Habeas Corpus - District Court Review - Habeas Granted!

In the comments to my post about the Second Circuit's habeas grant in Rivera, reader DB pointed out that there had been another recent habeas grant on a depraved indifference claim in a case called Johnson v. Bellnier. I have now read it and its a really important decision.

But first, let me note that, even though I tried to keep up to date with recent habeas developments over the summer, I had not heard about the decision.  Actually, I had not yet looked through the decisions from the week in which it was issued, and that week turned out to be a pretty busy one in the district courts - a habeas grants and two COA's.  There had not been a COA in the district courts in months.  I'll put those up in a separate post.

Here, I am going to quickly talk about Johnson.  First, the details:

Johnson v. Bellnier, 09-CV-381, 2011 WL 3235708 (EDNY July 27, 2011) (KAM) (RER)

• Habeas Granted in Part
• Issues: (1) whether petitioner had shown a miscarriage of justice in order to overcome a procedural default; (2) legal insufficiency on depraved indifference
• Notes: Adopting R&R in part (available at 2010 WL 7100915)

ANALYSIS: DJ grants habeas relief concluding that the evidence was legally insufficient to establish depraved indifference murder.

But that's not what makes this an important decision.  It is the procedural default ruling that really matters.  Both the MJ in his R&R and the DJ here conclude that petitioner can overcome the procedural default (i.e. failure to raise the claim at trial) because a fundamental miscarriage of justice would result if his case is not reached on the merits.  We have seen that result before (in Petronio and Fernandez v. Smith).  This issue is now currently before the Second Circuit in a case called Garbutt v. Conway (see Pending Second Circuit Cases page).  But the DJ ruled against the petitioner on this issue in Garbutt.  So now we have another DJ going in the other direction.  That's really helpful.

Hopefully, this case will be heard with Garbutt (assuming the State appeals).  At the very least, this decision is now out there and could have an influence on the court.