Habeas Corpus - Around the U.S.

I have been accumulating some links over the past six weeks.  Here they are:

Here's a blog post (by someone with a very similar last name to mine) discussing the potential impact of the upcoming Supreme Court case of Martinez v. Ryan.

Sticking with that case for a second, the ABA has filed an amicus brief in support of the habeas petitioner.

A blog post about the upcoming Supreme Court case of Gonzalez v. Thaler.

Justice delayed, justice denied: The subject matter of that linked article will make any fair person's blood boil.  A DJ in California (who was appointed by GWB) has been sitting for over five years on at least three different R&R's that have recommended habeas grants.  It can't be written off as the DJ being slow on habeas cases generally, as he appears to act much more swiftly on R&R's that recommend that habeas be denied (of course, those can be pretty easy to review, so it may not be fair to compare).  Sadly, one of the petitioners died while the DJ sat on the R&R recommending habeas relief.

And to make your blood boil further, there is a quote at the end of the article from Nancy King, who, as we all know, is on the offensive to try and end habeas.  In the article, she criticizes petitioners for abusing habeas.  So, let me get this straight: a federal judge has been delaying decisions for years in cases where there are real concerns that there have been constitutional violations, and it is the petitioners who are abusing the system.  Good to know.

Interesting article about a movie called "Crime After Crime."  It focuses on the reinvestigation of multiple cases of battered women serving lengthy sentences.   The reinvestigations occurred after California passed a law in 2002 that allowed abused individuals to introduce evidence of the abuse into evidence in a criminal trial.  An organization called the Habeas Project took the lead in the reinvestigations and the legal advocacy.

There has been a lot of coverage of a habeas decision from a DJ down in the Middle District of Florida, who ruled that a drug law in Florida was unconstitutional.  From the St. Petersburg Times:

U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven of Orlando issued a ruling Wednesday that struck down the state's Drug Abuse Prevention and Control law, saying it violates due process because it doesn't require that prosecutors prove that a person knew he or she possessed illegal drugs.

The article claims that the decision could have an impact on thousands of cases.  The name of the case is Shelton v. Secretary, Department of Corrections.

One house of the California's State legislature has passed a law that would prohibit convictions based solely on a jailhouse informant's testimony.  The article talks about one person who was convicted based exclusively on jailhouse informants.  He later obtained habeas relief from the Ninth Circuit.

An article about a habeas petition filed down in Mississippi.  Petitioner was a doctor who was convicted of killing his wife.  He maintains that his wife committed suicide.

SCOTUSblog has recently featured a couple of habeas petitions (here and here) as their petitions of the day.

An article about the habeas petition filed by Tom Noe, the rare-coin dealer who stole millions from the state of Ohio.  I believe that scandal nearly took down the entire Republican Party in Ohio (or something like that).

The Fifth Circuit recently showed some sympathy for a habeas petitioner in Texas who claimed that he was wrongfully convicted.  However, the court stated that, due to the AEDPA, there was nothing that it could do for him.  Here's the closing paragraph:

It is beyond regrettable that a possibly innocent man will not receive a new trial in the face of the preposterously unreliable testimony of the victim and sole eyewitness to the crime for which he was convicted. But our hands are tied by the AEDPA, preventing our review of Kinsel's attack on his Louisiana postconviction proceedings, so we dutifully dismiss his claim.

On the other hand, the Fifth Circuit granted habeas relief to a petitioner with the amazing name of  Princess LaCaze.  It's an interesting case.

The Third Circuit recently ruled that Padilla v. Kentucky applies retroactively in habeas cases (for some reason, I almost wrote "radioactively" there; not sure why, but it also seems to fit).

A post over at CrimProf Blog about an article from Matthew Seligman about summary adjudications after Richter.

Comments

[JP]

In the "Justice delayed. justice denied" article you cited, why is the fact that the district judge in the Central District of California "was appointed by GWB" relevant?

Put another way, would you find it objectionable if someone else simply stated that a district judge "who was appointed by WJC (Clinton) or BHO (Obama)" had been sitting on R&Rs recommending the denial of habeas petitions?

To be sure, I am not commenting on the merits of those cases. I am merely pointing out that judicial philosophies of federal judges are far too often attributed to those of the president that appointed them. While such an analogy may hold true in the Supreme Court, and to some extent in the courts of appeal, I think its much more tenuous in the context of district judges.

[JK]

JP,

I think that's a valid question. Is the president who appointed a federal district court judge relevant? In most situations, I don't think it is. And I would tend to agree that the appointment of district court judges is less political. But they remain political appointments. And the people who get nominated for district court positions often have strong political connections to the president's party. It does not necessarily mean that they will pursue the agenda of the party. But sometimes it does happen that way. And one part of the republican agenda, for years, has been to limit habeas relief. So I believe it is relevant to this particular story that a judge who was appointed by a republican seems to be antagonistic to habeas petitioners.

But it is also a fair question to ask whether I would have mentioned that the judge was a democratic appointee if the situation had been reversed. To be honest, I am guessing I probably wouldn't have. So, to be somewhat even handed, I'll say that, from my experience, I do know that some clinton appointees work very, very slowly on habeas cases. I don't know of a pattern of those judges sitting on recommended habeas denials and then granting relief (that could be true, but in my experience it's usually just sitting on recommended habeas denials and then denying relief). But there has been serious delays from some democratically-appointed judges.