by Chuck Sharman

The Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) ruled on February 6, 2026, that federal prisoners seeking habeas corpus relief are not bound by the statute that limits state prisoners to one shot at their claims. The result seems only fair for federal prisoner Michael Bowe, who is serving a 10-year mandatory-minimum sentence under sections of a criminal statute that have since been invalidated. Nevertheless, the dissent in the case made clear that at least four justices on the high Court preferred to leave him in prison anyway.

Bowe, 39, is currently incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Coleman, Florida, serving a 24-year sentence for a 2008 attempt to rob an armored truck that left two guards injured from gunshots. Bowe pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit Hobbes Act robbery and attempted robbery, earning sentences totaling 14 years. He was also convicted of using a firearm during a “crime of violence” as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A), which added a consecutive 10-year mandatory-minimum sentence to his term.

He first sought post-conviction relief in 2016, after SCOTUS struck the “residual clause” from the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Bowe argued that the similar clause in § 924(c) was also unconstitutionally vague. But the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied his habeas petition, reasoning that regardless of the clause’s constitutionality, Bowe’s crime was a qualifying “crime of violence.”

Two years after that, in 2019, SCOTUS struck the residual clause in § 924(c)(3)(B) in United States v. Davis, 588 U.S. 445 (2019). However, when Bowe attempted again to challenge that portion of his sentence, he ran into a provision of 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which governs habeas filings by federal prisoners. As amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), it provided that second or successive petitions must be pre-approved by a federal appellate court.

To give those courts detailed guidance, § 2255 cross-referenced U.S.C. § 2244, which governs habeas filings by state prisoners. But the latter statute also bars any claim that has already been made in a previous filing—like Bowe’s challenge to the constitutionality of the § 924(c) residual clause. So even though it was (a) the portion of the statute under which he was given an enhanced sentence and (b) no longer constitutional, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit said that his claim was precluded because he’d already asked for relief.

Three years later, in 2022, SCOTUS decided in United States v. Taylor, 596 U.S. 845 (2022), that attempted Hobbes Act robbery is not a “crime of violence.” That left Bowe serving a decade-long mandatory-minimum prison term for an alternative enhancement that no longer qualified, either. He sought relief under § 2255, and the Eleventh Circuit denied him, pointing to § 2244’s old-claim bar, at least to the extent that he was asking for relief under Davis; to the extent that he was asking under Taylor, the appellate court said that he was also out of luck because that decision did not announce a “new constitutional rule” that would trigger an exception under § 2255(h)(2).

To his credit, Bowe did not give up, returning to the Eleventh Circuit several times. Eventually, he petitioned for review at SCOTUS, which granted certiorari to resolve a split among appellate circuits; only some agreed with the Eleventh Circuit that § 2255 incorporates § 2244’s old-claim bar for federal prisoners.

SCOTUS Recognizes Different
Rules for Federal Prisoners
Seeking Habeas Relief

Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that for Bowe to have been “properly convicted under §924(c)—and thus to have received the accompanying 10-year consecutive sentence—his conviction for either conspiracy or attempt to commit Hobbs Act robbery must qualify as a crime of violence under either the elements or residual clause.” But since Davis barred the latter and Taylor barred the former, “[t]oday it is likely that neither clause would permissibly support Bowe’s §924(c) conviction.”

As for what she called the “procedural complications that have so far prevented relief,” the government argued that the Court lacked jurisdiction to resolve them, since § 2244(b)(3)(E) specifically states that “denial of an authorization by a court of appeals to file a second or successive application … shall not be the subject of a petition for … a writ of certiorari.”

But the Court disagreed. Quoting Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375 (2003), it said that “‘reading the statute as the Government suggest[ed]’ to bar jurisdiction in that case ‘would close our doors to a class of habeas petitioners seeking review without any clear indication that such was Congress’ intent.’” Thus, “[b]ecause a ‘clear indication’ [of Congressional intent] was necessary in Castro to strip the Court of jurisdiction, a ‘clear indication’ is required here,” the Court declared.

Anticipating the dissent, Sotomayor ingeniously undertook a close textual analysis—the sort that the Court’s conservative bloc routinely employs against her and other more progressive members. The cross-reference in § 2255 to § 2244 “speaks to how a ‘panel’ of the court of appeals certifies a filing,” she noted. “But this Court is not ‘a panel of the appropriate court of appeals,’ §2255(h), so the cross-reference does not speak to this Court’s jurisdiction.” Rather, it was clear that the certiorari bar in § 2244 “addresses an entirely different act (filing a certiorari petition, not certifying a successive motion) by an entirely different actor (the prisoner, not the panel) in an entirely different court (this Court, not the court of appeals).”

The government’s fallback argument was that the certiorari bar was necessary to advance the AEDPA’s “stated principles of comity, finality, and federalism.” But the Court said that it was “[o]ut of respect for state courts and their ability … ‘to adjudicate claims of constitutional wrong [that] AEDPA erect[ed] a formidable barrier to federal habeas relief for [state] prisoners”—a bar that “fall[s] away” for a federal prisoner. By the time he “looks to file a second or successive motion,” the Court said, “he will have had fewer bites at the apple, and fewer courts reviewing his case, than most state prisoners in the same position.”

Having dispensed with the certiorari bar from § 2244, the Court conducted another close textual analysis to find that its old-claim bar didn’t apply under § 2255, either. The former refers to “applications” and the latter to “petitions,” Justice Sotomayor noted, reasoning that Congress meant for courts to provide distinct avenues to relief for state or federal prisoners, respectively. Thus, when state prisoners apply for federal habeas relief, they are held to a stricter standard than § 2255 petitioners. It wouldn’t make sense to incorporate all of § 2244 in the cross-reference contained in § 2255, since that would render the latter “dead letter”—and “Congress presumably does not enact useless laws,” the Court said, quoting Garland v. Cargill, 602 U. S. 406 (2024).

In their dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and, to an extent, Amy C. Barrett, decried the grant of “federal-prisoner exceptionalism” in habeas actions compared to the statutory requirements for state prisoners. Notably, the dissent took time to reiterate Bowe’s crimes, as if they might justify leaving him behind bars to serve sentence enhancements that were no longer valid.

In the end, the high Court’s majority declared that § 2244’s old-claim bar does not apply to a § 2255 petition like Bowe’s, remanding it to the Eleventh Circuit for an appropriate determination on his second or successive petition request. Before the Court, Bowe’s case was argued by Fort Lauderdale Public Defender Andrew L. Adler. See: Bowe v. United States, 223 L.Ed.2d 311 (U.S. 2026).

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