Whether Alabama robbery categorically requires 'as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another' under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i) and U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2(a)(1)

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Each of the Petitioners presented the Eleventh Circuit with counseled briefing on a question of first impression: whether Alabama robbery categorically requires “as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another” under 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(@) and U.S.S8.G. § 4B1.2(a)(1). But two days after their appeals were set for consolidated oral argument, a separate Eleventh Circuit panel decided the same question on its merits in an order denying an inmate’s pro se application, under 28 U.S.C. § 2244, for authorization to file a successive motion challenging his sentence. And because that panel decided to publish its order—despite having only 30 days to rule on it, with no counsel, briefing, or adversarial presentation—the unreviewable order became a precedent that, under Eleventh Circuit law, binds all future panels. In this way, the Eleventh Circuit decided a question of first impression that significantly affects the Petitioners’ sentences, and many others, without any meaningful argument by the parties or analysis by the court of appeals. The Petitioners’ appeals became empty rituals in which they could do little more than argue that the panel hearing their cases should disregard the intervening order and become the first to truly analyze the dispositive issue. The practices that produced that result are unnecessary, and they are unique to the Eleventh Circuit. The Petitioners present these questions: I. Did the court of appeals deprive the Petitioners of due process of law by giving binding precedential weight to a prior panel’s expedited and unappealable order issued under 28 U.S.C. § 2244 without counsel, argument, or adversarial testing? i II. Should this Court exercise its supervisory authority over the federal courts to hold that a prior order on an ex parte motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2244 cannot bind a subsequent panel in an adversarial proceeding?