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Jones v. Hendrix/Opinion of the Court

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Marcus DeAngelo Jones v. Dewayne Hendrix, Warden
Supreme Court of the United States
Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., dissenting
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4267429Marcus DeAngelo Jones v. Dewayne Hendrix, WardenSupreme Court of the United States
​

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 21–857

MARCUS DEANGELO JONES, PETITIONER v. DEWAYNE HENDRIX, WARDEN
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
[June 22, 2023]

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case concerns the interplay between two statutes: 28 U. S. C. §2241, the general habeas corpus statute, and §2255, which provides an alternative postconviction remedy for federal prisoners. Since 1948, Congress has provided that a federal prisoner who collaterally attacks his sentence ordinarily must proceed by a motion in the sentencing court under §2255, rather than by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under §2241. To that end, §2255(e) bars a federal prisoner from proceeding under §2241 “unless … the [§2255] remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

Separately, since the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), second or successive §2255 motions are barred unless they rely on either “newly discovered evidence,” §2255(h)(1), or “a new rule of constitutional law,” §2255(h)(2). A federal prisoner may not, therefore, file a second or successive §2255 motion based solely on a more favorable interpretation of statutory law adopted after his conviction became final and his initial §2255 motion was resolved.

​The question presented is whether that limitation on second or successive motions makes §2255 “inadequate or ineffective” such that the prisoner may proceed with his statutory claim under §2241. We hold that it does not.

I

In 2000, the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri convicted petitioner Marcus DeAngelo Jones of two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(1), and one count of making false statements to acquire a firearm, in violation of §922(a)(6). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed his convictions and sentence of 327 months’ imprisonment. See United States v. Jones, 266 F. 3d 804 (2001). After losing his appeal, Jones filed a timely §2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence, which resulted in the vacatur of one of his concurrent §922(g) sentences but no other relief. See United States v. Jones, 403 F. 3d 604 (CA8 2005); United States v. Jones, 185 Fed. Appx. 541 (CA8 2006) (per curiam).

Years later, in Rehaif v. United States, 588 U. S. ___ (2019), this Court held that a defendant’s knowledge of the status that disqualifies him from owning a firearm is an element of a §922(g) conviction. In doing so, it abrogated the Eighth Circuit’s contrary precedent, which the Western District of Missouri and the Eighth Circuit had applied in Jones’ trial and direct appeal. See Jones, 266 F. 3d, at 810, n. 5.

After Rehaif, Jones hoped to leverage its holding into a new collateral attack on his remaining §922(g) conviction. But Rehaif’s statutory holding satisfied neither of §2255(h)’s gateway conditions for a second or successive §2255 motion: It was neither “newly discovered evidence,” §2255(h)(1), nor “a new rule of constitutional law,” §2255(h)(2) (emphasis added). Unable to file a new §2255 motion in his sentencing court, Jones instead looked to ​§2255(e)’s “saving clause,” which provides that a federal prisoner may file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under §2241 if—and only if—§2255’s “remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” Invoking this clause, Jones petitioned the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the district where he was imprisoned, for a writ of habeas corpus under §2241.

The District Court dismissed Jones’ habeas petition for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed. 8 F. 4th 683 (2021). The Eighth Circuit rejected Jones’ argument that the saving clause permits recourse to §2241 to present a §2255(h)-barred claim based on an intervening decision of statutory interpretation, as well as his argument that foreclosing relief on his Rehaif claim would violate the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, §9, cl. 2. In doing so, the Eighth Circuit deepened a split among the Courts of Appeals about whether prisoners in Jones’ circumstances may resort to §2241 via the saving clause.

We granted certiorari. 596 U. S. ___ (2022). The Solicitor General then noticed her intent to defend the Eighth Circuit’s judgment but not its rationale. We appointed Morgan Ratner as amicus curiae to argue in support of the Eighth Circuit’s reasoning. 597 U. S. ___ (2022). She has ably discharged her responsibilities.

II

Consistent with the Eighth Circuit’s reasoning, we hold that §2255(e)’s saving clause does not permit a prisoner asserting an intervening change in statutory interpretation to circumvent AEDPA’s restrictions on second or successive §2255 motions by filing a §2241 petition. We begin by considering the role of the saving clause in §2255 prior to AEDPA’s enactment. We then consider the impact of AEDPA on the statutory scheme.

​

A

In relevant part, §2255 provides:

“(a) A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence. ····· “(e) An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

In understanding this statutory text, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U. S. 345, 349 (1921). Section 2255 is an outgrowth of the historic habeas corpus powers of the federal courts as applied to the special case of federal prisoners. The First Judiciary Act authorized the federal courts “to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause of commitment,” with a proviso that such writs could “extend to prisoners in gaol” only “where they [were] in custody, under or by colour of the authority of the United States, or [were] committed for trial before some court of the same, or [were] necessary to be brought into court to testify.” Act of Sept. 24, 1789, §14, 1 Stat. 82. In 1867, Congress expanded the federal courts’ habeas powers to ​cover “all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States.” Ch. 28, 14 Stat. 385. For most of our Nation’s history, a federal prisoner “claiming the right to be released,” §2255(a), in a collateral attack on his sentence would have relied on these Acts and their successors.

That changed with the 1948 recodification and reorganization of the Judiciary Code. See generally 62 Stat. 869. In enacting the present Title 28 of the United States Code, Congress largely recodified the federal courts’ pre-existing habeas authority in §§2241 and 2243, which, respectively, confer the power to grant the writ and direct the issuing court to “dispose of the matter as law and justice require.” Id., at 964–965. At the same time, however, Congress created §2255 as a separate remedial vehicle specifically designed for federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sentences.[1] Id., at 967–968.

The “sole purpose” of this innovation, as this Court acknowledged a few years later, “was to minimize the difficulties encountered in habeas corpus hearings by affording the same rights in another and more convenient forum.” United States v. Hayman, 342 U. S. 205, 219 (1952); see also Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 333, 343 (1974) (“[Section] 2255 was intended to afford federal prisoners a remedy identical in scope to federal habeas corpus”); accord, United States v. Addonizio, 442 U. S. 178, 185 (1979); Hill v. United ​States, 368 U. S. 424, 427 (1962). Experience had shown that processing federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sentences through habeas proceedings—and, therefore, through the judicial districts in which they were confined—resulted in “serious administrative problems.” Hayman, 342 U. S., at 212. Most significantly, a federal prisoner’s district of confinement was often far removed from the records of the sentencing court and other sources of needed evidence. Id., at 212–213. These difficulties were “greatly aggravated” by the concentration of federal prisoners in a handful of judicial districts, which forced those District Courts to process “an inordinate number of habeas corpus actions.” Id., at 213–214.

Section 2255 solved these problems by rerouting federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sentences to the courts that had sentenced them. To make this change of venue effective, Congress generally barred federal prisoners “authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to” §2255 from applying “for a writ of habeas corpus” under §2241. §2255(e). But, in a provision that has come to be known as the saving clause, Congress preserved the habeas remedy in cases where “the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of [a prisoner’s] detention.” Ibid.

Traditionally, courts have treated the saving clause as covering unusual circumstances in which it is impossible or impracticable for a prisoner to seek relief from the sentencing court. The clearest such circumstance is the sentencing court’s dissolution; a motion in a court that no longer exists is obviously “inadequate or ineffective” for any purpose. See, e.g., Witham v. United States, 355 F. 3d 501, 504–505 (CA6 2004) (finding §2255 inadequate or ineffective after court-martial was dissolved); Edwards v. United States, 1987 WL 7562, *1 (EDNY, Feb. 9, 1987) (finding §2255 inadequate or ineffective after District Court of the Canal Zone was dissolved); cf. Spaulding v. Taylor, 336 F. 2d 192, ​193 (CA10 1964) (finding §2255 inadequate or ineffective after Alaska territorial court was dissolved and federal and state successor courts declined §2255 and state-habeas jurisdiction, respectively). The saving clause might also apply when “it is not practicable for the prisoner to have his motion determined in the trial court because of his inability to be present at the hearing, or for other reasons.”[2] Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23 (internal quotation marks omitted).

In addition, the saving clause ensures that §2255(e) does not displace §2241 when a prisoner challenges “the legality of his detention” without attacking the validity of his sentence. To give a few examples, a prisoner might wish to argue that he is being detained in a place or manner not authorized by the sentence, that he has unlawfully been denied parole or good-time credits, or that an administrative sanction affecting the conditions of his detention is illegal. See generally Samak v. Warden, FCC Coleman–Medium, 766 F. 3d 1271, 1280 (CA11 2014) (Pryor, J., concurring) (explaining that “[t]he ‘detention’ of a prisoner encompasses much more than a criminal ‘sentence’ ”). The briefs before us debate whether these types of challenges ​depend on the saving clause or proceed under §2241 “directly.” Compare Brief for Petitioner 31 and Brief for Respondent 37–38 with Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae 17–18. It is difficult to imagine a case in which this logical distinction would make any practical difference. That said, were it not for the saving clause, a literal reading of §2255(e) might be thought to bar any “application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a [federal] prisoner,” §2255(e), whether or not it challenged the “sentence … imposed,” §2255(a). If nothing else, then, the saving clause guards against the danger that §2255(e) might be construed to bar manner-of-detention challenges even though they are not within §2255’s substantive scope.

B

In 1996, Congress enacted AEDPA, which made significant reforms to the process of federal-court postconviction review for both state and federal prisoners. Most relevant here, AEDPA strictly limited “second or successive” §2255 motions to those that “contain—

“(1) newly discovered evidence that, if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would have found the movant guilty of the offense; or

“(2) a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” §2255(h).

Importantly, AEDPA left the text of §2255(e) unchanged. But AEDPA’s new second-or-successive restrictions indirectly gave rise to a novel application of the saving clause.

Mere months before AEDPA’s enactment, this Court decided Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137 (1995). That case interpreted the offense of “us[ing]” a firearm “during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking ​crime,” in violation of then-existing 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1), more narrowly than many Circuits’ previous case law. See 516 U. S., at 142 (describing the Circuits’ approaches). Under this Court’s §2255 precedent, Bailey’s narrowing interpretation was grounds for a collateral attack by federal prisoners who had been convicted under the Courts of Appeals’ broader interpretations. See Davis, 417 U. S., at 342–347 (holding a claim of legal error based on an intervening change in statutory interpretation cognizable under §2255). Many prisoners with Bailey claims, however, had already exhausted their first §2255 motion, and Bailey’s statutory holding plainly did not satisfy either of §2255(h)’s conditions for a second or successive motion.

Several Courts of Appeals found a workaround for those prisoners in the saving clause. With minor differences in reasoning and wording, they held that §2255 was “inadequate and ineffective” under the saving clause—and that §2241 was therefore available—when AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions barred a prisoner from seeking relief based on a newly adopted narrowing interpretation of a criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal, and first §2255 motion. This application of the saving clause took shape in In re Dorsainvil, 119 F. 3d 245, 251 (CA3 1997); Triestman v. United States, 124 F. 3d 361, 378–380 (CA2 1997); and In re Davenport, 147 F. 3d 605, 609–611 (CA7 1998), and it was later adopted by most of the other Circuits. See Ivy v. Pontesso, 328 F. 3d 1057, 1059–1060 (CA9 2003); Martin v. Perez, 319 F. 3d 799, 804–805 (CA6 2003); Reyes–Requena v. United States, 243 F. 3d 893, 904 (CA5 2001); In re Jones, 226 F. 3d 328, 333–334 (CA4 2000); Wofford v. Scott, 177 F. 3d 1236, 1242–1245 (CA11 1999), overruled by McCarthan v. Director of Goodwill Industries–Suncoast, Inc., 851 F. 3d 1076 (CA11 2017) (en banc); but see Prost v. Anderson, 636 F. 3d 578, 584–595 (CA10 2011) (Gorsuch, J.) (holding ​that §2255(e) does not permit recourse to §2241 in these circumstances).

We now hold that the saving clause does not authorize such an end-run around AEDPA. In §2255(h), Congress enumerated two—and only two—conditions in which a second or successive §2255 motion may proceed. Because §2255 is the ordinary vehicle for a collateral attack on a federal sentence, the straightforward negative inference from §2255(h) is that a second or successive collateral attack on a federal sentence is not authorized unless one of those two conditions is satisfied. See Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 16) (“ ‘The expression of one thing implies the exclusion of others’ ” (quoting A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 107 (2012))). Even more directly, §2255(h)(2)’s authorization of a successive collateral attack based on new rules “of constitutional law” implies that Congress did not authorize successive collateral attacks based on new rules of nonconstitutional law. Had Congress wished to omit the word “constitutional,” it easily could have done so.

The saving clause does not undermine this strong negative inference. Basic principles of statutory interpretation require that we construe the saving clause and §2255(h) in harmony, not set them at cross-purposes. See, e.g., United States v. Fausto, 484 U. S. 439, 453 (1988); Bend v. Hoyt, 13 Pet. 263, 272 (1839) (Story, J.). That task is not difficult given the distinct concerns of the two provisions. Subsection (h) presumes—as part of its background—that federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sentences are governed by §2255, and it proceeds to specify when a second or successive collateral attack is permitted. The saving clause has nothing to say about that question. Rather, like subsection (e) generally, it addresses the antecedent question of the relationship between §§2241 and 2255.

After AEDPA, as before it, the saving clause preserves recourse to §2241 in cases where unusual circumstances ​make it impossible or impracticable to seek relief in the sentencing court, as well as for challenges to detention other than collateral attacks on a sentence. Because AEDPA did not alter the text of §2255(e), there is little reason to think that it altered the pre-existing division of labor between §§2241 and 2255. AEDPA’s new restrictions on §2255, therefore, are best understood as just that—restrictions on §2255—not as expansions of §2241’s applicability.

Any other reading would make AEDPA curiously self-defeating. It would mean that, by expressly excluding second or successive §2255 motions based on nonconstitutional legal developments, Congress accomplished nothing in terms of actually limiting such claims. Instead, it would have merely rerouted them from one remedial vehicle and venue to another. Stranger still, Congress would have provided “a superior remedy” for the very nonconstitutional claims it chose not to include in §2255(h). McCarthan, 851 F. 3d, at 1091. After escaping §2255 through the saving clause, nonconstitutional claims would no longer be subject to AEDPA’s other express procedural restrictions: the 1-year limitations period, see §2255(f), and the requirement that a prisoner obtain a certificate of appealability before appealing an adverse decision in the District Court, see §2253(c)(1).[3] We generally “resist attributing to Congress an intention to render a statute so internally inconsistent.” Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U. S. 237, 251 (2008).

That resistance is particularly acute here, where allowing nonconstitutional claims to proceed under §2241 would mean “resurrecting the very problems §2255 was supposed ​to put to rest.” Wright v. Spaulding, 939 F. 3d 695, 707 (CA6 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring). Section 2255 owes its existence to Congress’ pragmatic judgment that the sentencing court, not the District Court for the district of confinement, is the best venue for a federal prisoner’s collateral attack on his sentence. Channeling a particular class of second or successive attacks back into §2241 would mean once again “[c]oncentrat[ing] ‘an inordinate number of habeas corpus actions’ in districts with large prison populations” and requiring District Courts “to review each other’s proceedings—often without access to the witnesses, the sources of evidence, or other local information that may be critical.” Id., at 707–708 (quoting Hayman, 342 U. S., at 214). “The illogical results of applying such an interpretation … argue strongly against the conclusion that Congress intended these results.” Western Air Lines, Inc. v. Board of Equalization of S. D., 480 U. S. 123, 133 (1987).

Here, as often is the case, the best interpretation is the straightforward one. Section 2255(h) specifies the two limited conditions in which Congress has permitted federal prisoners to bring second or successive collateral attacks on their sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy those conditions does not mean that he can bring his claim in a habeas petition under the saving clause. It means that he cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen finality over error correction in his case.

III

Resisting this reading, Jones and the United States both argue that §2255(h)’s exclusion of statutory claims sometimes renders §2255 inadequate or ineffective, though they advance different theories of when and why it does so. Their arguments are unpersuasive.

A

Jones begins with a textual interpretation of the saving ​clause that, if accepted, would convert §2255(e) into a license for unbounded error correction. He argues that §2255 is necessarily “inadequate or ineffective to test” a prisoner’s claim if the §2255 court fails to apply the correct substantive law. This argument ignores that the saving clause is concerned with the adequacy or effectiveness of the remedial vehicle (“the remedy by motion”), not any court’s asserted errors of law. Cf. Swain v. Pressley, 430 U. S. 372, 383 (1977) (holding a District of Columbia-court remedy modeled on §2255 not to be “ ‘inadequate or ineffective’ ” because the D. C. courts were “competent to decide all issues”). Even when “circuit law is inadequate or deficient” because a Court of Appeals’ precedents have resolved a legal issue incorrectly, that is not a fault in “the §2255 remedial vehicle” itself.[4] Prost, 636 F. 3d, at 590.

Next, Jones offers a wide-ranging discussion of the concept of “inadequacy” as a term of art in traditional equity jurisprudence. While Jones demonstrates that courts of equity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal remedies in ​a broad range of circumstances, we find this excursus irrelevant to the question presented here. To the extent that Congress’ use of “inadequate” in the saving clause harkens back to equity’s historic use of that term (an issue we need not address), the most Jones’ evidence proves is that a variety of circumstances might make it impracticable for a prisoner to seek relief from the sentencing court. Cf. Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23. Nothing in Jones’ survey of equity jurisprudence, however, even begins to suggest that the saving clause offers an exemption from AEDPA’s clear limits on second or successive collateral attacks.

Trying a different tack, Jones suggests that the saving clause’s use of the present tense (“is inadequate or ineffective”) means that §2241 is available whenever a prisoner is presently unable to file a §2255 motion. Even the Circuits with an expansive view of the saving clause have uniformly rejected this argument, and for good reason. See, e.g., In re Jones, 226 F. 3d, at 333; Dorsainvil, 119 F. 3d, at 251. Were this argument accepted, AEDPA’s changes to §2255 would be entirely futile, as §2241 would be available any time the second-or-successive restrictions precluded relief. We decline to infer that Congress intended AEDPA’s carefully crafted limits on collateral relief under §2255 to be mere nullities.

As a backstop to his scattershot textual arguments, Jones invokes the constitutional-doubt canon, arguing that denying him the chance to raise his Rehaif claim in a §2241 petition raises serious constitutional questions. It does not.[5]

​Jones’ primary constitutional argument is that denying him any opportunity to seek postconviction relief based on Rehaif would violate the Suspension Clause, which provides that “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” U. S. Const., Art. I, §9, cl. 2. This “Suspension Clause argument fails because it would extend the writ of habeas corpus far beyond its scope ‘when the Constitution was drafted and ratified.’ ” Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 2) (quoting Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 746 (2008)). When the Suspension Clause was adopted, and for a long time afterward, Jones’ Rehaif claim would not have been cognizable in habeas at all.

At the founding, a sentence after conviction “by a court of competent jurisdiction” was “ ‘in itself sufficient cause’ ” for a prisoner’s continued detention. Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 8) (quoting Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193, 202 (1830)). As Chief Justice Marshall explained in the seminal case of Ex parte Watkins, the criminal judgment, “in its nature, conclude[d] the subject on which it [was] rendered,” “pronounce[d] the law of the case,” and “pu[t] an end to the inquiry concerning fact.” Id., at 202–203. Of particular relevance here, a habeas court had no power to “look beyond the judgment” to “re-examine the charges on which it was rendered” for substantive errors of law—even “if … the [sentencing] court ha[d] misconstrued the law, and ha[d] pronounced an offence to be punishable criminally, which [was] not so.” Id., at 202, 209.

In rebuttal, Jones argues that pre-founding practice did allow habeas courts to “look beyond the judgment” to ensure that the convicting court had proved every element of the crime for which a prisoner was committed. But Jones fails to identify a single clear case of habeas being used to relitigate a conviction after trial by a court of general criminal ​jurisdiction. Rather, the cases he cites mostly involve commitments by justices of the peace,[6] a distinction reflected in Watkins itself. See id., at 208 (discussing Ex parte Burford, 3 Cranch 448, 453 (1806), where the Court examined on habeas the sufficiency of a warrant of commitment by justices of the peace while noting that no judgment of a federal court was in question). At common law, justices of the peace were not courts of record and did not possess general criminal jurisdiction. Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U. S. 1, 16–17 (1899); see also United States v. Mills, 11 App. D. C. 500, 507 (1897). As such, their commitments were “not placed on the same high ground with the judgments of a court of record,” and the fact that superior courts sometimes used habeas to examine commitments by such inferior magistrates furnishes “no authority for inquiring into the judgments of a court of general criminal jurisdiction.” Watkins, 3 Pet., at 209.

Jones also appeals to Bushell’s Case, Vaugh. 135, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P. 1670), which has long been understood as a case about the independence of criminal juries in determining questions of fact. Clark v. United States, 289 U. S. 1, 16–17 (1933); see also Sparf v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 90–93 (1895); 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 375 (1883) (Stephen). There, a judge fined and imprisoned the members of a jury for acquitting William Penn and William Mead on indictments for “assembling unlawfully and tumultuously,” a verdict ostensibly against the “manifest evidence.” Vaugh., at 137, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1007. A juror refused to pay the fine, applied to the ​Court of Common Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus, and obtained discharge in an opinion by Chief Justice Vaughn. Jones points to one part of Vaughn’s opinion, which criticized the return of the writ for not specifying that the jurors “kn[e]w and believe[d] th[e] evidence to be full and manifest against the indicted persons,” without which the jurors’ verdict was “no cause of fine or imprisonment.” Id., at 142, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1009. Jones asks us to read this passage as reflecting a supposed common-law rule that habeas relief was available whenever a convicting court had not found the necessary mens rea of a crime. That reading, however, entirely misses the actual basis of Vaughn’s opinion, which was the judge’s absolute want of power to question the jury’s determination of the facts. See id., at 149, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1013 (“It is absurd a jury should be fined by the Judge for going against their evidence, when he who fineth knows not what it is…. [I]f it be demanded, what is the fact? the Judge cannot answer it”); see also Stephen 375 (“[T]he judges who heard the argument … decided that the discretion of the jury to believe the evidence or not could not be questioned”). Thus, Bushell’s Case no more undermines Watkins than do the justice-of-the-peace cases.

The principles of Watkins guided this Court’s understanding of the habeas writ throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th. See Brown, 596 U. S., at ___, n. 1 (slip op., at 9, n. 1) (collecting cases); see also Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 465–466 (1938). Even in Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 (1880), which held that the constitutionality of a prisoner’s statute of conviction could be reviewed on habeas (as going to jurisdiction),[7] the Court ​acknowledged Watkins and took pains to reconcile its holding with the traditional rule. See 100 U. S., at 375–377. And, when asked to review convicting courts’ substantive errors of statutory law in habeas corpus proceedings, this Court consistently held that it could not do so.[8] It was not ​until 1974, in Davis, that the Court broke with that tradition, holding for the first time that a substantive error of statutory law could be a cognizable ground for a collateral attack on a federal court’s criminal judgment. See 417 U. S., at 342–347.

The Suspension Clause does not constitutionalize that innovation of nearly two centuries later. Nor, a fortiori, does it require the extension of that innovation to a second or successive collateral attack.

Jones’ remaining constitutional arguments are no more persuasive. He argues that denying him a new opportunity for collateral review of his Rehaif claim threatens separation-of-powers principles—specifically, Congress’ exclusive power to define crimes Cf. United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32, 34 (1812). But the authority to determine the facts and the law in an individual case, and to render a final, binding judgment based on those determinations, stands at the core of the judicial power. See Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995); Watkins, 3 Pet., at 202–203. A court does not usurp legislative power simply by misinterpreting the law in a given case. See id., at 206 (“If its judgment was erroneous, a point which this court does not determine, still it is a judgment”).

​Next, Jones points to Fiore v. White, 531 U. S. 225 (2001) (per curiam), which applied the rule that due process requires that the prosecution prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. See id., at 228–229. Whether a due process error has occurred at trial, however, is an entirely different issue from Congress’ power to restrict collateral review. Due process does not guarantee a direct appeal, McKane v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684, 687 (1894), let alone the opportunity to have legal issues redetermined in successive collateral attacks on a final sentence.

Jones’ last constitutional contention—that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments may entitle him to another round of collateral review—fails for a similar reason. By its terms, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause expresses a substantive constraint on the kinds of punishments governments may “inflic[t].” It creates no freestanding entitlement to a second or successive round of postconviction review, and thus it adds nothing to Jones’ unavailing Suspension Clause argument.

B

The Government agrees with the Eighth Circuit that Jones is not entitled to relief, but, somewhat surprisingly, it asks us to adopt a novel, alternative interpretation of the saving clause, which it constructs via a roundabout argument. It begins with the premise that the words “inadequate or ineffective” imply reference to a “benchmark” of adequacy and effectiveness. It proceeds to identify that benchmark as the ability to test the types of claims cognizable under the general habeas statutes—specifically, those governing federal habeas petitions by state prisoners. The Government then reasons that §2255(h)’s limitations on second or successive motions asserting newly discovered evidence or new rules of constitutional law do not trigger the ​saving clause because Congress has imposed analogous limitations on analogous claims by state prisoners and—by doing so—has redefined §2255(e)’s implicit habeas benchmark with respect to such “factual” and “constitutional” claims. See 28 U. S. C. §§2244(b)(2)(A)–(B). Since, the Government asserts, Congress has imposed no analogous limitation on statutory claims by state prisoners, it has not redefined the implicit habeas benchmark with respect to statutory claims like Jones’. And, we should be unwilling to infer that AEDPA limited such claims without a clearer textual indication. The Government concludes that §2255(h) renders §2255 “inadequate or ineffective to test” a federal prisoner’s statutory claim in cases where the prisoner has already filed one §2255 motion and the claim otherwise satisfies pre-AEDPA habeas principles, which generally will require “a ‘colorable showing of factual innocence.’ ” McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 495 (1991) (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U. S. 436, 454 (1986) (plurality opinion)).[9]

​This elaborate theory is no more convincing than Jones’ arguments. Its most striking flaw is the seemingly arbitrary linkage it posits between the saving clause and state prisoners’ statutory postconviction remedies. While it is true that §2255, as enacted, afforded the same rights federal prisoners previously enjoyed under the general habeas statutes, see Hayman, 342 U. S., at 219, nothing in §2255’s text, structure, or history suggests that Congress intended any part of it to implicitly cross-reference whatever modifications to state prisoners’ postconviction remedies might be made in the future. Understanding the saving clause to do so would have highly counterintuitive implications: On the Government’s view, §§2255(h)(1) and (h)(2) do not create an adequacy or effectiveness problem only because of the parallel state-prisoner provisions in §2244(b). It seems to follow that if Congress relaxed §2244(b)’s second-or-successive restrictions for state prisoners tomorrow, and did nothing else, §2255 would suddenly become “inadequate or ineffective to test” at least some second or successive fact-based claims that did not satisfy §2255(h)(1) or constitutional claims that did not satisfy §2255(h)(2), and that those claims would then be allowed to proceed under §2241. We see no indication that the spare language of the saving clause creates such a Rube Goldberg contrivance, whereby changes to other statutory provisions (which do not apply to federal prisoners at all) could flow back into §2255 and undermine §2255(h).

In any event, as the Government acknowledges, a state prisoner could never bring a pure statutory-error claim in federal habeas, because “ ‘federal habeas corpus relief does ​not lie for errors of state law.’ ” Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, 67 (1991) (quoting Lewis v. Jeffers, 497 U. S. 764, 780 (1990)). As a result, it is unclear what work the Government’s state-prisoner-habeas benchmark is even doing in its answer to the question presented here.

Rather, the narrow base on which the Government’s top-heavy theory ultimately turns out to rest is its assertion that §2255(h) is simply not clear enough to support the inference that Congress entirely closed the door on pure statutory claims not brought in a federal prisoner’s initial §2255 motion. See Brief for Respondent 28–29, 39. That assertion is unpersuasive for the reasons we have already explained: §2255(h) specifies the two circumstances in which a second or successive collateral attack on a federal sentence is available, and those circumstances do not include an intervening change in statutory interpretation.

The Government asserts that we require “the clearest command” before construing AEDPA to “close [the] courthouse doors” on “a strong equitable claim” for relief. Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S. 631, 646, 649 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). The only two cases the Government relies on for its clear-statement rule do not sweep as broadly as it suggests. In Holland, we applied the general presumption of equitable tolling to AEDPA’s 1-year statute of limitations for state prisoners’ habeas claims. Id., at 645–649. Afterward, in McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U. S. 383 (2013), we held that “a convincing showing of actual innocence” could enable a prisoner to evade AEDPA’s statute of limitations entirely. Id., at 386.

Undoubtedly, McQuiggin’s assertion of equitable authority to override clear statutory text was a bold one. But even taking Holland and McQuiggin for all they are worth, there is a significant difference between reading equitable exceptions into a statute of limitations, on the one hand, and demanding a clear statement before foreclosing workarounds to AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions, on the other. ​Statutes of limitations merely govern the timeframe for bringing a claim. AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions, by contrast, “constitute a modified res judicata rule,” Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996), and thus embody Congress’ judgment regarding the central policy question of postconviction remedies—the appropriate balance between finality and error correction. Insisting on a heightened standard of clarity in this context would effectively mean adopting a presumption against finality as a substantive value. We decline to do so. “[T]he United States has an interest in the finality of sentences imposed by its own courts,” Johnson v. United States, 544 U. S. 295, 309 (2005), and how to balance that interest against error correction is a “judgmen[t] about the proper scope of the writ” that is “ ‘normally for Congress to make.’ ” Felker, 518 U. S., at 664 (quoting Lonchar v. Thomas, 517 U. S. 314, 323 (1996)).

Accepting the Government’s proposal to apply a clear-statement rule would be particularly anomalous in light of the precise question this case presents. Typically, we find clear-statement rules appropriate when a statute implicates historically or constitutionally grounded norms that we would not expect Congress to unsettle lightly. See, e.g., Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 594 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (per curiam) (slip op., at 6) (presumption that Congress does not casually assign executive agencies “powers of vast economic and political significance” or “significantly alter the balance between federal and state power” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 265–266 (1994) (presumption against statutory retroactivity); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 243 (1985) (presumption against abrogation of state sovereign immunity). But, as shown above in discussing Jones’ Suspension Clause argument, there is no historical or constitutional norm of permitting one convicted of a crime by a court of ​competent jurisdiction to collaterally attack his sentence based on an alleged error of substantive statutory law. As far as history and the Constitution are concerned, “there is nothing incongruous about a system in which this kind of error—the application of a since-rejected statutory interpretation—cannot be remedied after final judgment.” George v. McDonough, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 10). A fortiori, there is nothing fundamentally surprising about Congress declining to make such errors remediable in a second or successive collateral attack.

IV

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

It is so ordered.

  1. ↑ As first enacted, §2255 applied to any “prisoner in custody under sentence of a court of the United States.” 62 Stat. 967. In 1949, Congress substituted “court established by Act of Congress” for “court of the United States,” making no other changes. §114, 63 Stat. 105 (internal quotation marks omitted). Section 2255 was not again amended until AEDPA, and the only post-AEDPA amendment simply added the current lettering and numbering to what were previously undesignated paragraphs. Court Security Improvement Act of 2007, §511, 121 Stat. 2545. For simplicity, we use §2255’s current internal designations throughout this opinion.
  2. ↑ It bears mentioning that §2255 was enacted “eight years before President Eisenhower signed legislation funding the Interstate Highway System.” Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae 17. At that time, it would not be surprising if removing a prisoner from the penitentiary, transporting him to the sentencing court for a hearing, and taking him back to prison again sometimes posed difficulties daunting enough to make a §2255 proceeding practically unavailable. Cf. Stidham v. Swope, 82 F. Supp. 931, 932–933 (ND Cal. 1949) (describing the difficulty and delay involved in transporting a prisoner “upwards of 1,500 miles” from the federal penitentiary in Alcatraz to the sentencing court in Missouri, a journey that “well could be two weeks” by rail). That this sort of practical inadequacy would be highly unusual today should not blind us to the world in which Congress was legislating when it enacted the saving clause.
  3. ↑ It is no answer to say that the saving clause must apply sometimes and that these procedural restrictions are inapplicable whenever it does. Cf. Reply Brief for Petitioner 12; Reply Brief for Respondent 9–10. Allowing second or successive nonconstitutional claims to circumvent §2255(h) under the saving clause would confer favored treatment for nonconstitutional claims as a class, a result directly at odds with the manifest tenor of §2255(h).
  4. ↑ Despite occasional gestures in its direction, and despite its critical role in persuading the Courts of Appeals to expand the saving clause, Jones’ textual arguments place relatively little emphasis on whether binding precedent foreclosed a prisoner’s statutory argument at trial, on appeal, and in an initial §2255 motion. See In re Davenport, 147 F. 3d 605, 610–611 (CA7 1998) (making such foreclosure an express precondition of saving-clause relief); see also Triestman v. United States, 124 F. 3d 361, 380 (CA2 1997) (emphasizing that the prisoner “had no [prior] effective opportunity to raise his [Bailey] claim”); In re Dorsainvil, 119 F. 3d 245, 251 (CA3 1997) (similar). Rather, under Jones’ interpretation of “test,” it appears that §2241 would be available to correct any asserted error of law by a §2255 court, even on an issue of first impression. Untenable as that consequence is, the erroneous-foreclosure approach fares no better. To hold that binding precedent renders a judicial proceeding “ ‘inadequate or ineffective’ to test the rights of parties” would be a shock for “our entire justice system,” in which “precedent is ubiquitous.” Wright v. Spaulding, 939 F. 3d 695, 709 (CA6 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring). Nothing in the text or history of the saving clause suggests that it uniquely embodies that far-reaching proposition.
  5. ↑ As Court-appointed amicus curiae observes, Jones’ use of the constitutional-doubt canon is somewhat anomalous, in that it aims at a different result from what a direct constitutional challenge would achieve. If a prisoner persuaded a court that the exclusion of statutory claims from §2255(h) was unconstitutional, the result would not be that he could proceed under §2241, but simply that he could file a second or successive §2255 motion on an equal footing with §§2255(h)(1) and 2255(h)(2) claims.
  6. ↑ See Rex v. Brown, 8 T. R. 26, 101 Eng. Rep. 1247 (1798); Rex v. Hall, 1 Cowp. 60, 98 Eng. Rep. 967 (1774); Rex v. Hall, 3 Burr. 1636, 97 Eng. Rep. 1022 (1765); Rex v. Collier, 1 Wils. K. B. 332, 95 Eng. Rep. 647 (1752). The cursory report in Rex v. Catherall, 2 Str. 900, 93 Eng. Rep. 967 (1730), is silent as to the authority under which the petitioner was convicted, and so cannot help Jones overcome Watkins.
  7. ↑ The Court seemingly abandoned that notion in Glasgow v. Moyer, 225 U. S. 420 (1912), which explained that “[t]he principle” that nonjurisdictional errors of substantive law are not cognizable in habeas “is not the less applicable because the law which was the foundation of the indictment and trial is asserted to be unconstitutional …. [I]f a court has jurisdiction of the case the writ of habeas corpus cannot be employed to re-try the issues, whether of law, constitutional or otherwise, or of fact.” Id., at 429 (emphasis added).
  8. ↑ See, e.g., Knewel v. Egan, 268 U. S. 442, 446 (1925) (“It is fundamental that a court upon which is conferred jurisdiction to try an offense has jurisdiction to determine whether or not that offense is charged or proved”); In re Gregory, 219 U. S. 210, 213 (1911) (“[W]e are not concerned with the question whether the information was sufficient or whether the acts set forth in the agreed statement constituted a crime, that is to say, whether the court properly applied the law, if it be found that the court had jurisdiction to try the issues and to render the judgment”); In re Eckart, 166 U. S. 481, 483 (1897) (explaining that habeas would not offer relief from “a trial and conviction upon an indictment, the facts averred in which are asserted to be insufficient to constitute an offence against the statute claimed to have been violated”); Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, 654 (1884) (“Whether the indictment sets forth in comprehensive terms the offence which the statute describes and forbids … is in every case a question of law … within [the trial court’s] jurisdiction”); Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. 18, 20–21 (1876) (“It would be an assumption of authority for this court, by means of the writ of habeas corpus, to review every case in which the defendant attempts to controvert the criminality of the offence charged in the indictment”).

    Ignoring this authority, Justice Jackson’s dissent cites a handful of inapposite cases to suggest that 19th-century American courts would have treated claims such as Jones’ as cognizable in habeas. See post, at 31–32, n. 19, 34, 36–37, n. 25. Grant v. United States, 58 F. 694 (CA9 1893), was a case on a writ of error, not habeas corpus. Ex parte D’Olivera, 7 F. Cas. 853 (No. 3,967) (CC Mass. 1813), was another justice-of-the-peace case. Ex parte Randolph, 20 F. Cas. 242, 254 (No. 11,558) (CC Va. 1833), involved detention unsupported by any “judgment” or “judicial process” whatsoever. United States v. Bainbridge, 24 F. Cas. 946 (No. 14,497) (CC Mass. 1816), involved a collateral attack on a sentence imposed by a naval court martial; Justice Story’s opinion turned on the validity of the petitioner’s contract of enlistment, which, in turn, went to the court martial’s jurisdiction. Id., at 949–952; see also Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet 193, 209 (1830); Wise v. Withers, 3 Cranch 331, 337 (1806). Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75 (1807), relieved two alleged traitors from pretrial orders of commitment on the ground that there was “not sufficient evidence … to justify [their] commitment on the charge of treason.” Id., at 135. Matter of Corryell, 22 Cal. 178 (1863), granted relief from a pretrial order of commitment after holding that the acts of which the petitioner stood accused did not constitute the charged crime. Id., at 180, 183. (Incidentally, this use of habeas was not free from controversy. See, e.g., In re Hacker, 73 F. 464, 465–469 (SD Cal. 1896); “In re Kearney,” The Writ of Habeas Corpus—Its Uses and Abuses, 5 Pac. Coast L. J. 549, 565–570 (1880).) Finally, In re Wahll, 42 F. 822 (D. Minn. 1890), considered but rejected a similar argument for ordering pretrial release. Id., at 824–826. In sum, like Jones’ pre-founding English cases, the dissent’s 19th-century American cases include no example in which a prisoner under sentence of a court of general criminal jurisdiction was permitted to relitigate the elements of his offense on habeas corpus.

  9. ↑ The Government also argues that Davis v. United States, 417 U. S. 333 (1974), and Sunal v. Large, 332 U. S. 174 (1947), read together, dictate that only an intervening decision of this Court, rather than a Court of Appeals, can work such a change in the law as to justify an otherwise-barred §2241 petition. But this attempt to articulate an additional limiting principle for the Government’s theory requires turning the cases inside out. In Davis, where this Court allowed a statutory claim to proceed under §2255, the relevant narrowing decision came from the Ninth Circuit. See 417 U. S., at 341 (discussing United States v. Fox, 454 F. 2d 593 (CA9 1971)). In Sunal, where two petitioners’ statutory claims were barred from proceeding in habeas, it was this Court that had issued the relevant decision. See 332 U. S., at 176 (discussing Estep v. United States, 327 U. S. 114 (1946)). As we have recognized, see Reed v. Farley, 512 U. S. 339, 354 (1994), the holding of Sunal rested on what we would today call the petitioners’ procedural default without cause: By not appealing their convictions, they had forfeited the argument that ended up prevailing in Estep, and they had shown no “exceptional circumstances which excuse[d] their failure” to appeal. 332 U. S., at 183–184. The Sunal Court thus had no occasion to definitively resolve whether the petitioners’ claims would have been cognizable in habeas but for their default. And, to the extent Sunal addressed that question in dicta, it appeared to be of two minds. See id., at 181–183 (suggesting, in a single unelaborated sentence, that the petitioners’ “cases would be quite different” had they appealed and lost, then spending two paragraphs emphasizing that the trial courts’ “error of law” was neither jurisdictional nor constitutional).
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