Michael Dewayne Lairy v. United States

In Dretke v. Haley, 541 U.S. 386, 392 (2004), this Court recognized “a growing divergence of opinion in the Courts of Appeals” regarding whether the actual innocence exception to the habeas corpus procedural bar rule applies to noncapital sentencing errors. Then, as today, the Eighth and Tenth Circuits held that there is “no actual innocence exception for noncapital sentencing error,” while the Second and Fourth Circuits held that the exception “applies in [the] noncapital sentencing context” where the petitioner was erroneously found eligible for a career or habitual offender sentence enhancement. Id. Ultimately, this Court did not resolve the question. Since Dretke, the conflict has only deepened with lower courts in disarray on the applicability and scope of the actual innocence exception to noncapital sentencing errors. As a result, similarly situated defendants receive dramatically different treatment depending solely on the circuit in which they were sentenced. Here, although “no one disputes” that petitioner did not commit three prior “serious drug offenses” to trigger his 15-year mandatory minimum sentence enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act, Pet. App. 18a, the court below declined to apply the actual innocence exception. The court held that the erroneous “misclassification of a predicate offense for a sentencing enhancement is” only “legal innocence” that “does not open the actual innocence gateway” in a noncapital case. Pet. App. 14a. The question presented is: Whether an individual who did not commit the qualifying predicate offenses required to trigger the Armed Career Criminal Act’s 15- year mandatory minimum sentence enhancement in a noncapital case can assert the actual innocence exception to procedural bars on habeas corpus relief. (i)