Deandre Markee King v. United States
HabeasCorpus JusticiabilityDoctri
Whether actual innocence requires a court to bypass a collateral-attack waiver
QUESTION PRESENTED The vast majority of federal criminal cases end in a guilty plea. And in many of those pleas, the defendant promises not to file a future 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion to vacate his sentence. But what if the law later changes through a new substantive rule of constitutional law, like the rule in United States v. Davis, 139 8. Ct. 2319 (2019)? In this setting, a defendant stands convicted and sentenced for an act that is no longer a crime. He is actually innocent. When a petitioner demonstrates through a retroactive constitutional rule that he is actually innocent, must an otherwise valid collateral-attack waiver foreclose habeas relief in spite of that innocence?