Case: 20-10705 Document: 00516341053 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/02/2022 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED June 2, 2022 No. 20-10705 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk United States of America, Plaintiff—Appellee, versus Jose Vargas-Soto, Defendant—Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas USDC No. 4:18-cv-680 Before Davis, Elrod, and Oldham, Circuit Judges. Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge: The question presented is whether Jose Vargas-Soto’s successive motion for postconviction relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 is procedurally barred. We say yes. I. We begin with (A) a description of the relevant legal background. Then we explain (B) Vargas-Soto’s procedural history. Case: 20-10705 Document: 00516341053 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/02/2022 No. 20-10705 A. First some legal background. The Supreme Court long struggled with interpreting various “residual clauses” in federal criminal statutes, such as the definition of “violent felony” in the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) and the definition of “crime of violence” in the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”). See 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B) (ACCA); 8 U.S.C. § 16(b) (INA). Initially, the Court applied a “categorical approach” to determine whether a particular offense fell within a residual clause. See, e.g., Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 601 (1990) (holding that “the legislative history of [ACCA] shows that Congress generally took a categorical approach to predicate offenses”); Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004) (applying the categorical approach to the INA’s definition of “aggravated felony,” which includes the residual clause’s definition of “crime of violence,” but not addressing the constitutionality of the residual clause). That approach, however, led to a litany of head-scratchingly inconsistent results. See Chambers v. United States, 555 U.S. 122, 133 (2009) (Alito, J., concurring in judgment) (“After almost two decades with Taylor’s ‘categorical approach,’ only one thing is clear: ACCA’s residual clause is nearly impossible to apply consistently.”). That led some on the Court to question whether ACCA’s residual clause was unconstitutionally vague. See, e.g., James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 214–31 (2007) (Scalia, J., dissenting); Sykes v. United States, 564 U.S. 1, 28 (2011) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (reiterating the view that “ACCA’s residual provision is a drafting failure and [should be] declare[d] . . . void for vagueness”). For many years, however, the Court continued to apply the residual clauses anyway. After about a decade of struggling, the skeptics won. In Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015), the Supreme Court held ACCA’s residual 2 Case: 20-10705 Document: 00516341053 Page: 3 Date Filed: 06/02/2022 No. 20-10705 clause violated the defendant’s due-process rights because it was “void for vagueness” and overruled James and Sykes. Id. at 595–606. As with so many landmark decisions, however, Johnson raised more questions than it answered. Chief among them: whether the void-for-vagueness holding should have retroactive effect, and whether other residual clauses (such as the INA’s) are also unconstitutionally vague. The Supreme Court started with retroactivity. The Court held that in Johnson, it “announced a substantive …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals