390
Souter, J., dissenting
ACCA itself: the ACCA ought to be easy to administer and state convictions ought to carry finality, ante, at 378-380. But whatever force these reasons might have if alternative avenues of challenge were open, they do not even come close to the horsepower needed to rule out the application of § 2255 when the choice is relief under § 2255 or no relief at all. Why should it be easy to subject a person to a higher sentencing range and commit him for nearly nine extra years (as here) when the prisoner has a colorable claim that the extended commitment rests on a conviction the Constitution would condemn? If the answer is the value of finality in state convictions, why is finality valuable when state law itself does not demand it, and why is finality a one-way street? Why should a prisoner like Daniels suddenly be barred from returning to challenge the validity of a conviction, when the Government is free to reach back to it to impose extended imprisonment under a sentence enhancement law unheard of at the time of the earlier convictions (1978 and 1981 in this case)? Daniels could not have been expected in 1978 to anticipate the federal enhancement statute enacted in 1984; and even if he had been blessed with statutory clairvoyance, the practice in 1978 would have told him he could challenge the convictions when and if the Government sought to rely on them under the future enhancement statute. The ACCA was enacted against the backdrop of a pervasive federal practice of entertaining constitutional challenges to prior convictions when used anew for sentence enhancement, a practice on which Congress threw no cold water when it enacted the ACCA. See Custis, 511 U. S., at 499-501 (Souter, J., dissenting). Indeed, even the Court seems to find something disquieting in the historical practice, as it shows by recognizing a textually untethered exception to its own rule, one allowing for collateral attacks on prior convictions if based on violations of the right to counsel under Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963). See ante, at 382. I sup-
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