Habeas Corpus Blog

Habeas Corpus - October 28 Conference

Some notes on the Supreme Court's upcoming October 28 conference. 

Four of the five habeas cases that had previously been relisted were officially relisted again and will be considered at the conference. Those are Cavazos, Dixon, Cross, and Buck.  I am guessing that, because the Court had ordered the record in Maxwell, it was not officially relisted for this conference.  But it will be eventually.

In addition, according to the most recent SCOTUSblog relist post, a front-end criminal case was also relisted.  It's a capital case called Medina v. Texas.  It's an odd one.  SCOTUSblog explains:

In it, he argues that he was deprived of his rights to due process, a meaningful opportunity to be heard, a fair opportunity to present a defense, a fundamentally fair trial, right to counsel, and right to a reliable and individualized capital sentencing in violation of the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.  One of the main issues is the prejudice caused to Medina, who was charged with killing his two children, by a number of court-ordered delays because of jury conflicts (including, supposedly, induced labor and fishing (!) during the punishment phase of his trial).  Medina argues that those delays, coupled with other errors, ultimately prevented a number of witnesses from Medina’s native El Salvador from testifying on his behalf.  The relist is slightly unusual because the Court scheduled Medina for the November 4 (rather than October 28) Conference, perhaps because the record (which the Court requested back on October 6) arrived at One First Street the same day the petition was on for the October 14 Conference.

So, I guess, on second thought, it's not entirely relevant to the October 28 conference.  But this seems like the right post to put it in.

Finally, on their petitions to watch page, SCOTUSblog mentions a petition in a habeas case to watch, on for its second conference.  It's Wetzel v. Lambert and here's the issue (from SCOTUSblog): Did the Third Circuit fail to properly apply the habeas deference standard to the state court's rejection of respondent's Brady claim?

 

Habeas Corpus - Quick Items

Just a few quick items today.

First, I read a really interesting discussion from earlier this week over at Prawfsblag called "Bifurcating Habeas" about how "habeas corpus" has become splintered, at least for teaching purposes, into two separate areas: (i) review of executive detention, which would be taught in constitutional law or federalism-type courses; and (ii) review of criminal convictions, which would be taught in criminal procedure type courses.  Obviously, that split is seen in full effect on this blog, as I have only written a single post about executive detention (I believe it was during the first week of the blog).  That's because the day to day experience of review of executive detention is not relevant to 2254.  In fact, this blog slices up habeas even more by excluding 2255 -- federal review of federal criminal judgments.  As I have stated before, in most ways, 2255 is not really even "habeas corpus" review and much of it is not relevant to 2254 cases.  In any event, it's an interesting discussion and that refers to the comments as well.

Second, as a result of the Supreme Court denying cert. to a habeas petitioner who lost his petition before the Ninth Circuit, Idaho has set a date for the first execution to be carried out in that State since 1994.

Finally, on Tuesday, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of Christopher Porco, who was convicted of killing his father and dismembering his mother with an ax.  At the time of his murder, his father was the law clerk for the presiding justice of the Third Department.  Porco had argued that there was a Crawford violation when the prosecution was allowed to submit evidence that his mother nodded affirmatively to an officer when asked at "her bedside" whether her son was responsible.  The court concluded that, even if there was a constitutional violation, the error was harmless.  Mr. Porco's attorney has stated that, if the Supreme Court denies cert., he will be filing a habeas corpus petition in federal court.  So I guess I could be writing more about this case someday.  A news report about the case is available here.

Habeas Corpus - Maxwell Relist - Updated

While I usually put up a relist post that reviews the SCOTUSblog post on the matter, I decided to be slightly more proactive this week.  But it's left me a little confused.

For the last conference on October 14, there were five relisted habeas cases: Cavazos, Maxwell, Dixon, Cross, and Buck.  The Court took no action on any of them, except for ordering the record in Maxwell.  But none of them were relisted for another conference.  That can still happen and I am guessing it probably will for all five.  The next conference is not until next Friday.  But as it stands they are all just in a holding pattern.

In the meantime, I read this really interesting article about the Maxwell case called "The Case You Go to Law School For."  That's a reference to a quote from Maxwell's attorney Verna Wefald.  Actually, in the full quote, the lawyer was trying to be funny, not simply poignant.  She said that, when she first started working on the case back in the late '80's, "I was young and thought this was the kind of case you went to law school for. About 10 years into it, I wished I had never gone."

Maxwell is a relatively well-known petitioner.  He was convicted of committing the "Skid Row" murders that occurred in Los Angeles in the 70's.  However, as the article states, the problem is that "in all likelihood, he’s innocent."  The main evidence against him was a jailhouse confession, which is a notoriously unreliable type of evidence.  The other evidence presented was really weak - a palm print on a public bench and some muddy footprints.  Maxwell was acquitted of several of the murders and only eventually convicted of three of the ten of which he was charged.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Turns out that the prosecution failed to turn over that the jailhouse informant was given a deal for his testimony against Maxwell.  Pretty big deal, no?  Well, Maxwell had trouble obtaining relief on this significant Brady violation until he reached the Ninth Circuit.  The Ninth Circuit granted habeas, holding that (1) state court’s finding that jailhouse informant testified truthfully at petitioner’s trial was unreasonable determination of facts in light of evidence presented;  (2) perjury by informant deprived petitioner of his right to trial by jury; (3) details of informant’s deal were material for Brady purposes; (4) information regarding informant’s prior informant activities were material for Brady purposes; and (5) state court’s determination that prosecution’s failure to disclose impeachment evidence did not undermine confidence in petitioner’s trial was unreasonable application of Brady. 

Without seeing it, I am guessing that the state court decision here would rank pretty high on the "uncommon sense" meter.

And this obvious Brady violation does not just appear in a vacuum.  As alluded to above, there are significant reasons to believe that petitioner is innocent. To some academics, innocence is all that should matter.  So this really should be viewed as a case where the federal courts were getting it right.

But, of course, innocence is not what's important to the Court.  It's the AEDPA.  Here are the issues before the Court (from the SCOTUSblog page for Maxwell):

(1) Whether, under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a federal court may grant habeas relief on a claim that the state-court conviction rested on perjured testimony absent proof that the prosecution knew that the challenged testimony was false and when the state post-conviction court deemed the testimony truthful; (2) whether, under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, a federal court may grant habeas corpus relief on a claim alleging suppression of exculpatory evidence when that evidence was unknown to law enforcement officials working on the case and without considering whether the state court might have rejected this claim.

Now that the Court has ordered the lower court record, we are looking at one of two probable outcomes: either a summary reversal or a dissent from a cert. denial.  Let's hope it's the latter.

It's always interesting for me to get a look behind the papers once awhile and learn more about some of these cases.  I felt the same way when Skinner was before the Court last term.  And Connick v. Thompson.  I know it can't be done for every case.  But I appreciate it when I do get the chance to get a bigger picture.

UPDATE: Actually, I neglected to mention Maples as one of those cases where we have learned more about the background of the case.  Of course, that was the case that inspired the "uncommon sense" meter, so I am disappointed in myself for leaving it out.

Habeas Corpus - Relists and Denials

SCOTUSblog has its new relist post up.  Many of the cases from the prior relist post were relisted again.  These were: Cavazos, Maxwell (for which the Court ordered the lower court record), Dixon, Cross, and Buck.

But not all cases were relisted again.  The petitions in Rocha and Adams, the cases that concerned questions about the independent and adequate state law ground, were denied. 

The Court also denied cert in Doody.  That's pretty significant.  Doody is a habeas grant out of the Ninth Circuit.  The Supreme Court previously had GVR'd that case after a prior Ninth Circuit grant.  On remand, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed the habeas grant.  I guess the Court decided to give up on that one.

There were also two petitions that SCOTUSblog was watching for that conference: Harrison and Abu-Jamal.  According to SCOTUSblog, the Court appears to be holding Harrison in light of the cert grant in Blueford.

And the Court denied cert in Abu-Jamal.  That's also significant for two reasons.  First, it's a habeas grant out of the Third Circuit.  And, similar to Doody, a prior habeas grant in that case had been GVR'd.  Second, it's a well-known petitioner, Mumia Abu-Jamal.  So Mumia will get a new sentencing hearing.  There was a bunch of media coverage of the denial, for example here and here, with CNN speculating that a new death sentence was unlikely.

There will be a conference tomorrow (Oct. 14) at which the Court will consider the relisted cases.  I'll try and post something soon after the order list gets issued.

Habeas Corpus - Relist List - Edited

Just in time for today's conference, I am going to link to SCOTUSblog's recent relist post discussing the cases that were relisted after last week's long conference.  And consistent with the overall theme of this Court's term, it is very habeas heavy.

A couple of the relists were cases that were on that site's Petitions to watch:  Bobby v. Dixon and Cash v. Maxwell.

Another relisted case is Buck v. Thaler.  That's the capital case in which the Court recently granted a stay.  I have previously stated that I can't see the Court granting cert. in that case.  I'd be happy to be wrong about that.

Then there are Adams v. Thaler and Rocha v. Thaler, both of which seem to concern the independent and adequate state law ground doctrine.  I guess there still is a little bit left there for the Supreme Court to chip away at.

Then there are two habeas grants, Ryan v. Doody and Harvey v. Cross, where the State was arguing that the Circuit Courts weren't deferential enough to the state courts.  It supports my prior claim that "it's safe to say that there are certain members of the Court who think that any habeas grant under the AEDPA  . . . is questionable."

In a prior post, I had previously covered the petitions to watch for the long conference.  One petition that was relisted, but not mentioned in the SCOTUSblog post was Cavazos v. Smith.  That one's been relisted many,  many times (nine to be exact).  So I am guessing it was just an oversight.  It's still on their petitions to watch page.

And a GVR was granted in one of the cases, Allison v. Diaz, in light of Richter.  That's obviously bad news for the habeas petitioner.

I must have misread the SCOTUSblog petitions to watch page and thought that every petition that they were watching was going to be submitted to the long conference.  That turns out not to have been the case.  But unlike before, that page of petitions is now broken up into conferences.  Which means that many of the cases I mentioned before actually are going to different conferences.

For today's conference, in addition to the relisted cases mentioned above, these petitions to watch will be considered: Harrison v. Gillespie and Wetzel v. Abu-Jamal.

[Edit - there were a couple extra words at the end here that should have been deleted before the original post was posted]

 

Habeas Corpus - Habeas Day! - Already Updated

Get ready for Habeas Day!

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will be hearing argument in three different habeas corpus cases.  That's almost one half of the habeas cases currently on the Court's docket.

First, it will hear argument in Maples v. Thomas.  Here's a nice preview of that case from the ABA and a discussion of the case at alabama.com.

Then, the Court will hear argument in the highly anticipated case of Martinez v. Ryan.  A really nice preview of the case can be found here on SCOTUSblog.

[Less than five minutes after putting up this post, I ran across a nice rundown of Martinez and Maples at PrawfsBlawg.  I highly recommend it.].

Finally, the Court will hear argument in Howes v. Fields.  You can go here for a very long preview of the case from the ABA.

Reviewing my preview of the upcoming term, these cases rank 1 (Martinez), 3 (Maples), and 5 (Fields) on the scale of the cases that I find most interesting in the current term

Habeas Corpus - Around the U.S.

Some stuff I've seen lately:

Here's a law professor who seems to love habeas corpus as much as I do.  She gives a nice list of reasons of why habeas corpus remains an interesting subject for law students.

More analysis of the Troy Davis case and/or the AEDPA can be found here, here, here, here, and here.  I really enjoyed reading the first of those here's.  It's more about the death penalty than either the AEDPA or habeas, but still relevant.

On a similar note, I liked this line from an Esquire piece about Obama and civil liberties.  The line is in a discussion of which presidents did the most to infringe upon civil liberties:  "Still clinging to third place is Bill Clinton, whose response to the Oklahoma City bombing was the Effective Anti-Terrorism and Death Penalty Act, a big bag of constitutional grief passed in 1996 that, among is other charms, took the biggest whack at habeas corpus since Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ entirely during the Civil War."

A discussion of the habeas and Fourth Amendment cases in the Supreme Court's upcoming term can be found here.  The New York Times has commented that the upcoming term is very criminal/habeas heavy.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has granted a habeas petitioner's request for bail after the judge granted habeas relief last month.  Petitioner had been convicted of a 1977 double murder.  However, the judge concluded that prosecutorial misconduct had "'cast[ ] a pall of doubt over every single piece of evidence presented by the prosecution in support of its case.'"

Habeas Corpus - Around the U.S.

Here's a bunch of habeas-related stuff I have seen over the past several weeks:

There was a lot of coverage of the Seventh Circuit decision in MC Winston v. Boatwright.  The issue was whether counsel was ineffective for using peremptory challenges to strike every male juror in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.  The court concluded that this was deficient performance, but that there was no prejudice since the per se reversal rule for Batson violations was not clearly established until after the state courts had reviewed the claim.  It's an aggressive use of the Musladin rule (for explanation of that rule you can read this post), but the court makes a good case that it was appropriate.

The Union Leader in New Hampshire had this article about a habeas petition filed by Katherine Mendola, who was convicted of attempting to hire a hitman to murder the wife of a lawyer with whom she sought a romantic relationship.

The Houston Chronicle had an article about the habeas petition filed by Nebraska inmate Germai Molina, who had been convicted of beating his toddler daughter.

Here is a post about a troubling case out of the Fifth Circuit in which petitioner Robert Allen Rabe raised serious questions about the reliability of the conviction.  Apparently, petitioner had both alibi witnesses and an argument that the perpetrator seen on the surveillance video did not have tattoos on his arms, while petitioner's arms were heavily tattooed.  Counsel did not raise these matters at trial.  Here's what the post says about the case:

To the outside observer, it looks like Rabe got a raw deal. Maybe he's guilty, but he at least deserved a defense that included an alibi witness and a nod to the fact that the robber in the surveillance tape did not appear to have tattoos on his forearms as Rabe does.

No, these issues were not raised in Rabe's state appeal, but that seems to indicate that Rabe's counsel for the state appeal may have also been ineffective, elevating Rabe's ineffective counsel conundrum to meta status.

Sentencing Law and Policy had a post about a "[b]otched Ohio capital prosecution."  The issue in the case was whether the State could be barred from re-prosecuting a successful habeas petitioner after the State failed to abide by the federal court's order granting habeas relief.  It was a split decision with the majority concluding that the district court had the authority to bar re-prosecution.

Here is a post from a blog called "Legal As She Is Spoke" about a habeas denial from the Sixth Circuit in which petitioner had argued that his counsel was ineffective for falling asleep during the prosecution's cross-examination of petitioner.  It's an interesting post that discusses other cases in which relief was denied based on a sleeping attorney.

An article from Metropolitan News Service (despite its appearance, the website seems legit) about the Ninth Circuit decision in Payton v. Cullen, in which the court denied habeas relief to a petitioner sentenced to death.  The Ninth Circuit had previously granted habeas relief, but that decision was (surprise, surprise) reversed by the Supreme Court back in 2005.

From that same news source, another article about a habeas denial from the Ninth Circuit in Rossum v. Patrick.  Here's the lead sentence in the article: "A woman whose husband was found dead in their bedroom, in a scene reminiscent of the film 'American Beauty,' yesterday lost her bid to overturn her murder conviction."  In my mind, time has not been kind to that movie.

A post about an Eleventh Circuit decision denying habeas relief to a petitioner who argued that his sentence to life without parole as a juvenile offender was unconstitutional.  I found this interesting: "As a Florida criminal appeals attorney, I was saddened to read, on page 45, that Florida stands out as the State that has the highest number of people sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide crimes committed while the people were juveniles.  Out of the 123 inmates imprisoned nationwide, 77 are imprisoned in Florida."

Sticking with Florida, I had previously mentioned in this prior post about a huge habeas grant in which a federal judge in Florida concluded that a Florida drug law violated due process.  Only problem, the Florida state courts are undeterred and will continue to apply the statute.  The link is to a state court decision denying motions to dismiss in numerous cases on the basis of the federal court's ruling.

Don't really know what to make of this video, in which Captain Constitution takes on Habeas Corpsus.

 

Habeas Corpus - December Sitting

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued its calendar for the December sitting.  One habeas case and a front end case.  Here's the relevant cases (cut and paste from SCOTUSblog):

Tues., Dec. 6:

Martel v. Clair (10-1265) — scope of convicted individual’s right to replace court-appointed lawyer in federal habeas proceeding

Williams v. Illinois (10-8505) — prosecutor’s power to present expert witness to discuss crime lab report when the lab analyst does not appear

I have promised this several times, but I will update the Supreme Court cases page.  Soon.

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.