crime. 523 U.S. at 624, 118 S.Ct. 1604. See also Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125, 118 S.Ct. 1911, 141 L.Ed.2d 111 (1998) (a drug dealer who does not actively “use” a gun in that crime nonetheless “carries” it if the weapon is moved about, even in the trunk of a car). We held accordingly in Buggs v. United States, 153 F.3d 439, 443-45 (7th Cir.1998), that deficiency of evidence can convert a statutory Bailey argument into a constitutional one, but only if the record really is deficient, and then only if the point has been properly preserved. (Note 4 of Buggs adds that Holm v. United States, 524 U.S. 236, 118 S.Ct. 1969, 141 L.Ed.2d 242 (1998), contributes nothing to the analysis of this question. The only question before the Court was whether a request for a certificate of appealability is a “case in” a court of appeals for certiorari purposes; the Court said nothing about the merits of the claim and instructed the eighth circuit to review them in the first instance in light of the Solicitor General’s position — which was functionally the same as the position we adopted in Buggs.)
Does Bousley make retroactive a “new rule of constitutional law” that the evidence must b sufficient to support the charge? Not at all; that rule has been around since Davis and Jackson. Gray-Bey’s second principal contention, that the jury instructions in his case did not anticipate Bailey, is not even a constitutional argument, for the reasons given in Young v. United States, 124 F.3d 794, 798-99 (7th Cir.1997). See also, e.g., Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U.S. 333, 342, 113 S.Ct. 2112, 124 L.Ed.2d 306 (1993) (an error in stating the elements of the offense in jury instructions is not a constitutional defect). I therefore conclude that a successive petition cannot be authorized under § 2255 ¶ 8. Gray-Bey must live with the forfeiture in his prior petition, just as our published opinion concludes.