Whether the Eleventh Circuit's prior-precedent rule violates due process when applied to orders denying second or successive habeas petitions

QUESTION PRESENTED FOR REVIEW 1. Prisoners must file a petition with the Court of Appeals for permission to pursue a second or successive habeas or 2255 petition. Most such petitions are filed pro se. In the Eleventh Circuit, the petitioner must use a form and cannot add attachments to it. The form has room for between 40 and 100 words of argument. Unlike many other circuits, the Eleventh Circuit treats the thirty day deadline for resolving such petitions as mandatory. The government is not permitted to respond, and there is no avenue of appeal for a denial of such permission. Nevertheless, the Eleventh Circuit publishes many of its decisions ruling on these petitions, and those published rulings are binding on future merits panels deciding direct appeals and appeals of rulings on initial 2255 proceedings. Decisions granting or denying petitions to file second or successive (SOS) habeas petitions should not be binding on merits panels pursuant to the rule, because it violates due process and fundamental fairness, and, in contrast, decisions granting permission to file a second habeas i petition are not even binding on the district court below, which may conclude after full briefing and review that relief is not warranted. The rule is applied very differently from the practice of other circuits. It is also controversial within the Circuit. See In re Octavious Williams, 898 F.3d 1098 (11% Cir. 2018) (Judges Wilson, Martin and Jill Pryor, concurring). This court should grant certiorari to determine the constitutionality of the Eleventh Circuit’s prior-precedent rule as applied to orders on petitions to file SOS petitions because it effectively denies due process and access to the courts to those, like Mr. Williams, who raise initial habeas challenges or direct appeals and are prevented from being heard because these published SOS orders are treated as binding precedent. Il. The residual clause of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) is void for vagueness. After Dimaya, the Fifth, Tenth and D.C. Circuits joined the Seventh Circuit in concluding that the residual clause of section 924(c) is void for vagueness. The Second Circuit has concluded it is not, and in so doing has abandoned the ii categorical approach. The Eleventh Circuit’s panel opinion concluding it is not void for vagueness has been vacated and is pending an en banc decision. This court should grant certiorari to resolve the split among the circuits on this important question affecting hundreds of pending cases. Whether the residual clause is vague, and if so, whether the courts should abandon the categorical approach and engage in a case-by-case determination that ignores the plain language of the statute’s text and provides defendants no notice of whether their conduct violates the statute, and creates the risk of inconsistent verdicts in similar cases and the development of a jury-determined common law of risk is an issue of utmost importance that should be resolved to provide clarity to courts and litigants. lll. Federal armed bank robbery is not a crime of violence as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A), because it can be accomplished in various ways, including by violence, intimidation or extortion, and these alternatives are means of committing the same offense and not elements of distinct crimes. iii Furthermore, the intimidation need not even be intentional, and thus, armed bank robbery can be committed without the necessary mens rea required for an intentional crime of violence. Because armed bank robbery is categorically not a crime of violence, it cannot serve as a predicate offense to support a conviction under section 924(c). This conclusion is required by the categorical approach set forth by this Court in Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. __, 136 S.Ct. 2243 (2016). This Court should grant certiorari to resolve this important question, because every circuit to have addressed the question thus far has erred in concluding that bank robbery does qualify as a crime of vio