First, I still need to update the Supreme Court page with the two most recent cert. grants in habeas cases, Maples and Greene and the decision in Cullen and that recent summary reversal. That should happen soon.
Second, I had read about the two recent stays issued in capital cases, Cook v. Arizona and Foster v. Texas. I read a couple of articles about them, but both articles* seemed to focus on the drug protocol that would be used to carry out the executions. So I figured that the cases weren't relevant to habeas as the drug stuff is brought in a federal civil rights claim.
*I did not read the New York Times article about the stays due to their new digital subscription policy. I haven't subscribed and have not been reading articles on the site as a result. I have also decided that I am not going to link to the Times.
This morning, I read the SCOTUSblog post about the stays and saw that both of them are purely criminal law issues and, even though they are appeals from state courts, they both have habeas angles. I have no idea why those articles were talking about drug protocols.
In Cook, the question is whether the defendant has the right to counsel, with the concommitant right to the effective assistance of counsel, in a state collateral proceeding. The habeas angle is the impact of the habeas case of Coleman v. Thompson. In that case, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its ruling that a State is not required to assign counsel to a defendant in a state collateral proceeding. However, the Court in that case left open the question of whether the State is required to assign counsel in such a proceeding if the proceeding is the first or only place to raise a legal challenge. That's an interesting question that would have a huge impact on criminal law, so it would be pretty eventful if the Court grants the petition.
In Foster, the issue is similar with a slightly different twist. In Texas, the defendant has a right to an attorney at the collateral proceeding. However, he does not have a right to an effective attorney. I did not realize how funny that was until I actually wrote those two sentences.
That's twisted, but not the twist I was referring to, as that twist is more directly related to a habeas case. The Court actually denied this petition back in January. However, the defendant filed a request for reconsideration based on the cert. grant in Maples, which concerned whether petitioner had shown cause for a procedural default where he was blameless for the default and the state had some role in the default.
According to SCOTUSblog, Foster's "rehearing plea argued that the state had selected the lawyer to represent Foster in the state habeas case, and picked an attorney over Foster’s protest. Foster had tried to fire the lawyer because he had performed inadequately for Foster before."
Hmm. Seems like a bit of a tenuous connection to Maples, but I am happy that the Court is at least giving the defendant a chance to make his case here.
Finally, the most current list of relists does not include any 2254 habeas cases.
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