McKinnon v. Superintendent, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, 08-2828-pr, Nov. 19, 2009, Parker, Hall, Lynch, order here
- Affirming Denial of Habeas
- Issues: (1) erroneous denial of motion to sever counts relating to separate incidents; (2) erroneous admission into evidence of various pieces of evidence; (3) verdict was against the weight of the evidence
ANALYSIS: Lengthy summary order, but not much in it. It's pretty fact-intensive. The order does have two footnotes, but I don't have as a big a problem with these as I did with the ones in the summary order in Smith v. LaClair from last week. One footnotes says that the court will not consider a claim that was raised for the first time before the Second Circuit and the other says, without saying it, that the district court should not have reviewed a claim de novo, but should have addressed it under 2254(d). I don't think either one is truly necessary (the first one could have been stated in the text and the second one isn't important), but at least they are not substantive like they were in Smith.
Overall, I have to say that I am happy that the Court did engage in a relatively extensive analysis of the claims as opposed to simply stating that they affirm for substantially the reasons set forth by the district court. The DJ relied upon a troubling Musladin argument in denying two of the evidentiary claims. See McKinnon v. Conway, 06-CV-717, 2008 WL 1945342 (NDNY May 1, 2008) (JKS). What's a troubling Musladin argument? It's a court's conclusion that there is no clearly established law for a specific type of claim, even though it is clear that a general principle of law does apply to the situation. Put another way, a court refuses to analyze whether a state decision is an unreasonable application of a clearly established general principle and instead finds that, because the Supreme Court has not addressed the exact same claim, there is no clearly established law (I have talked about this troubling trend here). In the summary order here, the court does apply the general standards to the claims. So a good decision for habeas petitioner's in that regard.
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