Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

431 F.3d 992

Docket No. 05-4525.

Johnson v. Robert

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals

Submitted Dec. 9, 2005.

Decided Dec. 15, 2005.*

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 2005-12-15

2 counsel of record

Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2244 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)

Relies on Apprendi v. New Jersey · Blakely v. Washington · Dodd v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Opinion by (per_curiam) · Decided 2005-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently June 2025

3 federal appellate ·

30200520102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Isaac Johnson, Centralia, IL, pro se.

¶2Deborah L. Ahlstrand (argued), Office of the Attorney General Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Respondent.

¶3Before BAUER, EASTERBROOK, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

¶5PER CURIAM.

¶6Isaac Johnson seeks permission to initiate another collateral attack on his conviction and 80-year sentence for murder. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3). Although his application is not entirely clear, he relies in substantial part on Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), and implies that he would invoke Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004), which elaborates on how Apprendi applies to sentencing in state prosecutions. Apprendi was decided several years ago, and Blakely was issued on June 24, 2004. Johnson’s application under § 2244(b)(3) was not filed until December 7, 2005, more than a year later.

¶7Because 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1) establishes a one-year period of limitations, Johnson’s application is too late. The year usually runs from the date on which the conviction became final, which for Johnson was long before the Supreme Court decided Apprendi. A proviso in § 2244(d)(1)(C) restarts the clock on “the date on which the constitutional right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if the right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review”. Whether we use Apprendi or Blakely as the benchmark, “the date on which the constitutional right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court” is more than a year before Johnson filed this application. The Supreme Court held in Dodd v. United States, —— U.S.-, 125 S.Ct. 2478, 162 L.Ed.2d 343 (2005), that a provision in 28 U.S.C. § 2255 materially identical to § 2244(d)(1)(C) runs from the date the right was initially recognized, even if the Court does not declare that right to be retroactive until later. Dodd is equally *993applicable to § 2244(d)(1)(C), so there is no point in authorizing Johnson to file another collateral attack. Because he waited too long, it is unnecessary to decide whether his claim would be a substantial one on the merits.

¶8Johnson adverts to a number of other potential contentions, such as the possibility that his trial lawyer furnished ineffective assistance, but these likewise would be untimely. Johnson should have pursued them in his initial federal collateral attack.

¶9The application is denied.

/431/f3d/992 · .json · Public domain