Ramon Hueso v. J.A. Barnhart


RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 20a0012p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT RAMON HUESO, ┐ Petitioner-Appellant, │ │ > No. 18-6299 v. │ │ │ J.A. BARNHART, Warden, │ Respondent-Appellee. │ ┘ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at London. No. 6:18-cv-00176—Danny C. Reeves, District Judge. Decided and Filed: January 9, 2020 Before: MOORE, KETHLEDGE, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. _________________ COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Cathryn R. Armistead, ARMISTEAD LAW GROUP, PLLC, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Charles P. Wisdom, Jr., Kyle M. Melloan, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Lexington, Kentucky, for Appellee. MURPHY, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which KETHLEDGE, J., joined. MOORE, J. (pp. 23–43), delivered a separate dissenting opinion. _________________ OPINION _________________ MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Since the founding, Congress has adjusted and readjusted the important balance between an individual’s interest in correcting a wrongful conviction and society’s interest in stopping perpetual attacks on final criminal judgments. In the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Congress adjusted this balance again, this time by No. 18-6299 Hueso v. Barnhart Page 2 placing greater weight on the finality of completed cases. This law generally gives federal prisoners just one chance to overturn a final criminal judgment—by alleging any and all errors in a single motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The law permits a second § 2255 motion only if prisoners show new evidence of their innocence or a new rule of constitutional law from the Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(1)–(2). Since 1996, therefore, prisoners have not been able to file a second § 2255 motion based on a new rule of statutory law from the Supreme Court. Unable to invoke new statutory decisions in a second § 2255 motion, prisoners have turned to a different vehicle: a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241. But they have faced a different obstacle: § 2255 has long barred federal prisoners from seeking habeas relief unless they show that § 2255’s remedy is “inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of [their] detention.” Id. § 2255(e). Courts disagree over when (if ever) § 2255(h)’s limits on second § 2255 motions—when combined with a new statutory decision issued after the denial of a first motion—render § 2255 “inadequate or ineffective” so as to permit a second round of litigation under § 2241. Compare McCarthan v. Dir. of Goodwill Industries-Suncoast, Inc., 851 F.3d 1076 (11th Cir. 2017) (en banc), with Brown v. Caraway, 719 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2013). Our court has joined those that have made the broadest inroads into the 1996 limits in § 2255(h). Unlike some courts, for example, we allow new habeas petitions even if a later Supreme Court decision affects only a prisoner’s sentence, not just the prisoner’s conviction. Hill v. Masters, 836 F.3d 591 (6th Cir. 2016). Ramon Hueso asks us to go further still. He argues that prisoners barred from filing a ...

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