Grounds for a 2255 Motion: Every Claim That Qualifies

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

What grounds can a § 2255 motion raise?

A §2255 motion can raise ineffective assistance of counsel, suppression of favorable evidence under Brady and Giglio, an involuntary or unknowing guilty plea, a sentence above the statutory maximum, lack of jurisdiction, conviction under a statute later narrowed or invalidated, a new retroactive constitutional rule, and prosecutorial misconduct. Ineffective assistance produces far more relief than any other ground.

Key takeaways on § 2255 grounds

• 28 U.S.C. §2255(a) supplies four categories, and every ground fits one of them: a sentence “imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States,” a court “without jurisdiction,” a sentence “in excess of the maximum authorized by law,” or one “otherwise subject to collateral attack.”
• Ineffective assistance is the workhorse ground, and it is exempt from procedural default. Massaro v. United States, 538 U.S. 500, 504 (2003): the claim “may be brought in a collateral proceeding under § 2255, whether or not the petitioner could have raised the claim on direct appeal.”
• Every ineffectiveness claim runs through two prongs. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) requires that “counsel’s representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness” and “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”
• In a plea case the prejudice question is different. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985): the defendant must show “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.”
• Suppressed evidence is a due process ground whether or not the prosecutor acted in bad faith. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963) reaches suppression of evidence “material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution”; Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972) extends it to impeachment.
• Omission is close to permanent. 28 U.S.C. §2255(h) permits a second motion only on newly discovered evidence meeting a clear-and-convincing innocence standard, or “a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.”

The statutory frame: §2255(a)’s four categories

Every recognized ground is a species of one of four statutory categories, and knowing which one a claim occupies is not academic — it determines what has to be pleaded and what the government will argue in response.

Constitutional or statutory violation. This is where most grounds live: Sixth Amendment ineffectiveness, Fifth Amendment due process (suppressed evidence, knowing use of false testimony, an involuntary plea), and the occasional statutory claim of the kind Davis v. United States, 417 U.S. 333, 346 (1974) allows when a conviction rests on “an act that the law does not make criminal.”

Lack of jurisdiction. Narrow, and narrower than most pro se motions assume — see the section below.

Sentence in excess of the maximum authorized by law. Self-executing and among the strongest grounds when it applies, because there is nothing discretionary about it.

“Otherwise subject to collateral attack.” The catch-all, and the narrowest of the four. United States v. Addonizio, 442 U.S. 178, 185 (1979) requires “a fundamental defect which inherently results in a complete miscarriage of justice,” and holds that §2255 “does not encompass all claimed errors in conviction and sentencing.” The mirror image of this page — the complaints that fit none of the four, and where each of them belongs instead — is at claims not cognizable under §2255. Read it before you finalize a motion; it is the fastest way to avoid spending the filing on a claim a court cannot reach.

Ground 1: Ineffective assistance of trial counsel

This is the most frequently raised ground, the one most likely to produce relief, and one that is categorically exempt from procedural default. It is also the ground that most needs facts outside the trial record, which is why Massaro directs it to §2255 in the first place.

The test has two prongs and both must be met. Strickland v. Washington frames it: “First, the defendant must show that counsel’s performance was deficient. … Second, the defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense.” Performance is measured against “an objective standard of reasonableness,” and the court “must indulge a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.” Prejudice requires “a reasonable probability” of a different outcome, defined as “a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.”

The failures courts have actually accepted cluster in recognizable places: failing to investigate an available defense or mitigation, failing to consult or retain a necessary expert, failing to communicate a plea offer, failing to move to suppress evidence obtained unlawfully, failing to object to an unsupported Guidelines enhancement, and failing to file a requested notice of appeal. What distinguishes a granted claim from a denied one is almost never the theory. It is the evidence: an affidavit from the witness who was never called, the expert report that was never obtained, the file showing the offer that was never conveyed. The two prongs and how courts apply each are set out in full at Strickland v. Washington; the catalog of failures courts have accepted is at ineffective assistance of counsel.

Ground 2: Ineffective assistance of appellate counsel

A separate ground with the same two prongs and a different application. The complaint is that appellate counsel omitted a stronger issue than the ones briefed, or filed no brief of substance at all.

The difficulty is that appellate counsel is not required to raise every non-frivolous issue — winnowing weak arguments to focus on strong ones is the core of competent appellate advocacy, and Strickland’s strong presumption of reasonableness protects that judgment. So the claim generally has to show that the omitted issue was clearly stronger than what was raised, which in practice means demonstrating that the issue would have won.

One variant is structurally different and much stronger: counsel who was asked to file a notice of appeal and did not. There, prejudice is presumed rather than proved. Garza v. Idaho, 586 U.S. 232 (2019) holds that “the presumption of prejudice recognized in Flores-Ortega applies regardless of whether the defendant has signed an appeal waiver,” reaffirming that “when counsel’s constitutionally deficient performance deprives a defendant of an appeal that he otherwise would have taken, the defendant has made out a successful ineffective assistance of counsel claim entitling him to an appeal,” with no need for a further showing that the appeal had merit. Because the presumption removes the hardest element of the case, this is among the most reliably granted claims in federal post-conviction practice. The two variants are covered at ineffective appellate counsel and my lawyer did not file an appeal.

Ground 3: Suppression of favorable evidence — Brady and Giglio

A due process ground, and one of the few that does not depend on proving anyone was at fault. Brady v. Maryland holds that “the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”

Giglio v. United States extends the rule to evidence bearing on a witness’s credibility, holding that “[w]hen the ‘reliability of a given witness may well be determinative of guilt or innocence,’ nondisclosure of evidence affecting credibility falls within this general rule,” and requiring a new trial if “the false testimony could … in any reasonable likelihood have affected the judgment of the jury.” Giglio also forecloses the government’s most common defense: “whether the nondisclosure was a result of negligence or design, it is the responsibility of the prosecutor. The prosecutor’s office is an entity … A promise made by one attorney must be attributed, for these purposes, to the Government.”

This ground fits collateral review naturally, because suppressed evidence is by definition not in the trial record — nothing was suppressed if it was disclosed. That also means the suppression usually supplies cause for any procedural default, and can restart the §2255(f)(4) clock from the date the facts could have been discovered with due diligence. The elements and how a suppression claim is built are at Brady violation; what the government must turn over, and how to find out whether anything exists, is at Brady lists and exculpatory evidence.

Ground 4: An involuntary or unknowing guilty plea

The overwhelming majority of federal convictions are entered on guilty pleas rather than after trial, so this ground reaches most of the §2255 population — and it is under-raised relative to that share.

Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614 (1998) states the constitutional rule: “A plea of guilty is constitutionally valid only to the extent it is ‘voluntary’ and ‘intelligent,'” and “a plea does not qualify as intelligent unless a criminal defendant first receives ‘real notice of the true nature of the charge against him, the first and most universally recognized requirement of due process.'” That covers the case where the defendant, counsel, and the court all misunderstood an element of the offense — including where a later Supreme Court decision reveals that the conduct charged was not the crime.

The far more common version is a plea induced by counsel’s incorrect advice, which is a Strickland claim with a modified prejudice test. Hill v. Lockhart holds that “the two-part Strickland v. Washington test applies to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel,” and that the defendant “must show that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.”

Two cautions. First, Bousley also holds that a plea-validity claim is subject to procedural default: “even the voluntariness and intelligence of a guilty plea can be attacked on collateral review only if first challenged on direct review.” Second, most plea agreements contain a collateral-attack waiver — though a claim attacking the plea’s own validity frequently survives it. See ineffective assistance and guilty pleas and appeal waivers and collateral-attack waivers.

Ground 5: A sentence above the statutory maximum

This is §2255(a)’s third category, and it is the cleanest ground in the statute because it involves no balancing. Either the sentence exceeds what Congress authorized for the offense of conviction, or it does not.

It matters most in enhancement cases. When a defendant is sentenced under a statute that raises the maximum — the Armed Career Criminal Act being the recurring example — and a later decision establishes that a prior conviction did not qualify as a predicate, the sentence imposed exceeds the maximum that lawfully applied. Circuits treat that as cognizable precisely because it is a statutory-maximum problem rather than a Guidelines problem. The Eleventh Circuit drew the line explicitly in Spencer v. United States, 773 F.3d 1132 (11th Cir. 2014) (en banc): a court can “collaterally review a misapplication of the Armed Career Criminal Act because, unlike an advisory guideline error, that misapplication results in a sentence that exceeds the statutory maximum.”

The contrast is the point. A Guidelines range calculated too high is, in most circuits, not cognizable at all; a statutory maximum exceeded is cognizable everywhere. If a sentencing claim can be framed as the second rather than the first, it should be. Timing usually runs through §2255(f)(3) when the enabling decision is a new Supreme Court rule — and the year runs from the decision that recognized the right, not from a later decision holding it retroactive. Compute it at the §2255 deadline calculator.

Ground 6: The court lacked jurisdiction

Listed in the statute, raised constantly, and successful almost never. The reason is that “jurisdiction” in §2255(a) means the court’s power to adjudicate a federal criminal case, and 18 U.S.C. §3231 provides that “[t]he district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States.” That grant is difficult to defeat.

The theories that circulate in prison law libraries — that the indictment was defective, that it lacked a proper signature or seal, that the statute of conviction was never properly enacted, that the court lacked territorial jurisdiction over the place of the offense — do not work, and one of them was foreclosed by name. In United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625 (2002), the Supreme Court held that “defects in an indictment do not deprive a court of its power to adjudicate a case,” expressly overruling Ex parte Bain to the contrary and quoting Justice Holmes for the proposition that “[t]he objection that the indictment does not charge a crime against the United States goes only to the merits of the case.”

Where a genuine jurisdictional problem exists it is usually about the offense rather than the paperwork: a prosecution for conduct that Congress did not make a federal crime, or an offense committed entirely outside the reach of the charging statute. That is a merits argument dressed as jurisdiction, and it is better raised as Ground 7. Because a jurisdictional claim cannot be waived or defaulted, it is worth including when it is real — but a motion whose leading ground is a defective-indictment theory tends to draw a Rule 4(b) dismissal that takes the other grounds with it.

Ground 7: A statute later held unconstitutional or narrowed

If a decision issued after your conviction establishes that the statute did not reach your conduct, you are imprisoned for something that was never a federal crime. That is the paradigm case for collateral relief, and it is what Davis v. United States described: “conviction and punishment are for an act that the law does not make criminal. There can be no room for doubt that such a circumstance ‘inherently results in a complete miscarriage of justice.'”

Bousley supplies the retroactivity analysis. Because “Teague by its terms applies only to procedural rules,” it is “inapplicable to the situation in which this Court decides the meaning of a criminal statute enacted by Congress” — so a decision narrowing a substantive criminal statute applies on collateral review without a Teague inquiry. Bousley also supplies the two limits. The claim is subject to procedural default unless the movant shows cause and prejudice or actual innocence, and “‘actual innocence’ means factual innocence, not mere legal insufficiency,” extending to any more serious charges the Government forwent in plea bargaining.

There is a third limit that has grown decisive since 2023. If this is your second §2255, §2255(h)(2) requires “a new rule of constitutional law” — and a statutory-interpretation decision is not one. Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465, 471 (2023), closed the workaround: “§ 2255(e)’s saving clause does not permit a prisoner asserting an intervening change in statutory interpretation to circumvent [the] restrictions on second or successive § 2255 motions by filing a § 2241 petition.” A statutory claim of this kind therefore has to be raised in the first motion or, realistically, not at all. See retroactive Supreme Court decisions.

Ground 8: A new rule of constitutional law made retroactive

Distinct from Ground 7 in a way that controls both timing and availability: this ground rests on a constitutional decision rather than a statutory one.

It matters twice. First, §2255(f)(3) supplies an independent one-year trigger running from “the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review” — which can revive a claim long after the judgment became final. Second, §2255(h)(2) makes this the only doctrinal ground that can open a second or successive motion.

The scale of that effect is measurable. Administrative Office data show that filings of motions to vacate sentence rose to 24,837 in FY2016 — a 350% increase over the prior year — after Welch v. United States made Johnson’s vacatur of the ACCA residual clause retroactive. That is a filing count, not a grant count, and it should not be read as a success rate; what it demonstrates is that a single retroactivity holding moves federal collateral practice more than any other event.

Two traps recur. The year under §2255(f)(3) runs from the decision that recognized the right, not from a later decision holding it retroactive — a distinction that has cost many movants their filing. And a circuit decision, however favorable, does not start the clock; only the Supreme Court can recognize the right for §2255(f)(3) purposes. Both are worked through at retroactive Supreme Court decisions and what AEDPA changed.

Ground 9: Prosecutorial misconduct rising to constitutional error

Not every improper act by a prosecutor is a §2255 ground. The conduct has to amount to a constitutional violation, which in practice means one of a short list.

Knowing use of false testimony is the clearest. Giglio restates the rule from Napue: “the same result obtains when the State, although not soliciting false evidence, allows it to go uncorrected when it appears,” and requires a new trial if the false testimony “could … in any reasonable likelihood have affected the judgment of the jury.” Suppression of favorable evidence is Ground 3. Improper argument — vouching for a witness, commenting on the defendant’s silence, misstating the evidence in closing — is a due process claim only if it “so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process,” a demanding standard that most improper-argument claims fail.

Two structural points make this ground harder than it looks. Most misconduct is visible in the trial record, which means it belongs on direct appeal and is procedurally defaulted if omitted — one reason it is so often paired with an ineffectiveness claim about counsel’s failure to object. And misconduct that is not in the record is usually a Brady problem, which is Ground 3. The category with independent work to do is narrow. See prosecutorial misconduct.

Ground 10: Actual innocence — a gateway, not a freestanding ground

Innocence is the reason most people file, and it is almost never the legal ground on which they win. Its dominant function is as a gateway: a showing that unlocks a procedural door so that a separate constitutional claim can be heard on the merits.

Bousley uses it that way, holding that a defaulted plea-validity claim may proceed if the movant demonstrates “actual innocence,” which “means factual innocence, not mere legal insufficiency” and, in a plea case, “must also extend to” any more serious charges the Government forwent in plea bargaining.

Whether innocence can ever stand alone as a §2255 ground is unresolved, and both confident answers are wrong. Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 404 (1993) held that “a claim of ‘actual innocence’ is not itself a constitutional claim, but instead a gateway through which a habeas petitioner must pass to have his otherwise barred constitutional claim considered on the merits,” while assuming without deciding that a truly persuasive showing might warrant relief under an “extraordinarily high” threshold. In 2026 the Supreme Court declined again to close the question, stating in Fernandez v. United States, 608 U.S. 411, 146 S. Ct. 1292 (2026), that “[w]e have never ruled that possibility out and do not do so now.”

The practical instruction follows: plead the innocence evidence as a gateway around whatever bar the government will raise, and plead an independent constitutional violation as the ground. The three different standards that apply depending on which bar the innocence showing is passing are at actual innocence, and the vehicle question for newly discovered evidence is at newly discovered evidence in federal court.

The master claims table

Every recognized ground, its basis, its leading case, what must be proved, and where in this section the full treatment lives.

Table 1. Grounds available in a 28 U.S.C. §2255 motion.

Ground	Statutory or constitutional basis	Leading case	What must be proved	Full treatment
Ineffective assistance of trial counsel	Sixth Amendment; §2255(a) (constitutional violation)	Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984)	Performance below an objective standard of reasonableness, plus a reasonable probability of a different outcome	ineffective assistance of counsel
Ineffective assistance of appellate counsel	Sixth Amendment; §2255(a)	Strickland, 466 U.S. 668; Garza v. Idaho, 586 U.S. 232 (2019)	An omitted issue clearly stronger than those raised — or, for a disregarded appeal request, presumed prejudice	ineffective appellate counsel
Counsel disregarded an instruction to appeal	Sixth Amendment; §2255(a)	Garza v. Idaho, 586 U.S. 232 (2019)	That an appeal was requested and not filed; prejudice is presumed, even with an appeal waiver	my lawyer did not file an appeal
Conflict of interest	Sixth Amendment; §2255(a)	Strickland, 466 U.S. 668	An actual conflict that adversely affected counsel’s performance	conflict of interest counsel
Suppression of exculpatory evidence	Fifth Amendment due process; §2255(a)	Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963)	Evidence favorable, suppressed, and material to guilt or punishment — good faith is irrelevant	Brady violation
Suppression of impeachment evidence	Fifth Amendment due process; §2255(a)	Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972)	Undisclosed inducement or credibility evidence that could in reasonable likelihood have affected the verdict	Brady lists and exculpatory evidence
Involuntary or unknowing plea	Fifth Amendment due process; §2255(a)	Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614 (1998)	No real notice of the true nature of the charge; subject to procedural default	ineffective assistance and guilty pleas
Bad plea advice from counsel	Sixth Amendment; §2255(a)	Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985)	A reasonable probability the defendant would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on trial	ineffective assistance and guilty pleas
Sentence above the statutory maximum	§2255(a) (third category)	Spencer v. United States, 773 F.3d 1132 (11th Cir. 2014) (en banc)	That the sentence exceeds the maximum Congress authorized for the offense of conviction	claims not cognizable under §2255 (contrast)
Court lacked jurisdiction	§2255(a) (second category); 18 U.S.C. §3231	United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625 (2002)	A genuine absence of power to adjudicate — indictment defects do not qualify	what is a §2255 motion
Statute later narrowed or invalidated	§2255(a); Teague inapplicable to substantive rules	Bousley, 523 U.S. 614; Davis v. United States, 417 U.S. 333 (1974)	That the conduct of conviction is not criminal under the statute as construed; default must be excused	retroactive Supreme Court decisions
New retroactive rule of constitutional law	§2255(a); triggers §2255(f)(3); satisfies §2255(h)(2)	Decision-specific	That the Supreme Court recognized the right and made it retroactive to cases on collateral review	retroactive Supreme Court decisions
Prosecutorial misconduct	Fifth Amendment due process; §2255(a)	Giglio, 405 U.S. 150	Knowing use of false testimony, or argument that so infected the trial as to deny due process	prosecutorial misconduct
Actual innocence	Gateway around a procedural bar; freestanding status reserved	Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993); Bousley, 523 U.S. 614	Factual innocence, not legal insufficiency; in a plea case, extending to forgone charges	actual innocence

Which grounds actually produce relief

The honest ranking is not by popularity. It is by three structural features that decide cases long before a judge weighs the facts.

Is the ground cognizable at all? A claim §2255 cannot reach loses without a merits ruling no matter how strong the underlying grievance is. Grounds resting on the Constitution, on the statutory maximum, or on jurisdiction clear this filter automatically. Guidelines-application arguments generally do not.

Is prejudice presumed or must it be proved? This is the single largest predictor. The overwhelming majority of §2255 motions fail on prejudice rather than on deficient performance, because a court will assume counsel erred and still deny relief on the ground that the outcome would have been the same. The claims that avoid that trap — counsel who disregarded an instruction to appeal, under Garza; a sentence that plainly exceeds the statutory maximum — are correspondingly the most reliably granted.

Does the ground clear procedural default on its own? Ineffective assistance does, under Massaro. Suppressed evidence effectively does, because the suppression itself supplies cause. Almost everything else has to be excused, and most defaulted claims are not. What excuses a default, and what does not, is at procedural default.

Applying those three filters produces a practical ordering: ineffective assistance of trial counsel first, by a wide margin, because it clears the default filter automatically and reaches facts no other proceeding can develop; a disregarded appeal request second, because prejudice is presumed; suppressed evidence third, because it clears default and is often dispositive when proved; sentence-above-maximum fourth, because it is mechanical when it applies; and everything else after, at a considerable distance. This page deliberately does not publish numbers — the national filing data belong to §2255 grant-rate statistics, which maintains them against the Administrative Office series and explains why no national grant rate exists. What can be said without a number is that relief is uncommon, and that the grounds above are the ones that account for most of it.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The first pass we make on a potential §2255 is not a search for the strongest claim — it is an inventory of every claim the record could support, because the inventory is what we only get to build once. That means reading the plea agreement, the presentence report, the sentencing transcript, and trial counsel’s file together, and asking of each decision counsel made whether there is evidence outside the record that would explain it. Some of the strongest claims we have filed were not in the client’s original letter. They surfaced in a file that nobody had asked for.

How many claims to raise, and why omission is usually permanent

Raise every ground the record and the available evidence support. That is not a stylistic preference; it follows from the structure of the statute.

Section 2255(h) permits a second or successive motion only if a panel of the court of appeals certifies that it contains “newly discovered evidence that, if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would have found the movant guilty of the offense,” or “a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” A claim you simply did not think of does not fit either. Neither does a claim you thought of and left out.

Two recent decisions removed the escape hatches that used to soften this. Jones v. Hendrix (2023) closed the §2255(e) saving clause as a route to §2241 for intervening statutory-interpretation claims. Fernandez v. United States (2026) held that a prisoner “who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through 28 U. S. C. §2255, not 18 U. S. C. §3582.”

Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. 13 (2026), decided January 9, 2026, is frequently cited in this connection and is being misread. Bowe held that two provisions of §2244 — the certiorari bar in §2244(b)(3)(E) and the old-claim bar in §2244(b)(1) — do not apply to federal prisoners, because §2255(h)’s cross-reference incorporates §2244’s certification procedures only. It did not loosen or remove the §2255(h) gate. Bowe itself quotes Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465, 477 (2023), for the “two—and only two—conditions in which a second or successive §2255 motion may proceed,” and a Seventh Circuit judge confirmed the narrow reading, in chambers, in Upchurch v. United States, No. 26-1114 (7th Cir. Aug. 4, 2026): “At several points, the majority opinion noted that its holding was limited to the certiorari bar alone.” A panel still authorizes a second motion only on a prima facie showing under §2255(h)(1) or (h)(2). The gate is described in full at second or successive §2255 motions.

There is one genuine flexibility, and it is early: before the one-year period expires, a motion may generally be amended under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15, applied through Rule 12 of the Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings. After the year runs, an amendment adding a new claim will be allowed only if it relates back to the conduct set out in the original motion — which a genuinely new ground usually does not. The mechanics of filing, including amendment, are at how to file a §2255 motion.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The most common structural mistake we see in a pro se §2255 is a motion built around the claim the client feels most strongly about, filed early, with everything else left for later. There is no later. The clock is one year and the second motion is gated by §2255(h), so the practical rule is to treat the first filing as the only filing and to spend the available months building the record rather than shortening the wait. The legal judgment about which grounds go in belongs to the firm’s attorneys, but the record-gathering — the file, the transcripts, the disclosure history, the medical and mental-health records — is work that can start immediately and almost always determines what is possible.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, with offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, serving clients nationwide. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has more than 20 years of federal and appellate criminal defense experience, has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record, and is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023).

Because the first §2255 is usually the only one, the firm runs a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload, and has been admitted pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida. Building a complete claim inventory means reading the whole file rather than the client’s summary of it, and that work does not scale.

Talk to a federal post-conviction lawyer

If you are deciding what to put in a §2255 motion, the useful step is a review of the actual record — plea agreement, presentence report, transcripts, and counsel’s file — to identify every ground it supports before the one-year period closes the question.

Schedule a consultation · Phone: (843) 620-1100 · Offices: Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina — federal practice nationwide.

The overview of this practice area, including what successful 2255 motions generally require, is at the hub: federal 2255 motion lawyer.

Frequently Asked Questions About § 2255 Grounds

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026