Fredrick Johnson v. Ohio

When a criminal defendant in the middle of a direct appeal seeks relief that first becomes available as a result of an intervening decision from this Court, he gets the benefit of the new analytical framework; "the failure to raise the claim in an opening brief reflects not a lack of diligence, but merely a want of clairvoyance." Joseph v. United States, 574 U.S. 1038, 1039. (2014) (Kagan, J., concurring in denial of certiorari); see also Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 322 (1987); United States v. Smithers, 92 F.4th 237, 247 (4th Cir. 2024). But the Supreme Court of Ohio summarily refused to consider Petitioner Fredrick Johnson's as-applied Second Amendment challenge to his conviction, which he raised in his jurisdictional petition to that court on the strength of this Court's intervening decision in United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), and the Sixth Circuit's application of Rahimi in United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637 (6th Cir. 2024). So the question presented is: Must a state-court appellate system address the merits of a defendant's Second Amendment as-applied challenge to a firearm-possession charge under Rahimi and intervening circuit precedent when those precedents first became available while the defendant's state-court appeal was in the pipeline?