Johnson v. United States
The Court ruled that a federal prisoner's one-year deadline to challenge a sentence enhanced by a since-vacated state conviction starts when he learns the state conviction was thrown out — but only if he pursued that state court challenge diligently after his federal sentence was handed down.
Because the prisoner here waited over three years to challenge his old state convictions after his federal sentencing, the Court found he had not acted diligently, so his challenge was too late and his enhanced sentence stands.
“the statute allows the fact of the state-court order to set the 1-year period running only if the petitioner has shown due diligence in seeking the order”
The majority's core holding that diligence is required not just in discovering the vacatur but in obtaining it.
How it got here: The district court and the Eleventh Circuit both ruled Johnson's federal motion untimely under AEDPA's one-year limit; the Supreme Court agreed to resolve a circuit split on the issue.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Robert Johnson pleaded guilty to a federal drug distribution charge in 1994 and received a longer sentence because of two 1989 Georgia drug convictions that qualified him as a "career offender." Years later, Johnson challenged those Georgia convictions in state court, arguing he had never validly waived his right to a lawyer, and a Georgia court agreed and vacated them. Johnson then asked the federal court to reduce his sentence.
The question before the Court
When a prisoner's enhanced federal sentence relied on a state conviction that is later thrown out, when does his one-year deadline to ask for a lower sentence start running?
Why it matters
Thousands of federal prisoners with sentences enhanced by prior state convictions now have a clear rule: they must move quickly in state court to challenge those old convictions once they are sentenced federally, not wait until it's convenient. Waiting too long — even if the state conviction is eventually thrown out — can permanently forfeit the chance to get the federal sentence reduced.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving a circuit split, so no further proceedings occur in Johnson's own case — his federal sentence stands as enhanced. Going forward, federal prisoners seeking to challenge sentences enhanced by prior convictions must move quickly to attack those underlying convictions in state or other courts once their federal sentence is entered, or risk losing the chance to benefit from a later vacatur.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Johnson was entitled to a reduced sentence had he acted diligently, nor did it disturb the separate rule from Custis and Daniels that most defendants generally cannot challenge prior convictions' validity directly at federal sentencing, apart from the narrow right-to-counsel exception.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Kennedy
“This added condition cannot be found in the statute's design or in its text.”Kennedy's central objection to the majority's new prevacatur diligence requirement.
Justice Kennedy agreed that a vacatur order counts as a 'fact' triggering the deadline, but objected to the majority's added requirement that prisoners also act diligently in pursuing the state-court vacatur itself. He argued this second diligence rule has no basis in the statute's text, is unnecessary because states already impose their own deadlines, picks an arbitrary trigger date (the federal judgment rather than its finality), and will burden defense lawyers and spawn confusing litigation. He would have held that the one-year clock runs from the vacatur's entry or from when it was reasonably discovered, with no separate prevacatur diligence requirement.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court had to interpret the fourth trigger for AEDPA's one-year deadline, which starts the clock on 'the date on which the facts supporting the claim... could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.' The question was whether a state court's order throwing out a prior conviction counts as a 'fact' for this purpose.
- The Court rejected the government's view that the relevant 'facts' were the underlying reasons the state conviction was invalid, reasoning that those facts could exist years before the federal claim itself existed, which would make no sense as a trigger for a deadline tied to that claim.
- The Court held that the vacatur order itself is the triggering 'fact,' reasoning that courts commonly speak of the 'fact' of a conviction or its reversal, so an order erasing a conviction is a factual event just like the order creating it.
- The Court added a diligence requirement beyond simply discovering the vacatur promptly: because a prisoner brings about the vacatur himself by suing in state court, the due-diligence requirement must also cover how quickly he sought that state-court relief in the first place, or the requirement would do almost no work.
- The Court picked the date of entry of the federal judgment as the point at which a prisoner must start diligently pursuing the state challenge, reasoning that this timing best balances quick action against wasting effort on convictions that might later be reversed on appeal.
- Measured against that timeline, the Court concluded that Johnson's roughly three-year delay before filing his state habeas petition was not diligent, so the vacatur could not restart his one-year deadline and his federal motion was untimely.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Custis v. United States (511 U.S. 485)
The Court relied on Custis's rule that defendants generally cannot attack prior convictions at federal sentencing, except for right-to-counsel claims.
Reaffirms Daniels v. United States (532 U.S. 374)
The Court applied Daniels's holding that a state vacatur is normally required before challenging a federal sentence enhancement.