Current Events > The Supreme Court's latest opinion means innocent people must remain in prison

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/6/22/23769886/supreme-court-innocent-jones-hendrix-clarence-thomas-habeas

The Supreme Court just ruled that at least some federal prisoners who are completely innocent must serve out their entire sentence, with no meaningful way to challenge their unlawful conviction. One of the most fundamental principles of criminal law is that no one may be convicted of a crime unless the legislature previously passed a law making their actions illegal. If there is no law on the books that, say, marijuana possession is unlawful, then a judge cannot toss someone in jail because they were found with a joint. The Supreme Courts 6-3 decision in Jones v. Hendrix, handed down Thursday, does not directly attack this foundational principle. Instead, it does so indirectly by prohibiting many prisoners from ever challenging their convictions in court. The case centers on Marcus DeAngelo Jones, a federal prisoner who was convicted in 2000 of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony. Nineteen years later, in Rehaif v. United States (2019), the Supreme Court held that no one may be convicted under this felon-in-possession statute unless they knew they had a felony conviction at the time that they possessed the gun.

Jones says that he (incorrectly, but genuinely) believed that his previous felony conviction had been expunged when he purchased a gun, and thus his conviction was invalid under Rehaif. In essence, he claims that no federal law criminalized his possession of a firearm, because he did not know he had a felony conviction. Thanks to Thomass opinion in Jones, however, we will never know if Rehaif invalidates Joness conviction that is, if he is innocent of the crime that caused him to spend nearly a quarter-century in prison because the Court held that Jones may not challenge his conviction at all. The reason why is a federal law, known as Section 2255, which ordinarily prevents federal prisoners from challenging their conviction or sentence more than once.

Yikes

Only some, and I'm sure we know which ones.

The Supreme Court should be the ones in prison.

felons shouldn't have guns obv but 25 years for that is insane and if he genuinely didn't know he was a felon it is even more fucked up. stuff like this is truly evil

Those fucking boomers need to leave

Yeah and if you actually read interviews about these people they are so fucking smug and shit lol

StarSpangled posted...

Those fucking boomers need to leave

I honestly can't wait for their generation to die out and we have people of good conscience and sound judgment leading this country, instead of old, white, goppers whose only allegiance is to their political power and money.

StarSpangled posted...

Those fucking boomers need to leave

I'm so fed up with boomers in power. They need to all retire. I kinda think there should be an upper age limit in politics. Maybe nobody over the age of 60. Maybe lower even. I don't think super old people should be making laws for a world they won't spend much more time in

You guys would all be praising the Court if they made a ruling you agree with. You're all such hypocrites.

Zikten posted...

I'm so fed up with boomers in power. They need to all retire. I kinda think there should be an upper age limit in politics. Maybe nobody over the age of 60. Maybe lower even. I don't think super old people should be making laws for a world they won't spend much more time in

So why did you vote for Trump?

Aloc posted...

So why did you vote for Trump?

I don't think he did. At least not in 2020

Lol, he said he didn't know....gee never heard that excuse before.

The US is a fucking joke. "Land of the free" my ass.

Xatrion posted...

I honestly can't wait for their generation to die out and we have people of good conscience and sound judgment leading this country, instead of old, white, goppers whose only allegiance is to their political power and money.

You want a whole generation of people to die?
So your parents, aunts, uncles etc..

I'm confused. If having a record meant he couldn't purchase a gun, and he went to an authorized dealer, shouldn't it be on them to turn him down and inform him why they won't sell him one? Now, if he bought one illegally I can see a jail sentence, but this kind of feels like the voter fraud lady in Florida. She asked if she could vote, they told her she could, then after voting was told "whoops, our bad" and arrested her.

Aloc posted...

So why did you vote for Trump?

In 2016 I was stupid and bought into Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories. That's about the general reason why

Tyranthraxus posted...

I don't think he did. At least not in 2020

I did in 2016. Of which I still feel shame for. I mostly have been a liberal my whole life but I for some reason got convinced by conspiracy shit in the mid 2010s and had a moment of idiocy

Yeah, trying to shame Zikten for that ain't gonna work.

Dude got manipulated, realized it, and grew.

Zikten is solid.

Full_Pokedex posted...

You guys would all be praising the Court if they made a ruling you agree with. You're all such hypocrites.

https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312

BlueTigerLion posted...

The reason why is a federal law, known as Section 2255, which ordinarily prevents federal prisoners from challenging their conviction or sentence more than once.

Isn't that what appealing your case is? Or is this not about appeals?

emblem-man posted...

Isn't that what appealing your case is? Or is this not about appeals?

This isn't about a direct appeal from a conviction. 28 USC 2255 concerns claims for postconviction relief. These actions can be broadly summarized as claims that the petitioner's sentence violates his or her rights.

Xatrion posted...

I honestly can't wait for their generation to die out and we have people of good conscience and sound judgment leading this country, instead of old, white, goppers whose only allegiance is to their political power and money.

You'll be lucky. Different generations aren't that different. It's not being old that makes you shitty; shitty people are shitty their whole lives, and no generation has a monopoly on that. People of the same age don't all have the same politics or morality, and anyone who thinks you can lump together millions of people and make moral judgements about them based on something as arbitrary as the year they were born is as bigoted as any racist.

Full_Pokedex posted...

You guys would all be praising the Court if they made a ruling you agree with. You're all such hypocrites.

Okay duncan

Vampire_Chicken posted...

You'll be lucky. Different generations aren't that different. It's not being old that makes you shitty; shitty people are shitty their whole lives, and no generation has a monopoly on that. People of the same age don't all have the same politics or morality, and anyone who thinks you can lump together millions of people and make moral judgements about them based on something as arbitrary as the year they were born is as bigoted as any racist.

I think we can make the assumption that the generations born in the 80s up are less racist than the generations born from the 40s - late 70s.

Full_Pokedex posted...

You guys would all be praising the Court if they made a ruling you agree with. You're all such hypocrites.

Yes, we would? I don't know what you think your point is. Yes, if the Supreme Court did a good thing and made a good ruling we would praise them. However thats not happening and has been not happening much more often than not lately.

Yet again, what point did you actually think you made?

pnut027 posted...

I think we can make the assumption that the generations born in the 80s up are less racist than the generations born from the 40s - late 70s.

But you're not entitled to assume that a whole generation is racist, in the same way that no one is entitled to assume that every boomer is a wealthy Republican voter. If you (that's a generic "you", by the way) say you can't wait for every last boomer to die, patting yourself on the back for belonging to a generation free of prejudice (or some such bullshit) is nothing more than the hypocrisy of a self-deluded, ageist bigot.

Notions about who and what is a boomer are mostly caricatures. Millions upon millions of people don't all share the same socioeconomic background or status, the same life experiences, the same careers, the same political views, the same same attitudes, opinions and beliefs just because they were born in this decade or that.

Vampire_Chicken posted...

But you're not entitled to assume that a whole generation is racist, in the same way that no one is entitled to assume that every boomer is a wealthy Republican voter. If you (that's a generic "you", by the way) say you can't wait for every last boomer to die, patting yourself on the back for belonging to a generation free of prejudice (or some such bullshit) is nothing more than the hypocrisy of a self-deluded, ageist bigot.

I think youre taking the post a bit too literal. It is a fact that once the boomers are gone, the world will be better for marginalized groups.

That doesnt mean that when the last boomer dies, freedom and prosperity will ring free.

Full_Pokedex posted...

You guys would all be praising the Court if they made a ruling you agree with. You're all such hypocrites.

If the made a ruling I'm for, it means the ruling comports with common sense and constitutional law.

This SCOTUS has a habit of making shit up from whole cloth and inflicting injustice on the people who least need to suffer.

Full_Pokedex posted...

You guys would all be praising the Court if they made a ruling you agree with. You're all such hypocrites.

Go to bed Duncan. It's well beyond the time you should be awake.

pnut027 posted...

It is a fact that once the boomers are gone, the world will be better for marginalized groups.

Plenty of boomers who were teenagers or in their twenties during the 1960s saw themselves as belonging to a radical generation: the generation of free love, that one that marched for civil rights and against Vietnam, the generation that would bring about a more free, more just, and more peaceful future. They saw their parents and grandparents as a conservative, reactionary and regressive generation whose authority had to be challenged and overthrown if the world was to be made a better place. And we know how that turned out in the end.

In other words, they fought a 'generation war' that mirrored your own, and they entertained the same illusions about their own generation as maybe you do about yours. Just a cautionary note.

Vampire_Chicken posted...

Plenty of boomers who were teenagers or in their twenties during the 1960s saw themselves as belonging to a radical generation: the generation of free love, that one that marched for civil rights and against Vietnam, the generation that would bring about a more free, more just, and more peaceful future. They saw their parents and grandparents as a conservative, reactionary and regressive generation whose authority had to be challenged and overthrown if the world was to be made a better place. And we know how that turned out in the end.

In other words, they fought a 'generation war' that mirrored your own, and they entertained the same illusions about their own generation as maybe you do about yours. Just a cautionary note.

The next few generations will be far more progressive than my own, with respect to gender and sexual fluidity among others. We see shifts in attitudes today.

And when my generation dies out, their generations generally will be better off for it. Thats just how it goes.

pnut027 posted...

The next few generations will be far more progressive than my own, with respect to gender and sexual fluidity among others. We see shifts in attitudes today.

It's all swings of the pendulum: from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump. You can't dump all the blame for Trump in the lap of the boomers, and you can't stigmatize an entire generation for the sins of hand-picked cronies appointed to power by wealthy elites. Not every boomer is white, male, heterosexual, moneyed, and Republican, but if you listened to boomer-hating, ageist bigots you'd think those were the only people born between 1946 and 1964.

And while you may have the positivity to believe the next few generations will be far more progressive, the crucial question is: is it actually going to be the progressives among them who exercise power? Boomers dropping like flies from the lists of candidates or voters isn't going to guarantee that. The optimism that America had finally turned an historic corner on race when Obama became the 44th president now looks badly misplaced, and even as more and more boomers are dying off the irony is that the halls of power in America seem to be growing as conservative and reactionary as they were in the 1950s. I'm seeing groups that call themselves The Proud Boys, not The Proud Elderly Gentlemen.

mfw you both sides on two different axes at the same time

Most of the Supreme Court justices are pieces of shit but how can you have a felony conviction and not know..?

MrDrMan posted...

Most of the Supreme Court justices are pieces of shit but how can you have a felony conviction and not know..?

The reasoning of the rulling doesn't seem to be "shut the fuck up, of course you knew" but rather "regardless of if your story is fucking stupid or not, you do not have the right, oh elden ring!"

Spoilers for some in here: this isn't a generational issue and it won't be fixed by old people dying.

MrDrMan posted...

Most of the Supreme Court justices are pieces of shit but how can you have a felony conviction and not know..?

You could've thought that it was expunged and off your record only for it to not be off your record at all.

It's quite common.

I had a misdemeanor that I had expunged almost (relatively) immediately but when applying for a job it got flagged on a background check.