Jason Tywann Bell v. John Gilley, Warden

Petitioner challenged the legality of his 2003 federal sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, arguing that it was unconstitutionally enhanced under the residual clause of the then-mandatory career offender Guideline—a provision materially indistinguishable from the residual clause this Court held unconstitutionally vague in Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015). The court of appeals rejected petitioner’s challenge, holding that this Court’s intervening decision in Jones v. Hendrix, 599 U.S. 465 (2023)—which held that § 2255(e)’s saving clause does not allow resort to § 2241 to raise claims based on intervening statutory-interpretation decisions—forecloses relief even for constitutional challenges. The court of appeals held further that this result raises no Suspension Clause problem, even where, as here, a federal prisoner is left with no forum in which to raise a constitutional challenge to his plainly unconstitutional sentence. Approximately three weeks after the court of appeals issued its mandate, petitioner finished serving his term of supervised release, completing his entire challenged sentence and mooting the case before he could seek this Court’s review. The question presented is: Whether, pursuant to United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950), this Court should vacate the court of appeals’ judgment and remand with instructions to dismiss the case as moot. (i)