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Criminal Procedure — successive appeals

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 4, 2014//

Criminal Procedure — successive appeals

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 4, 2014//

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Criminal Procedure — successive appeals

A defendant’s failure to present evidence of his low IQ at sentencing is not a new factor requiring that his federal death sentence be vacated.

“No court of appeals has deemed §2255 ‘inadequate or ineffective’ just because counsel failed to take maximum advantage of the opportunity it extends. To get anywhere, Webster must persuade us not only to break new ground but also to hold that the changes to §2255 made in 1996 by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act — and particularly the addition of §2255(h), which limits second or successive petitions to those that satisfy a short list of conditions — made §2255 ineffective. In other words, he must persuade us that the AEDPA is self-negating, that by restricting the number of §2255 petitions Congress indirectly authorized an unlimited number of §2241 petitions seeking the same relief. At oral argument, Webster’s counsel was explicit: He asked us to apply pre-1996 law and to hold that an additional collateral attack is proper whenever the prisoner does not abuse the writ. That would write §2255(h) and 28 U.S.C. §2244(b) out of the United States Code. Yet courts do not interpret statutes to make revisions self-cancelling. We have held that §2255(h) does not make §2255 as a whole inadequate or ineffective. See Unthank v. Jett, 549 F.3d 534, 535–36 (7th Cir. 2008); Taylor v. Gilkey, 314 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir. 2002). Webster does not persuade us to change course.”

Affirmed.

14-1049 Webster v. Caraway

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Lawrence, J., Easterbrook, J.

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