"Is the Solicitor General Playing a Shell Game With the Supreme Court Over Johnson Retroactivity?"

The title of this post is the title of this notable, lengthy commentary by Steve Vladeck over at PrawfsBlawg, which gets started this way:

I've already written a pair of posts about the very significant current conflict among the circuits over the retroactive effect of the Supreme Court's June 2015 in Johnson v. United States, and the extent to which the Court may need to use an application for extraordinary relief (perhaps including an "original" writ of habeas corpus) to resolve that split — given (1) the unavailability of certiorari to review denials of second-or-successive habeas petitions; (2) government's agreement that Johnson may be retroactively enforced; and (3) the one-year statute of limitations, which likely requires all Johnson-based claims to be filed by June 26, 2016.  And in my most recent post, I noted that the Solicitor General had already recommended denial of review in one case by reference to three pending "original" applications — perhaps hinting that it would support the Court's using one or all of those cases as a vehicle for settling the circuit split (and clarifying that Johnson is indeed retroactive).

Or not.

In the past week, the government has effectively mooted one of the three original cases (by completely reversing a position it had taken earlier in different litigation involving the same prisoner), and has filed briefs opposing extraordinary relief in the other two.  As I explain in the post that follows, these actions (and the arguments in the briefs) give rise at least to the appearance that, even though the Solicitor General agrees that Johnson is retroactive on the merits and should therefore be enforceable by federal prisoners through both original and second-or-successive applications for post-conviction relief, the government is perfectly content to run out the clock — and to not support efforts to have the Supreme Court so hold before next June's deadline. 

A few prior related posts:

• SCOTUS finds, per Justice Scalia, that ACCA residual clause is unconstitutionally vague
• A (way-too-quick) Top 5 list of thoughts/reactions to the votes and opinions Johnson
• How many hundreds (or thousands?) of ACCA prisoners could be impacted by a big ruling in Johnson?
• How many federal prisoners have "strong Johnson claims" (and how many lawyers will help figure this out)?
• Should SCOTUS deal with Johnson retroactivity through an original habeas petition?