Cite as: 540 U. S. 375 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
"is likely to reduce and simplify litigation over questions of characterization, which are often quite difficult." Brief for United States 42.
We agree with these suggestions. We consequently hold, as almost every Court of Appeals has already held, that the lower courts' recharacterization powers are limited in the following way:
The limitation applies when a court recharacterizes a pro se litigant's motion as a first § 2255 motion. In such circumstances the district court must notify the pro se litigant that it intends to recharacterize the pleading, warn the litigant that this recharacterization means that any subsequent § 2255 motion will be subject to the restrictions on "second or successive" motions, and provide the litigant an opportunity to withdraw the motion or to amend it so that it contains all the § 2255 claims he believes he has. If the court fails to do so, the motion cannot be considered to have become a § 2255 motion for purposes of applying to later motions the law's "second or successive" restrictions. § 2255, ¶ 8.
IV
The District Court that considered Castro's 1994 motion failed to give Castro warnings of the kind we have described. Moreover, this Court's "supervisory power" determinations normally apply, like other judicial decisions, retroactively, at least to the case in which the determination was made. Mc-Nabb, supra, at 347 (applying new supervisory rule to case before the Court). Hence, given our holding in Part III, supra, Castro's 1994 motion cannot be considered a first § 2255 motion, and his 1997 motion cannot be considered a "second or successive" motion—unless there is something special about Castro's case.
The Government argues that there is something special: Castro failed to appeal the 1994 recharacterization. According to the Government, that fact makes the 1994 recharacter-
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