When a New Supreme Court Decision Applies Retroactively to You

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

Does a new Supreme Court decision apply to a final conviction?

Usually not. Under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), new procedural rules do not apply to final convictions; Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. 255 (2021), holds the watershed exception “retain[s] no vitality.” New substantive rules do apply. And under Dodd v. United States, 545 U.S. 353 (2005), your year runs from the decision date — not from a later retroactivity ruling.

Key takeaways on retroactivity

• Substantive rules apply retroactively; procedural rules essentially never do. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004): “A rule is substantive rather than procedural if it alters the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes.”
• The watershed exception is gone. Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. 255 (2021), held: “New procedural rules do not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. The watershed exception is moribund.”
• Statutory-interpretation cases are outside Teague altogether. Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614 (1998): “because Teague by its terms applies only to procedural rules, we think it is inapplicable to the situation in which this Court decides the meaning of a criminal statute enacted by Congress.”
• The §2255(f)(3) clock runs from recognition, not from retroactivity. Dodd: §2255(f)(3) “unequivocally identifies one, and only one, date … ‘the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court.'” That trap costs people their motions.
• Only the Supreme Court can “make” a rule retroactive for a second motion. Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656 (2001): “the Supreme Court is the only entity that can ‘ma[k]e’ a new rule retroactive,” and “‘made’ means ‘held.'”
• A statutory decision cannot open a second §2255. Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023): a prisoner who cannot satisfy §2255(h) “cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen finality over error correction in his case.”
• One retroactivity decision moved federal filings more than any other event on record. Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. 120 (2016), made Johnson retroactive; the Administrative Office reported 24,837 motions to vacate sentence filed in FY2016, up about 350% in a single year. Those are filings, not grants.

The retroactivity decision table

Start here. Identify what kind of rule the new decision announced, and the rest of the analysis follows from that classification — including which §2255 provision, if any, the decision unlocks.

Table 1. Does a new decision apply to an already-final federal conviction?

Type of new rule	Applies on collateral review?	Controlling authority	Which §2255 provision it unlocks
Substantive — alters “the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes”	Yes	Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 351–53 (2004); Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 311 (1989) (plurality)	§2255(f)(3) if the Supreme Court recognized a new right; §2255(h)(2) only if the rule is also constitutional and the Supreme Court has held it retroactive
Substantive constitutional rule invalidating a sentencing statute — e.g. a residual clause struck as vague	Yes	Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. 120 (2016) (making Johnson retroactive)	Both §2255(f)(3) and §2255(h)(2)
Procedural — regulates “the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability”	No	Schriro, 542 U.S. at 353; Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. 255 (2021)	Neither
“Watershed” procedural	No — the category no longer functions	Edwards: “The watershed exception is moribund. It must ‘be regarded as retaining no vitality.'”	Neither
Statutory interpretation — the Court construes what a criminal statute means	Outside Teague entirely; such a decision states what the statute always meant	Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 620 (1998); Schriro, 542 U.S. at 351–52	§2255(f)(3) can apply if the Supreme Court’s decision newly recognized the right asserted and that right has been made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review — the provision is not limited to constitutional rights; a first §2255 within the ordinary period can also raise it. §2255(h)(2) is unavailable — it requires constitutional law
Statutory interpretation, where you already filed a §2255	No route	Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023): §2255(e)’s saving clause does not permit a §2241 end-run; the claim “cannot [be brought] at all”	Neither. This is the trap to avoid
A favorable court of appeals decision	Depends on the claim, but it cannot start a §2255(f)(3) clock or satisfy §2255(h)(2)	28 U.S.C. §2255(f)(3) (“by the Supreme Court”); Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656, 663 (2001)	Neither, on its own
A new rule about counsel’s obligations	Analyzed under Teague like any other rule — and often “new”	Chaidez v. United States, 568 U.S. 342 (2013) (holding Padilla announced a new rule and is not retroactive)	Usually neither

Table 1 is general information, not legal advice. Classification is contested in many cases, and the answer for your case depends on your conviction date, your circuit, and whether you have filed before.

Does a new Supreme Court case apply to my final conviction?

Usually not — and the default matters, because most coverage of a new decision does not mention it.

The governing framework is Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), which adopted Justice Harlan’s view of retroactivity for collateral review and held: “Unless they fall within an exception to the general rule, new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before the new rules are announced.”

Two definitions do most of the work.

“New.” Teague says “a case announces a new rule when it breaks new ground or imposes a new obligation on the States or the Federal Government,” and “[t]o put it differently, a case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Edwards v. Vannoy restated the test as whether, when the conviction became final, the rule was “already ‘apparent to all reasonable jurists.'” Almost every decision a prisoner reads about in the news is “new” under that standard — that is why it made the news.

“Final.” A conviction becomes final for these purposes when direct review is over. The mechanics — including the 90-day certiorari window that most people miscount — are at post-conviction deadlines, and computing the specific date is at 2255 statute of limitations. If your case was still on direct appeal when the decision came down, you are not in Teague territory at all: new rules apply to cases pending on direct review.

Teague also carries a structural consequence people rarely notice. The Court held that “habeas corpus cannot be used as a vehicle to create new constitutional rules of criminal procedure unless those rules would be applied retroactively to all defendants on collateral review.” So retroactivity is not the last question a habeas court reaches. It is often the first.

What is the difference between a substantive and a procedural rule?

This single classification decides most retroactivity questions, and the Supreme Court has given it a usable definition.

Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004), states the test:

“A rule is substantive rather than procedural if it alters the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes. … In contrast, rules that regulate only the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability are procedural.”

And the consequence: “New substantive rules generally apply retroactively. This includes decisions that narrow the scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its terms … as well as constitutional determinations that place particular conduct or persons covered by the statute beyond the State’s power to punish.” The reason is not sentiment. Such rules “necessarily carry a significant risk that a defendant stands convicted of ‘an act that the law does not make criminal'” or faces a punishment the law cannot impose.

Schriro itself shows how the line is drawn against a movant. Ring v. Arizona required a jury rather than a judge to find the aggravating facts making a defendant death-eligible. That sounds momentous. The Court held it procedural anyway: Ring “altered the range of permissible methods for determining whether a defendant’s conduct is punishable by death,” and “[r]ules that allocate decisionmaking authority in this fashion are prototypical procedural rules.”

Welch v. United States, 578 U.S. 120 (2016), shows the line drawn the other way. Johnson v. United States struck the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause as unconstitutionally vague. The Court held Welch substantive because Johnson “changed the substantive reach of the Armed Career Criminal Act, altering ‘the range of conduct or the class of persons that the [Act] punishes.'” Before Johnson, a person with three predicate convictions — one qualifying only under the residual clause — faced 15 years to life. After Johnson, “the same person engaging in the same conduct is no longer subject to the Act and faces at most 10 years in prison.”

Welch also disposed of an argument that recurs constantly: that a rule grounded in a procedural constitutional guarantee must itself be procedural. Not so. “[T]his Court has determined whether a new rule is substantive or procedural by considering the function of the rule, not its underlying constitutional source.” Vagueness is a due-process doctrine; the rule it produced was substantive because of what it did.

The limit on Welch that most pages omit

Johnson and Welch did not extend to the Sentencing Guidelines. In Beckles v. United States, 580 U.S. 256 (2017), the Court held that “[t]he Federal Sentencing Guidelines, including §4B1.2(a)’s residual clause, are not subject to vagueness challenges under the Due Process Clause,” because “the advisory Guidelines do not fix the permissible range of sentences” but “merely guide the exercise of a court’s discretion in choosing an appropriate sentence within the statutory range.” Beckles expressly reserved whether the mandatory, pre-Booker Guidelines are subject to such a challenge — a question that still matters to anyone sentenced before 2005.

If you were told that Johnson invalidates your career-offender designation under the advisory Guidelines, Beckles is the case you need to read before you file.

What happened to the “watershed” exception?

It is gone, and this is the most important development on this page.

Teague recognized two exceptions to non-retroactivity: one for rules placing “certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to proscribe,” and a second for “watershed rules of criminal procedure” — those “without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished.” The second was always narrow; Schriro called the class “extremely narrow” and quoted Tyler v. Cain for the observation that “it is unlikely that any … ‘ha[s] yet to emerge.'”

In Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. 255 (2021), the Court closed it. Considering whether Ramos v. Louisiana‘s jury-unanimity rule applies retroactively, the Court held it does not, and then said the quiet part out loud:

“It is time—probably long past time—to make explicit what has become increasingly apparent to bench and bar over the last 32 years: New procedural rules do not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. The watershed exception is moribund. It must ‘be regarded as retaining no vitality.'”

Edwards also restated the surviving framework in one sentence: “New substantive rules alter ‘the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes.’ Those new substantive rules apply to cases pending in trial courts and on direct review, and they also apply retroactively on federal collateral review.”

The practical consequence is blunt. If the decision you are relying on is procedural, the analysis is over. Arguing that your rule is so fundamental it must be watershed is arguing for a category the Court has said retains no vitality. A great deal of published guidance — including material updated well after 2021 — still describes the two Teague exceptions as though both are live. They are not.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: When a client sends us a new decision, the first question we answer is not whether it is good for them. It is which of three buckets it falls into: substantive constitutional, procedural, or statutory interpretation. That classification determines everything downstream — whether it reaches a final conviction at all, which §2255 subsection it touches, and how much time is left. It is also where most of the disagreement is. The Government will argue a rule is procedural; the movant will argue it is substantive. Welch is the model for how that argument is won: not by describing the decision as important, but by showing what it removed from the statute’s reach.

Does a statutory interpretation case help me?

Sometimes — but through an entirely different door, and with a trap behind it.

Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614 (1998), holds that “because Teague by its terms applies only to procedural rules, we think it is inapplicable to the situation in which this Court decides the meaning of a criminal statute enacted by Congress.” A statutory-interpretation decision is not a “new rule” that has to be made retroactive; it is an authoritative statement of what the statute always meant. Schriro confirms the point, listing “decisions that narrow the scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its terms” among the substantive rules that apply retroactively.

That sounds like good news, and for someone filing a first §2255 motion within the ordinary limitations period it often is. But three limits apply, and each of them ends cases.

Limit one: §2255(f)(3) may not give you a fresh year. That subsection runs from the date “the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court,” and it applies only where the right “has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review.” A decision construing a statute can qualify — unlike §2255(h)(2), subsection (f)(3) is not limited to constitutional law — but the year runs from the date the Supreme Court first recognized the right, and whether a given decision recognized a new right that has been made retroactive is often contested. So the practical position is uncomfortable: the decision helps you substantively, but it may not restart your clock.

Limit two: procedural default. If the claim was available on direct appeal and you did not raise it, Bousley holds that “the claim may be raised in habeas only if the defendant can first demonstrate either ’cause’ and actual ‘prejudice,’ or that he is ‘actually innocent.'” Bousley also forecloses the easiest argument: “futility cannot constitute cause if it means simply that a claim was ‘unacceptable to that particular court at that particular time.'” And the innocence route is demanding — “[a]ctual innocence means factual innocence, not mere legal insufficiency,” the showing is that “it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him,” and “[i]n cases where the Government has forgone more serious charges in the course of plea bargaining, petitioner’s showing of actual innocence must also extend to those charges.” The doctrine is at procedural default; the innocence gateway is at actual innocence.

Limit three, and it is the one that ends most of these cases: if you already filed a §2255, there is no vehicle. Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023), held that §2255(e)’s saving clause “does not allow a prisoner asserting an intervening change in interpretation of a criminal statute to circumvent [AEDPA’s] restrictions on second or successive §2255 motions by filing a §2241 habeas petition.” The Court was explicit about the result:

“Section 2255(h) specifies the two limited conditions in which Congress has permitted federal prisoners to bring second or successive collateral attacks on their sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy those conditions does not mean that he can bring his claim in a habeas petition under the saving clause. It means that he cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen finality over error correction in his case.”

Every pre-2023 circuit test for using §2241 in these circumstances is abrogated. Much published guidance still describes those tests as available. What is left of the saving clause — “cases where unusual circumstances make it impossible or impracticable to seek relief in the sentencing court, as well as … challenges to detention other than collateral attacks on a sentence” — is mapped at 28 U.S.C. § 2241.

How long do I have after a new decision?

One year from the date the Supreme Court decided it — not from the date somebody holds it retroactive.

28 U.S.C. §2255(f)(3) supplies a trigger date: “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.”

Read literally, that sentence contains two ideas, and Dodd v. United States, 545 U.S. 353 (2005), decided which one starts the clock:

“It unequivocally identifies one, and only one, date from which the 1-year limitation period is measured: ‘the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court.'”

The retroactivity language is a condition on eligibility, not a start date. In the Court’s words, that clause “imposes a condition on the applicability of this subsection,” and “[a]s long as the conditions in the second clause are satisfied so that ¶ 6(3) applies in the first place, that clause has no impact whatsoever on the date from which the 1-year limitation period in ¶ 6(3) begins to run.”

The Court knew where that leads: “Although we recognize the potential for harsh results in some cases, we are not free to rewrite the statute that Congress has enacted.” Justice Stevens, dissenting, put the mechanism plainly — the reading makes “it possible for the limitations period to expire before the cause of action accrues.”

Here is what that means for a real person. The Supreme Court decides a case in March that appears to help you. Nobody knows yet whether it is retroactive. Litigation over retroactivity takes eighteen months and comes out in your favor. Your year expired the previous March. You had a right and no remaining vehicle to assert it.

The only defense is to file inside the year, before the retroactivity question is answered. A motion filed on that basis will often be met with a government argument that the decision is not retroactive, and it may be denied on that ground. That denial is a far better position than a motion filed after the year has run, which is denied as untimely and never reaches the merits at all. If your year has already closed, the narrow doctrine that can sometimes rescue a late motion is at equitable tolling — and Dodd itself declined to reach whether tolling was available on those facts, so treat it as an argument, not a plan.

Who decides whether a case is retroactive?

It depends on which door you are trying to walk through, and the two doors have different gatekeepers.

For a first §2255 motion, ordinary courts decide. A district court applying Teague, Schriro, and Welch can conclude that a decision announced a substantive rule and is retroactive, and courts of appeals do this routinely. Nothing requires the Supreme Court to have said so first.

For a second or successive §2255 motion, only the Supreme Court counts. 28 U.S.C. §2255(h)(2) permits a successive motion certified to contain “a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656 (2001), construed the parallel language and held: “the Supreme Court is the only entity that can ‘ma[k]e’ a new rule retroactive. The new rule becomes retroactive, not by the decisions of the lower court or by the combined action of the Supreme Court and the lower courts, but simply by the action of the Supreme Court.” And “‘made’ means ‘held.'”

Tyler left one narrow path open. “Multiple cases can render a new rule retroactive only if the holdings in those cases necessarily dictate retroactivity of the new rule” — the relationship “must be strictly logical,” and it is not enough that the Court “merely establishes principles of retroactivity and leaves the application of those principles to lower courts.” That is the Welch pattern: Johnson announced the rule, Welch held it retroactive, and the combination satisfied the gate.

For state prisoners in state court, there is a third rule worth knowing because it is frequently misapplied to federal cases. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016), held that “when a new substantive rule of constitutional law controls the outcome of a case, the Constitution requires state collateral review courts to give retroactive effect to that rule,” and that Miller v. Alabama announced such a rule. Montgomery expressly limited itself to “Teague‘s first exception for substantive rules.” A later decision, Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. 98 (2021), narrowed what Miller requires at sentencing while stating that it “does not disturb … Montgomery‘s holding (that Miller applies retroactively on collateral review).” Montgomery is a §2254 case about state courts’ obligations; it does not change how a federal court evaluates a federal prisoner’s §2255 motion.

Can a new case let me file a second §2255 motion?

Only in a narrow set of circumstances, and the gate is where most of these attempts end.

Section 2255(h) requires that a second or successive motion be certified by a panel of the appropriate court of appeals to contain either newly discovered evidence meeting a demanding standard, or “(2) a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.”

Four words in subsection (h)(2) do the filtering, and every one of them excludes something.

• “new rule” — an application of settled law to new facts is not enough.
• “of constitutional law” — a statutory-interpretation decision cannot satisfy this clause, no matter how clearly it shows the movant was convicted of conduct the statute does not reach. That is the precise gap Jones v. Hendrix addressed and closed: the claim “cannot [be brought] at all.”
• “made retroactive … by the Supreme Court” — Tyler: “made” means “held,” and only the Supreme Court can do it.
• “previously unavailable” — the rule must not have been available when the earlier motion was filed.

What Bowe did — and, more importantly, what it did not do

Bowe v. United States, 607 U.S. 13 (2026), decided January 9, 2026, resolved two questions about how §2255(h)’s cross-reference to §2244 works, and the answers help federal prisoners procedurally.

First, §2244(b)(3)(E)’s certiorari bar “does not apply to federal prisoners,” so the Supreme Court may review a court of appeals’ denial of authorization to file a successive §2255 motion. Second, §2244(b)(1)’s old-claim bar — which by its terms reaches “[a] claim presented in a second or successive habeas corpus application under section 2254” — likewise does not apply to federal prisoners, because “[s]tate prisoners alone file habeas corpus applications under §2254.” Both holdings rest on the same reading: §2255(h)’s cross-reference “incorporates the procedures in §2244 only as they relate to how a panel certifies a second or successive filing.”

What Bowe did not do is loosen the §2255(h) gate, and reading it that way is a mistake that will get a motion dismissed. Bowe itself says a panel may authorize a filing only “if the filing makes a prima facie showing that it satisfies one of the two grounds in §2255(h), the ‘two—and only two—conditions in which a second or successive §2255 motion may proceed,'” quoting Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465, 477. If your new decision is statutory rather than constitutional, or has not been held retroactive by the Supreme Court, Bowe does not help you get past the gate — it only means the door you are knocking on is a slightly different door than the courts had assumed. The authorization process itself, including what a prima facie showing looks like and how the 30-day panel timeline works, is at second or successive 2255.

How is a circuit decision different from a Supreme Court decision?

A favorable court of appeals decision can matter a great deal to the merits of your claim and almost nothing to your timing.

It cannot start a §2255(f)(3) clock. The statute’s words are “initially recognized by the Supreme Court.” A circuit decision recognizing a right, however favorable, does not open a new one-year window.

It cannot satisfy §2255(h)(2). Tyler forecloses it directly: retroactivity is not made “by the decisions of the lower court or by the combined action of the Supreme Court and the lower courts.”

It can still decide your case if you are within the ordinary limitations period and filing a first §2255 motion in that circuit, because the district court is bound by its own circuit’s law. This is why a circuit decision is sometimes worth acting on immediately even though it changes no deadline: the window in which it is binding and your motion is timely may be short.

It can also be a warning sign. Jones v. Hendrix holds that even where “a Court of Appeals’ precedents have resolved a legal issue incorrectly, that is not a fault in ‘the §2255 remedial vehicle’ itself” — so a circuit split is not, by itself, a route around §2255(h). The saving clause “is concerned with the adequacy or effectiveness of the remedial vehicle …, not any court’s asserted errors of law.”

The practical rule that follows: track the Supreme Court for your deadline, and your own circuit for your merits. They are different calendars.

What the data shows about retroactivity — and what it does not

Retroactivity is not a marginal doctrine. One decision on it moved federal collateral-review filings more than any other event in the available series.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reports district-court caseload in its Judicial Business of the United States Courts series. For fiscal year 2016, the AO reported 24,837 motions to vacate sentence filed — an increase of roughly 350% over the prior year, an increase of about 19,317 motions in twelve months. The AO attributed the surge to Welch v. United States, which made Johnson v. United States retroactive. The following year the wave receded: FY2017 saw 7,205 motions to vacate sentence filed, a decline of about 71%.

Two things that number is not. It is not a grant rate, and it is not a success rate. It is a count of motions filed. The AO does not publish a clean “granted” field for this category, and no honest page can convert a filing count into an outcome. What the figure does show is the scale of what a single retroactivity decision releases — tens of thousands of people who had been sitting on a claim that only became viable when the Court answered one question.

It also shows the cost of the Dodd rule in human terms. Johnson was decided in June 2015; Welch in April 2016. Everyone whose §2255(f)(3) year ran from Johnson had to file before knowing how Welch would come out.

For actual outcome data — how often §2255 motions are granted, how long they take, and what the available statistics do and do not measure — see 2255 motion success rate.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: Inside a facility, a new Supreme Court decision travels fast and arrives distorted. By the time it reaches the third person, “the Court struck down a sentencing provision” has become “everybody with that enhancement is going home.” The two questions we ask people to bring us are narrow and answerable: what is the exact case name and date, and what is the date your own conviction became final. Those two dates decide whether the decision can reach you and how much of your year is left. Everything else — whether it is substantive, whether it has been held retroactive, whether your circuit has ruled — is legal analysis, and that is done by the firm’s attorneys, not by rumor and not by me.

What to do the week a favorable decision issues

Retroactivity fights take years. Your window does not wait for them. If a decision looks like it might reach your case, this is the order of operations.

1. Write down the exact case name and the decision date. The decision date is the §2255(f)(3) trigger under Dodd. Everything else is scheduled against it.
2. Confirm the date your conviction became final, from the docket, not from memory. If the decision came down while your case was still on direct review, you are not in Teague territory and should say so.
3. Classify the rule. Substantive constitutional, procedural, or statutory interpretation. Table 1 above is the sorting tool, and the classification determines which subsection you are proceeding under.
4. Determine whether this is your first §2255. If it is not, §2255(h)(2) governs, and a statutory decision will not get you through — see second or successive 2255.
5. Do not wait for a retroactivity ruling. That is the entire lesson of Dodd. File within a year of the decision even if the retroactivity question is unresolved.
6. Check whether the claim was available on direct appeal. If it was and you did not raise it, plan for the procedural default fight in the motion itself rather than in a reply brief.
7. Get counsel looking at it while there is still time to investigate. A retroactivity claim usually needs a record — which predicates were used, how the sentence was calculated, what the plea colloquy said. That takes weeks to assemble and cannot begin after the deadline.

If you are new to this process, what is a 2255 motion explains the statute subsection by subsection, and what AEDPA changed explains where the one-year period and the successive-motion gate came from in the first place. If you are no longer in custody, §2255 is unavailable regardless of how retroactive the decision is, and the alternative is at coram nobis. And if the new decision concerns what defense counsel was required to do, the framework that governs it is at Strickland v. Washington — with the caution that Chaidez v. United States, 568 U.S. 342 (2013), held Padilla v. Kentucky announced a new rule and “does not have retroactive effect,” so a decision about counsel’s duties is no more automatically retroactive than any other.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The hardest conversation in this area is with someone whose claim is right on the merits and two years late. It happens because the person did the sensible thing: they waited to see whether the courts would say the decision was retroactive before spending money on a motion. Dodd punishes exactly that instinct. So when a decision comes down that might reach a client, we treat the calendar as the emergency and the merits as the project. A timely motion that loses on retroactivity can be appealed and can be revisited if the law moves. An untimely motion cannot be anything.

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, running a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload. 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, and has sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She 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 — and has been admitted pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida.

She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and ranked by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, was named South Carolina Public Defender of the Year in 2010, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023). She serves as Board Chair of Justice 360 and as Co-Vice Chair of the NACDL Amicus Curiae Committee for the Fourth Circuit. She has written on federal post-conviction developments for Best Lawyers and for Law360, including expert analysis of the Bowe decision’s implications for federal prisoners.

Retroactivity work is appellate work: it turns on classification, on reading a new opinion for what it changed rather than what it said, and on moving before the answer is settled. With offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the firm represents clients nationwide — a §2255 motion is filed in the district that imposed the sentence, wherever that is.

Talk to a federal post-conviction attorney about a new decision

If a recent Supreme Court decision may reach your case, the two things worth establishing quickly are what kind of rule it announced and how much of your one-year window remains. Both are answerable from the decision date and your own docket.

Schedule a consultation directly, or call (843) 620-1100. The firm handles federal post-conviction matters in every district and circuit. If you are still deciding what kind of representation your case needs, start at federal 2255 motion lawyer, which covers what post-conviction counsel actually does and how these engagements work.

Frequently Asked Questions About Retroactivity

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