Justices Will Consider Dispute Over Successive Habeas Challenges

The US Supreme Court agreed to consider a dispute over the parameters of a law that allows state prisoners to file a successive petition challenging their sentence only if the legal claim they’re making was previously unavailable.

The case granted Monday centers on whether death-row defendant Dexter Johnson can pursue a second federal habeas application raising an Atkins claim, named for a 2002 Supreme Court decision that said executing an intellectually disabled person is unconstitutional.

Johnson, who was convicted in Texas in 2007 of capital murder after Atkins v. Virginia, didn’t raise an Atkins claim in his original trial or habeas proceedings. But the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit authorized Johnson to file a second petition after finding that his Atkins claim would’ve never had a chance of success until a 2013 update in how clinicians view IQ scores and disability.

The question for the justices is whether Johnson’s Atkins claim in his second petition was “previously unavailable” given that he could have made such a constitutional argument in a prior challenge.

Texas urged the justices to take up the issue, claiming the Fifth Circuit’s rationale conflicts with a more restrictive reading of the law at issue in the Eleventh and Fourth Circuits.

In those circuits, “a rule was ‘previously unavailable’ only if a claim based on the rule could not have been asserted in a prior proceeding,” the state said.

Johnson’s counsel had argued the case, which centers on the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, wasn’t worth the court’s time. “Indeed, in the nearly thirty years since AEDPA took effect only two habeas petitioners utilizing this ‘no possibility of merit’ rule have received preliminary circuit court authorization to proceed on a successive petition,” Johnson said.

The case is Guerrero v. Johnson, U.S., No. 25-1003.