FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS August 4, 2020
Christopher M. Wolpert
TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
MICHAEL JACKSON,
Petitioner-Appellant,
No. 20-3053
v. (D.C. No. 5:20-CV-03055-JWL
(D. Kan.)
DON HUDSON, Warden,
Respondent-Appellee.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before HOLMES, BACHARACH, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges.
Petitioner-Appellant Michael Jackson, proceeding pro se, 1 filed a 28 U.S.C.
§ 2241 petition in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas
alleging that he is innocent in light of Rehaif v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 139
S. Ct. 2191 (2019). The district court dismissed this petition for lack of statutory
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited,
however, for its persuasive value consistent with Federal Rule of Appellate
Procedure 32.1 and 10th Circuit Rule 32.1.
1
Because Mr. Jackson is proceeding pro se, we construe his filings
liberally, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (per curiam); accord Garza
v. Davis, 596 F.3d 1198, 1201 n.2 (10th Cir. 2010), but “we will not ‘assume the
role of advocate,’” United States v. Parker, 720 F.3d 781, 784 n.1 (10th Cir.
2013) (quoting Yang v. Archuleta, 525 F.3d 925, 927 n.1 (10th Cir. 2008)).
jurisdiction. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm the
district court’s judgment.
I
A jury convicted Mr. Jackson in the United States District Court for the
Western District of Missouri of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) for being a
felon in possession of a firearm. Given his prior convictions, Mr. Jackson was
subject to the penalty-enhancement provision of the Armed Career Criminal Act,
18 U.S.C. § 924(e). The district court sentenced him to 327 months’
imprisonment. The Eighth Circuit affirmed his conviction and sentence.
However, in 2005, the Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit’s judgment and
remanded Mr. Jackson’s case back to the Eighth Circuit for further consideration
in light of United States v. Booker, 543 U.S 220 (2005). See Jackson v. United
States, 543 U.S. 1103 (2005). On remand, the Eighth Circuit held that Mr.
Jackson could not demonstrate plain error in connection with his sentence, and
reinstated its vacated judgment. See United States v. Jackson, 163 F. App’x 451
(8th Cir. 2006) (per curiam) (unpublished). Mr. Jackson unsuccessfully sought
relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and was denied authorization to file a second
motion under that section.
Subsequently, Mr. Jackson filed the § 2241 petition at issue here in federal
court in the District of Kansas, challenging the validity of his conviction based on
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a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court Rehaif v. United
States which held that to convict a criminal defendant under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g),
the government must prove “both that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm
and that he knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from
possessing a firearm.” 139 S. Ct. at 2200 (emphasis added). Before Rehaif, the
government could obtain a felon-in-possession conviction without proving that
the defendant knew he had previously been convicted of a felony. See, e.g.,
United States v. Silva, 889 F.3d 704, 711 (10th Cir. 2018) (citing United States v.
Benford, 875 F.3d 1007, 1015 (10th Cir. 2017)).
Mr. Jackson argues that Rehaif “was a substantial change in the law” that
renders him innocent of his felon-in-possession offense and that he should be
permitted to proceed under § 2241. Aplt.’s Opening Br. at 3. This is because, he
says, he has “exhausted all of his” rights under § 2255 and § 2241 “is the only
portal avenue available to [him] for entry into this [c]ourt.” Id. at 2 3. The
district court rejected Mr. Jackson’s argument and dismissed his § 2241 petition
for lack of statutory jurisdiction. In pertinent part, the court determined that Mr.
Jackson could not avail himself of § 2241 because he failed to demonstrate that
the remedy provided by his initial § 2255 motion was “inadequate or ineffective”
within the meaning of § 2255(e)’s so-called savings clause. R. at 29, 30 (Dist. Ct.
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Mem. & Order, filed Feb. 21, 2020) (quoting Prost v. Anderson, 636 F.3d 578,
586 (10th Cir. 2011), which in turn quotes § 2255(e)).
II
We review de novo the district court’s dismissal of Mr. Jackson’s § 2241
petition for lack of jurisdiction. See Brace v. United States, 634 F.3d 1167, 1169
(10th Cir. 2011).
When a federal prisoner is denied relief on his first § 2255 motion, as
happened here, the prisoner cannot file a second § 2255 motion unless he can
point to either “newly discovered evidence” or a “new rule[] of constitutional
law,” as those terms are defined in § 2255(h). Prost, 636 F.3d at 581. A prisoner
is permitted, however, to file a habeas petition in the federal district in which he
is incarcerated under § 2241, but only if he first demonstrates under § 2255(e)’s
savings clause that the remedy provided under § 2255 was “inadequate or
ineffective” at the time of his initial § 2255 motion. See 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e)
(noting the operative condition as “unless it also appears that the remedy by
motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention”); Prost,
636 F.3d at 589 (“[I]t is the infirmity of the § 2255 remedy itself, not the failure
to use it or to prevail under it, that is determinative. To invoke the savings
clause, there must be something about the initial § 2255 procedure that itself is
4
inadequate or ineffective for testing a challenge to detention.”); accord Abernathy
v. Wades, 713 F.3d 538, 547 (10th Cir. 2013).
The savings clause that is, § 2255(e) is only satisfied “in extremely
limited circumstances.” Caravalho v. Pugh, 177 F.3d 1177, 1178 (10th Cir.
1999); cf. Brace, 634 F.3d at 1169 (stating that Ҥ 2255 will rarely be an
inadequate or ineffective remedy to challenge a conviction”). Focusing on
matters relevant here, a panel of our court recently summarized well Prost’s
reasoning:
We explained [in Prost] that “[t]o invoke the savings clause,
there must be something about the initial § 2255 procedure
that itself is inadequate or ineffective for testing a challenge to
detention.” And “the fact that [a defendant] or his counsel
may not have thought of [a novel statutory interpretation
argument later approved by a court] earlier doesn’t speak to
the relevant question whether § 2255 itself provided [the
defendant] with an adequate and effective remedial mechanism
for testing such an argument.”
Garcia v. Stancil, 808 F. App’x 666, 669 (10th Cir. 2020) (unpublished) (first
alteration added) (first emphasis added) (citations omitted) (quoting Prost, 636
F.3d at 589); see Lewis v. English, 736 F. App’x 749, 752 (10th Cir. 2018)
(unpublished) (“Lewis notes that several of our sibling circuits follow what’s
known as the erroneous-circuit-foreclosure test. Courts following that test apply
the savings clause if a circuit court’s subsequently overturned interpretation of a
statute precluded relief at the time the § 2241 petitioner moved for relief under
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§ 2255. But we specifically rejected that approach in Prost.” (emphasis added)
(citations omitted)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 139 S. Ct. 1318 (2019). And
“when a federal petitioner fails to establish that he has satisfied § 2255(e)’s
saving clause test thus, precluding him from proceeding under § 2241 the
court lacks statutory jurisdiction to hear his habeas claims.” Abernathy, 713 F.3d
at 557; accord Jones v. Goetz, 712 F. App’x 722, 726 n.2 (10th Cir. 2017)
(unpublished).
III
We conclude that the district court correctly dismissed Mr. Jackson’s
§ 2241 petition for lack of statutory jurisdiction. That is because he has not
shown that the remedy provided by his initial § 2255 motion was inadequate or
ineffective, within the meaning of § 2255(e), to challenge his felon-in-possession
conviction. Under Prost, the fact that after Mr. Jackson filed his initial § 2255
motion the Supreme Court in Rehaif construed § 922(g) in a manner that might
have provided him, at the time of his motion, a basis for relief does not render the
remedy provided by his initial § 2255 motion inadequate or ineffective. See
Prost, 636 F.3d at 589; accord Garcia, 808 F. App’x at 669. Indeed, a panel of
our court specifically held as much in the context of a § 2241 petition predicated
on Rehaif, and we find that decision persuasive. See Dembry v. Hudson, 796 F.
App’x 972, 975 (10th Cir. 2019) (unpublished) (“[T]hat Rehaif did not exist when
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Dembry initially filed his § 2255 motion or that adverse circuit precedent existed
at the time does not render § 2255’s procedure ineffective or inadequate. The
savings clause in § 2255(e) does not apply here and the district court properly
concluded it lacked jurisdiction to review Dembry’s § 2241 petition.” (citation
omitted)). Accordingly, Mr. Jackson cannot pursue his Rehaif argument in a
§ 2241 petition. The district court correctly dismissed the petition for lack of
statutory jurisdiction.
IV
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Jerome A. Holmes
Circuit Judge
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