The Supreme Court docket will hear oral argument on Nov. 4 in Guerrero v. Johnson, a case concerning the restricted circumstances wherein a state prisoner can return to federal court docket for a second spherical of post-conviction assessment.
However let’s again up a bit: If inmates wish to problem the grounds for his or her detention, they have to usually convey a habeas declare. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, looking for to curb the variety of such petitions, made it considerably harder to convey successive purposes. Particularly, underneath 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2) of AEDPA, a brand new declare in a second federal habeas petition is barred except it falls underneath one in every of two exceptions. The primary is when such a declare “depends on a brand new rule of constitutional regulation, made retroactive to circumstances on collateral assessment by the Supreme Court docket, that was beforehand unavailable.” The second exception covers claims based mostly on “the info underlying the [initial] declare,” however provided that these info would present “by clear and convincing proof that, however for constitutional error, no affordable factfinder would have discovered the applicant responsible of the underlying offense.”
Texas inmate Dexter Johnson introduced his declare underneath the primary exception, contending that he can’t be put to loss of life based mostly on the court docket’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which held that executing individuals with mental disabilities violates the Eighth Modification’s ban on merciless and weird punishment. Johnson didn’t current the Atkins declare in his preliminary petitions however, after qualifying as intellectually disabled underneath revised diagnostic requirements, raised this in a subsequent petition. The query earlier than the justices is whether or not Johnson’s Atkins declare was “beforehand unavailable” to him.
Some background
In 2007, Johnson was convicted of capital homicide and sentenced to loss of life in Texas for his function within the double homicide of 23-year-old Maria Aparece and 17-year-old Huy Ngo. At trial, a protection skilled testified that Johnson’s IQ was between 74 and 88 and he “didn’t have apparent deficits” with regard to “private independence and social accountability when in comparison with different individuals of comparable age and sociocultural background.” Underneath the diagnostic requirements in place at the moment, the skilled concluded that Johnson was not intellectually disabled. (Johnson didn’t increase an Atkins declare in his preliminary habeas petitions however invoked Atkins in these petitions to argue – unsuccessfully – that its protections ought to prolong to individuals with psychological sickness.)
In Might 2013, whereas Johnson’s federal petition was pending, the American Psychiatric Affiliation revealed the fifth version of its diagnostic guide, often known as the DSM-5, which Texas’ highest legal court docket adopted in 2018. The brand new version de-emphasized IQ cutoffs and acknowledged that somebody whose rating is above 70 should be intellectually disabled. In April 2019, an skilled gave Johnson an IQ take a look at on which he scored 70, and a second skilled agreed that Johnson met the DSM-5’s standards for mental incapacity.
Johnson filed a successive habeas software within the district court docket, wherein he claimed that he couldn’t be executed underneath Atkins. After an evidentiary listening to, the trial court docket decided that Johnson’s Atkins declare was beforehand unavailable and consequently stayed his execution. The state appealed to the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the fifth Circuit, which in July 2025 affirmed the district court docket’s resolution. The complete fifth Circuit then declined to rehear the case by a vote of 9-7. In February, the state requested the Supreme Court docket to weigh in, which the Supreme Court docket agreed in June to do.
The events’ arguments
In its brief, the Workplace of the Texas Legal professional Common maintains that “Johnson’s Atkins declare doesn’t depend on a change within the regulation.” As an alternative, it emphasizes, Atkins was determined effectively earlier than Johnson filed his preliminary habeas software, and “earlier than Johnson even dedicated the capital homicide for which he was sentenced to loss of life.” Nor, based on the Texas AG’s workplace, would allowing Johnson to convey such a declare serve the aim of enabling successive petitions, which is to permit for brand new proof as as to whether an individual is “responsible of the underlying offense.”
The state additional presses the purpose that no “rule” was beforehand unavailable right here. “An object—or a rule—could be out there even when it’s not wanted or helpful. A carpenter, for instance, possible has a hammer ‘out there,’ even when engaged on a job for which a hammer wouldn’t be needed or helpful,” the state writes. The publication of the DSM-5 could have allowed Johnson to find a brand new factual predicate, based on the state, however it doesn’t change the supply of any rule. As an alternative, the fifth Circuit’s strategy “erases the road Congress drew between new regulation and new info and successfully writes § 2244(b)(2)(B)’s limitations out of the statute.”
Johnson’s attorneys counter that one thing is “out there” solely whether it is “able to being utilized by an individual, for a function”; previous to the publication of the DSM-5, no such utilization was attainable. “Nobody would say the hammer was out there to the carpenter if it had been locked in a toolbox he couldn’t open,” Johnson’s group writes. “Mr. Johnson didn’t change; his mental and adaptive traits are the identical as all the time. What modified was the framework that made Atkins able to defending him. Atkins was not out there to him earlier than; now it’s.” Nor, opposite to the AG’s declare in any other case, Johnson’s legal professionals argue, would this open the “floodgates” to many different such challenges. As a result of only a few guidelines are retroactive, such points not often come up.
Maybe unsurprisingly given its stance on capital punishment, the Trump administration filed a “good friend of the court docket” temporary supporting Texas. Echoing a number of of the state’s arguments, U.S. Solicitor Common D. John Sauer asserts that “[s]tandards promulgated by a board of psychiatrists can’t remodel a call of this Court docket that predates a previous habeas software right into a ‘new’ and ‘beforehand unavailable’ rule of constitutional regulation.” Louisiana and 21 different states, additionally supporting Texas, call the fifth Circuit’s rule “a recipe for everlasting Atkins claims and nil finality,” declaring {that a} skilled affiliation additionally moved the age by which mental incapacity should seem from 18 to 22 in 2021 – elevating the chance that such age-based claims may be introduced and questioning the chance that the habeas floodgates would stay closed had been the court docket to agree with Johnson.
On Johnson’s facet, the Nationwide Affiliation of Prison Protection Legal professionals compares Johnson’s declare to second petitions based mostly on new science about “microscopic hair comparability evaluation, arson science, and shaken child syndrome.” In response to the NACDL, “claims of constitutional error grounded in defective science in a second or successive petition” should be allowed to go ahead as a result of “flawed analytical strategies might not be debunked till” it’s too late.
One closing factor price mentioning: Final time period, after listening to argument in Hamm v. Smith, a dispute over how courts ought to weigh a number of IQ scores in Atkins circumstances, the justices dismissed the case as improvidently granted (often known as a “DIG”) – that’s, they determined that it was a mistake to have agreed to listen to the case within the first place and didn’t resolve it. On the finish of his temporary, Johnson asks the court docket to do the identical in his case on the bottom that the state has regularly modified its arguments. Regardless of the deserves of Johnson’s place on that entrance, it appears unlikely the court docket will DIG two Atkins circumstances in successive phrases.
The choice in Guerrero v. Johnson is anticipated by late June or early July.