In Fernandez v. United States (2025), the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that prisoners seeking to challenge the validity of their conviction must use the habeas corpus statute (28 USC 2255), not the compassionate release statute (18 USC 3582), which is reserved for extraordinary circumstances like terminal illness or family emergencies. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone, arguing that wrongfully convicted prisoners should have another opportunity to seek release under the compassionate release statute. The Court emphasized that these statutes serve fundamentally different purposes: habeas corpus provides a mechanism to collaterally attack the validity of a conviction, while compassionate release addresses current circumstances that warrant release based on compassion rather than innocence.
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MASSIVE BREAKING NEWS! FANTASTIC EMERGENCY 8-1 SCOTUS DECISION JUST RELEASED!Añadido:
Major breaking news as the United States Supreme Court in an 8:1 decision has just spanked Justice Katanji Brown Jackson yet again for saying crazy stuff. But the question is, is Katanji Brown Jackson actually crazy or is she playing an entirely different game, which is what I think is going on here.
You're not going to want to miss this breakdown. Why is Katanj Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court justice, always dissenting by herself? is because she's not trying to persuade you or me or her other justices. She has a bigger fish to fry. We're going to break it all down when we come right back.
Hey folks, I'm Mark Smith, host of the four box of Diner, proud American gun owner, constitutional attorney, member of the United States Supreme Court Barn, and I'm proud to say the top voice of the Second Amendment in America. Thank you. 2025 and 2026 guns awards. All right, folks. So, we have a major Supreme Court decision here in Fernandez versus the United States. Now the details of this case is quite interesting. But what's more interesting is that we have another situation yet another instance where we have an 8 to one decision eight justices in the majority written by justice Amy Coney Barrett and a single justice in the descent. That would be, drum roll please, Justice Katanj Brown Jackson, the single Joe Biden appointee to the US Supreme Court. Now, what I'm going to do here is just briefly go touch on what this case presented, why it's an obvious ruling in favor of the 8:1 majority.
It's a no-brainer. You'll see why in a second. But then I want to talk about what exactly is the game that Katanj Brown Jackson is playing. And it's a very smart maneuver that she's doing. If if if we wake up one day and we have a court packing scheme that has been implemented by President Gavin Nuome or President AOC because that is going to convert Katanji Brown Jackson into the brand new Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court where she will lead the charge. That's what she's planning on.
That's why I think Justice Brown Jackson does not care that she repeatedly is the lone descent, not even picking up the votes of fellow lefties, uh, you know, Justice Kagan and Justice Sodomayor. So anyway, let's turn back to the facts of Fernandez, and I think you'll find it at least interesting and understand what happened here. Now, in the Fernandez case, this is really a straightforward case involving two different statutes that apply to people who have been convicted of major crimes.
One is 28 USC 2255 which is known as the habius corpus statute. And basically the purpose of habius corpus which means essentially look I know I've been convicted of a crime but basically there's new stuff or something's gone on that allows me to attack my conviction beyond a normal appeal. So what happens is usually in a criminal case, I'm to keep very general here, is you are convicted of a crime, you exhaust your appeals, all of your appeals are done, and then what happens if after all your appeals are done in the case, something changes in some huge way, meaning there's new evidence that has come to light or something else has happened.
you find out there's some fraud or something in the system that could impact your case, you can bring a habius corpus petition to the courts to say, "Look, I am being wrongfully held in prison because of X, Y, and Z that I've just discovered now, long after my conviction and long after I have exhausted my normal appeal rights." That is the purpose of habius corpus. If something crazy happens that you can argue, look, there's something crazy that happened here. Let me out of prison now. Now, there's another statute and we're going to talk about why they interact and what the issue here was 18 USC 3582.
Now, you don't need to remember section 3582 except this. This is a very special federal statute for people that have been convicted in federal prison or are in federal prison for a federal conviction. It basically says that we, the Bureau of Prisons, the DOJ, the administration, we could let you out of prison if there's sort of an extraordinary and compelling reason for doing so. Now, historically, what that means is, think of it this way. You were convicted of a crime when you were like 25. You've been sentenced to life.
You're like 85 years of o age. You have just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. You have a couple weeks to live.
You're 85 years of age. You're not a threat to anyone. You asked to go leave the prison to go to hospice for a few weeks to be with your family, let's say, the last few weeks of your life. That sort of compassionate kind of treatment there. That is the purpose of 18 USC 3582. It's essentially to say, you know, again, I got a few weeks to live or there's some other extraordinary situation. Let me out of prison because there's some compassionate reason for letting me out. Now, those are the two statues. Now, what happened in this case of Fernandez is that Mr. Fernandez basically exhausted all his appeal rights in his conviction, which we'll get to the facts in a second. He was convicted of basically double murders and stuff or whatever. Um, and then he exhausted all of his habius corpus petition rights under 28 USC 2255. He made all these organs. Then he came back to court again and says, "Look, I know I've exhausted my right to an appeal. I know I've exhausted my habius corpus arguments, but I'm going to now seek make the same types of arguments except I'm going to use a new statute. That would be the 3582 argument and I believe that an extraordinary compelling reason for why I can use the statute is because I am innocent. Here's further evidence.
So the question became in this case is if you are arguing that you're innocent and you should not have been convicted, are you allowed to use this other statute, this compassion statute and to say that it's an extraordinary and compelling and compassionate reason that I should be let out of prison because I was wrongfully convicted. And the Supreme Court 8 to1 says no. If you want to argue you're wrongfully convicted, you have to use the habius corpus petition statute. That is what it's there for. The other statute is entirely there to the extent that there's a compassionate reason to let you out of prison because you're dying of cancer or your grandkid is dying of cancer and you need to like be let out for a few days to go attend the funeral. Any of those sorts of things is what that other statute and they're separate statutes.
Now, Kanji Brown Jackson, Justice Brown Jackson 100% likes criminals over anyone else as you know. And as a consequence, she basically says no, we should give the convicted criminal yet another bite of the apple. It's not enough that he has his appeal rights. It's not enough that he has habius corpus rights. Now he has yet another opportunity to make all the exact same arguments yet again under a different statute. And the Supreme Court says there's no basis for that in the law, the legislative history or anything else and what Kantji Brown Jackson is saying. So just just so you understand, I'm going to give you the what the language from the Supreme Court is about what this case was about and then I'm going to give you the facts of the case and they're going to break down what exactly is Katanji Brown Jackson doing. So to begin with, here's what the court had to say about the issue and how they resolved it. Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the court. A federal statute authorizes district courts to shorten to shorten prison sentences for extraordinary and compelling reasons, most commonly conditions like the prisoner's age and infirmity. Petitioner Joe Fernandez argues that doubts about a conviction's validity also qualify as extraordinary and compelling reasons for relief under that particular statute. We disagree. A prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through the habius corpus statute 18USC 2255 and not under the compassion statute of 18USC 3582.
So that's basically the summary. Seball hit ball. This is not hard stuff. And here are the facts of Mr. Fernandez's case because I think you'll find them interesting. Check it out. Joe Fernandez was indicted in 2013 for his role in the assassination of two gang members. The prosecution's theory was that members of a drug ring had paid Fernandez $40,000 to act as a backup shooter. When the primary shooters gun jammed, Fernandez stepped in. He fired 14 rounds, killing both victims. Mr. Fernandez's cousin and alleged co-conspirator, Patrick Darge, testified against him at trial. to discredit Darge. Fernandez's council argued that Darge was framing Hernandez to protect the real second shooter, Darge's brother. Unconvinced, the jury convicted Fernandez of murder for hire and an and a firearms offense. And the district court then imposed two consecutive life sentences. So, that's the facts. Not a good set of facts. Now, again, Mr. Fernandez sought all sorts of relief. He he he appealed his conviction. It was upheld. He then sought a separate habius corpus petition saying I was wrongly convicted. That all failed and he was out of options. So that said, he then said, "Hey, I've got this new argument under this different statute. No one's ever used it before.
Let me argue that it is a compelling, compassionate reason um to let me out of prison because I was wrongfully convicted." And the government says, "That's the wrong statute. you're not allowed to use that other statute for compassion, if you will, to get out of jail on the grounds that you think the case against you was somehow fatally flawed. And the Supreme Court says, "Yeah, obviously the reason why you have the habius corpus statute there is it offers people an opportunity to collaterally attack in a separate proceeding their first conviction or their conviction. But this other statute, which is really a watered down version, it's, you know, it's much loosey goosey. It gives a lot of discretion to district courts. They said that can't be the case. The majority said that cannot be the case. That this very watered down loosey goosey statute is there to replace or end run around the hapas corpus statute because the habius corpus statute has very precise detailed instructions as to when you can get out of prison if you've been wrongfully convicted and what you have to show. And that is much different than the loosey goosey like if there's a compassionate reason for letting you out of prison then the district court can sometimes do so. Totally different animals. But Katanji Brown Jackson said, "No, that's not the case." That there was this other third bite of the apple, a third bite of the apple for criminals convicted in federal court to get out of prison early. And again, remember what does Kanji Brown Jackson do? Justice Brown Jackson, in my view, does not care what you think or what I think. She doesn't even care what her fellow justices think, including Justice Kagan and Justice Sodomor. Because Justice Brown Jackson is playing to a different audience. She has a different criteria for the purpose of her dissents and that is she is sending a message to future Democrat presidents if there are any and to the MS now audience to say look at me I am standing up and yelling halt to the conservative Supreme Court in all respects. So therefore, if and when James Carville's plan to pack the Supreme Court by adding four or five or six new left-wing justices, giving the leftwing a rubber stamp on any leftwing nutty thing they want to do, including get rid of the Second Amendment. By the way, I Katanj Brown Jackson should be the new Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, able to rubber stamp as the boss all these decisions that are anti-American that we're all going to support after we pack the court. That is the game she is playing.
So for those people that say Katanj Brown's Jackson or Justice Brown Jackson is stupid, well she may not be as intellectually sharp as the other justices in one sense, but to the extent she's a political animal with political an ambitions rolling the dice on the possibility of a court packing scheme down the road, she is playing that game.
And that is the criteria for success in her mind. She's not trying to persuade anyone that she's right on the law.
She's really just appealing to left-wing academics that hate America, that hate this current court. And she's appealing to the MS Now crowd and to the radical progressive crowd, the AOCC's of the world, the Gavin Newsomes of the world, the Gretchen Whitmers of the world. You get the point. That is the plan. Now, with that said, I I want to read the criticisms of Katanj Brown Jackson by the US Supreme Court's majority. Why they say her descent makes no sense.
Here's what the court had to say. Again, written by none other than Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Check it out.
Perplexingly, the disscent accuses us of failing to define what it means for a prisoner to collaterally attack the validity of his conviction and characterizes this limit as unworkable, but we explain our holding in detail and his application is straightforward.
There is an obvious distinction between a prisoner who asserts that he should not have been convicted in the first place and one who asserts that his present circumstances warrant an exercise of compassion. Indeed, we routinely require courts to draw much finer distinctions than this citing to a series of cases. Exactly right. It's a clear distinction. One argument is about I was wrongfully convicted and here's why. The jury was tainted. the evidence was not given to me. I was denied Brady material. Whatever it is, that is how you collaterally attack a prior conviction under the habius corpus laws.
In contrast, if you're saying, "Look, I'm in prison and my current circumstances warrants as a matter of compassion me getting out of prison now because I'm dying in a week or my grandkid is dying in a week or something like that." It's something that says there's something unique about my situation that says, "Let me out." Or I'm 92 degrees and I'm paralyzed. just let me go home and I'll get wheeled around by my grandkids for the last few weeks of my life. That is what that statue is talking about. They're totally separate animals. But of course, Katage Brown Jackson um wants to give criminals every possibility of getting out because at the end of the day, as I point out before, the criminal class in America are the shock troops, are the constituents of the Democratic party.
Because of the criminal class in America that goes out and creates the ruckus, the crises, the mass shootings, the terrible events that cause for greater greater calls for things like more gun control, more government spending, more social workers, more left-wing nutty programs. You get the picture. In other words, the criminal class causes the upheaval in our society that gives rise to calls for what the Democrats want, which is more and more government and less and less freedom. That's the reality on the ground as I see it. All right, with all that said, I do want to just teach you, set aside this particular case for a moment. I just want to teach you to be the smartest person in the room, a concept about how to think about statutory interpretation.
I think it will be helpful. There is a famous metaphor that uh Judge Richard Pner, former professor at the University of Chicago, used about how to think about judging when you're dealing with like an ambiguous statute or you're trying to figure out whether or not a statute applies in a particular case to a particular set of circumstances where there's some unclarity here or it's not clear. And that is the metaphor about a soldier or a commander in a battlefield where he's been given specific instructions by his headquarters but then in the middle of the battle he loses communication with the headquarters. So the metaphor goes something like this that you have been given instructions as a soldier to go over there and to take the compound 10 miles away. You and your troops get there and you find that you cannot take the compound or there's some other change. You then radio back to headquarters to say there's a major change here. What do I do? But you're not able to get in touch with headquarters. So the situation there is what do you do? Do you follow the initial instructions that says take the place that is no longer there or there you can't do it or whatever it is or do you have to improvise and figure out a way to deal with it because you can't just do nothing. And the metaphor when it comes to judging in statutory interpretation cases where this question about what the statute means and how it applies to a particular case is the same way that you're a judge, you have to apply the statute to the case in front of you. You have to resolve the case.
You have no choice. You have to apply the statute. But if Congress that or whatever the state legislature is that passed the law was not clear or it's not clear how the statute applies, you're essentially in the same position as that military commander who's been totally cut off from HQ in communicating as to what should happen next. So, how do you go about solving that problem of lack of communication whe whether you're a soldier and or whether you're a judge applying a statute that's unclear and again there's a lot of answers to that question but I did want you to know to be the smartest person in the room that that is the metaphor. So, if you're asking yourself how do we deal with or how do judges deal with like ambiguity in the law or questions of interpretation always remember the metaphor. It's the same as if you many of you were in the military. If you're in the military, you're out on a mission and you're cut off from HQ and your instructions are one thing and you don't know if you can do them or you don't know what to do next and there's no way to call back to HQ, what do you do? That is essentially the same position uh that many federal judges and other judges find themselves in when they're given a statute and a case and no way to know for sure what the legislature wanted to happen in that particular scenario. So again, either way, you're dealing with incomplete information. And there's a lot of discussions about how you resolve that in the context of interpretation of a law and judging. We don't need to get into that here, but I do want you to understand the issue presented to judges and the military commanders uh when they're cut off from the legislature, from the Congress, or from HQ in the military context. All right, folks.
Well, hope you learned something here today at the Forbox of Diner. Make sure you follow me over there on X forbox.
Don't forget to subscribe YouTube and I'll talk to you again real soon here at the Forbox of Diner. Orders up. Table 2.
A
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