Supreme Court granted cert. today in a habeas case.
The grant is in Greene v. Fisher, 10-637. It is was one of the relisted cases.* According to SCOTUSblog, the question is what is the temporal cutoff for whether a decision from the Supreme Court Court qualifies as “clearly established Federal law” under 2254(d)?
*SCOTUSblog speculated that this case was being held to link it up with another case that had the same issue, Stovall v. Miller. It does not appear that the Court took action in that case.
I think the debate will be over whether “clearly established law” is based on the law in effect when the state conviction becomes final (meaning denial of discretionary review from the state's highest court) or at the time of the state court decision.
It's an important open issue in habeas law. I am happy that the Court granted cert.
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