US v. Green — criminal — affirmance — Chagares

By statute, 28 USC § 2255, federal prisoners are allowed to file a petition challenging their conviction within one year of a Supreme Court decision recognizing a retroactively applicable “newly recognized” right. In 2015, the Supreme Court held in US v. Johnson that the so-called residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act was unconstitutionally vague, and it later held that this rule applied retroactively. The wording of the residual clause of the ACCA statute is similar to the wording of the residual clause of the career-offender provision of the Sentencing Guidelines. So the prisoner in this case filed a petition within a year of Johnson asserting that he was erroneously classified under the Guidelines as a career offender.

Splitting with the Seventh Circuit, the Third Circuit today held that the prisoner’s claim did not involve a right that was “newly recognized” under § 2255 because the court interpreted a subsequent Supreme Court ruling, Beckles v. US, to foreclose application of Johnson to Guidelines residual-clause career-offender challenges. The court also distinguished its ruling last year in In re: Hoffner. (And, on a typography note, the paragraph formatting in the opinion is inconsistent.)

Joining Chagares were Greenberg and Fuentes. Arguing counsel were Fritz Ulrich for the prisoner and John Pelletieri for the government.

[Disclosure: I’ve provided some consulting assistance to counsel for the prisoner.]