On Tuesday [May 28, 2013], the Supreme Court handed down two important
criminal procedure decisions, both allowing defendants to seek habeas corpus review of their convictions in federal court.
The 5-to-4 majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the court’s four moderate liberals, reached the right result in each case. But, in a larger sense, the two decisions show how much the scope of habeas review has been curtailed by the Supreme Court in the last three decades, so that it now must work around earlier precedents to avoid doing injustice.
In a case from Texas,
Trevino v. Thaler, the court ruled that a death-row inmate in Texas can make the claim of ineffective counsel for the first time in a federal habeas petition because the rules of Texas procedure made it virtually impossible for him to raise that issue during an appeal in state court.
In a case from Michigan,
McQuiggin v. Perkins, the court ruled correctly that an inmate who can make a credible showing of actual innocence is not barred from filing a habeas petition to have his case reviewed by a federal court — even if the petition is filed after the one-year limit for such claims under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the federal statute that sets forth rules about habeas use.
The federal statute says a state prisoner ordinarily has a year to file a federal habeas petition after the conviction becomes final or after he should have discovered the new evidence that he claims supports his innocence.
Source: The New York Times, Editorial Board, May 28, 2013
Divided Court, in 2 Rulings, Makes It Easier to Challenge Criminal Convictions
WASHINGTON — In a pair of 5-to-4 decisions that divided along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday made it easier for inmates to challenge their convictions.
In McQuiggin v. Perkins, No. 12-126, the majority said that a one-year filing deadline for prisoners seeking federal review of their state court convictions under a 1996 law may be relaxed if they present compelling evidence of their innocence. The new “miscarriage of justice exception” to the deadline, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority, “applies to a severely confined category” — cases in which no reasonable juror aware of the new evidence would have voted to convict the defendant.
The decision did not seem likely to help the prisoner whose case was under review, but the exception it announced drew a barbed dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, who called the majority opinion “a series of transparent non sequiturs” and “a flagrant breach of the separation of powers.”
In the second decision issued Tuesday, in Trevino v. Thaler, No. 11-10189, the same five-justice majority extended a ruling last year that had allowed prisoners to challenge their state convictions in federal courts based on the argument that their trial lawyers had been ineffective, even though the prisoners had not raised the issue in earlier proceedings.
Source: The New York Times, May 29, 2013
Justice Scalia: Ensuring Innocent People Get Out Of Prison Is A ‘Faustian Bargain’
A man who may be locked up for a murder he did not commit should not be allowed to challenge his conviction, according to Justice Antonin Scalia and his three most conservative colleagues. And three members of the Supreme Court seem to believe that most people jailed due to unconstitutional convictions should have no recourse to the federal courts. At least, that’s what emerges from a four justice dissenting opinion written by Scalia in a case dealing with the rights of state prisoners who may be “actually innocent” of the crime they were convicted of committing.
McQuiggin v. Perkins is a fairly unusual case. After being sentenced to life in prison for murder, Floyd Perkins spent years gathering three affidavits from witnesses corroborating his claim that another man committed the crime. Yet he sat on this new evidence for nearly six years before presenting it to a federal court. Justice Scalia’s dissent claims that a one year statute of limitations prevents Perkins from presenting six year-old evidence that he may be innocent. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s majority opinion holds that “actual innocence” may overcome this one year time limit, although she also requires prisoners in Perkins’ shoes to overcome a very high bar before their claims of innocence may succeed in federal court.
Source: Think Progress, May 28, 2013
An Innocent Extension
The Supreme Court moves to protect the innocent, and Justice Scalia fumes.
In 1996, Congress cracked down on defendants who repeatedly try to go to court to overturn their convictions. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), signed by President Bill Clinton, created a thicket of new requirements for people in prison who file last-ditch appeals—called habeas corpus petitions. The idea was that once you’ve lost your first and only direct appeal, you should only get a single try at habeas corpus (the “great writ,” dating from the 14th century, that allows a prisoner to sue his warden for release). And you were supposed to get moving quickly: The law generally imposed a new deadline of one year from the date on which you lost your direct appeal.
Congress made an exception, however: If you say you have new evidence, then you have one year from the day you could have discovered it through “the exercise of due diligence.” But what if you miss the deadline without any good excuse—and yet the new evidence could show that you are innocent? On Tuesday, the Supreme Court widened what it called the “gateway” to reviewing claims of actual innocence that are made long after the one-year deadline expires. It’s a 5-4 decision, split between liberals-plus-Kennedy and conservatives. The opinions, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Antonin Scalia, read like a pitched battle in a long-simmering war. At the end, Ginsburg succeeds in opening what she calls a “gateway” to court for innocence claims that blow by the one-year deadline.
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Source: Slate, May 28, 2013
