SCOTUS Rules Against Felon in Possession of Firearms Case

[alsaqr]

This one is interesting.

"The court's conservatives were in the 6-3 majority against the man, Marcus DeAngelo Jones, who was given a 27-year prison sentence for violating a federal law meant to keep guns out of the hands of people with previous criminal convictions.

Jones had argued that he should be allowed another chance to get his conviction thrown out following a 2019 court decision. In that case, the justices ruled prosecutors must prove that people charged with violating federal gun laws knew they were not allowed to have a weapon."

Supreme Court rules against a man who was given 27 years in prison for having a gun (msn.com)

 

[Spats McGee]

Again, we don't usually let Legal threads based solely on news stories survive in Legal. Nonetheless, here's the actual decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf

 

[CapnMac]

So, looking at the decision:

Congress later enacted AEDPA, which, as relevant here, barred second or successive §2255 motions unless based on either “newly discovered evidence,” §2255(h)(1), or “a new rule of constitutional law,” §2255(h)(2). Some courts faced with AEDPA’s second-or-successive restrictions held that §2255 was “inadequate and ineffective” under the saving clause when AEDPA’s restrictions barred a prisoner from seeking relief based on a new interpretation of a criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner’s trial, appeal, and first §2255 motion.

Section 2255(e)’s saving clause does not authorize that end-run around AEDPA. The 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. But §2255(h) specifies the two limited conditions in which federal prisoners may bring second or successive collateral attacks on their sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy §2255(h) does not mean that the prisoner may bring the claim in a §2241 petition.

But 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. Next, Jones argues that courts of equity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal remedies in a broad range of circumstances; to the extent relevant to §2255(e), this proves at most that a variety of practical obstacles might trigger the saving clause, cf. Hayman, 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23, not that the clause offers an exemption from AEDPA’s limits on second or successive collateral attacks. Jones further argues 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. That argument would nullify AEDPA’s limits on collateral relief.

Jones suggests that denying him the chance to raise his Rehaif claim in a §2241 petition would violate the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const.,
Art. I, §9, cl. 2. This argument fails because it would extend the writ of habeas corpus far beyond its scope when the Constitution was
drafted and ratified.

This is more about procedure than whether a person was a felon with a firearm.

Not that our modern news media might frame such things poorly or the like . . .