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October 6, 2014
SCOTUS summarily reverses Ninth Circuit habeas grant on AEDPA deference grounds
Thanks to this post by Kent Scheidegger over at Crime & Consequences, I just saw that the Supreme Court kicked off the first Monday of October with its first reversal of the Ninth Circuit in a criminal case. Here is how the per curiam opinion in Lopez v. Smith, No. 13-346 (S. Ct. Oct. 6, 2014) (available here), gets started:
When a state prisoner seeks federal habeas relief on the ground that a state court, in adjudicating a claim on the merits, misapplied federal law, a federal court may grant relief only if the state court’s decision was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). We have emphasized, time and again, that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, prohibits the federal courts of appeals from relying on their own precedent to conclude that a particular constitutional principle is “clearly established.” See, e.g., Marshall v. Rodgers, 569 U.S. __, __ (2013) (per curiam) (slip op. at 6). Because the Ninth Circuit failed to comply with this rule, we reverse its decision granting habeas relief to respondent Marvin Smith.
After reporting on this SCOTUS development, Kent added this pointed commentary about the general failure of lower federal courts to show adequate AEDPA deference:
There is a broad spectrum of viewpoints on the Supreme Court today, but when there is not a single justice who thinks the court of appeals' decision is correct, when the error is so obvious that it doesn't even require full briefing and argument, and when the same pattern recurs "time and again," there is something gravely wrong with some of our courts of appeals (mostly those divisible by 3).
The continuing violation of this provision by some of the lower federal courts is the largest-scale defiance of federal law since the "massive resistance" campaign in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Except this time federal courts are perpetrators of the violations instead of enforcers of the law.
October 6, 2014 at 05:46 PM | Permalink
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Comments
When will SCOTUS actually call oust these Judges by Name in their decision. Time to actually take action and urge these judges to be disbarred or at least forced into retirement. The 9th was trying to sneak this decision by since there wasnt a dissent, but they were caught red handed. 3 Liberal judges are dangerous!
Posted by: DeanO | Oct 6, 2014 9:18:01 PM
horse pucky DeanO. might be time to lower courts FIRED the high one. especially when I still criminally retarded shit like this!
"We have emphasized, time and again, that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, prohibits the federal courts of appeals from relying on their own precedent to conclude that a particular constitutional principle is “clearly established.”"
I'm curious just who's are they supposed to use? IRAN'S?
Posted by: rodsmith | Oct 7, 2014 12:02:58 AM
@rodsmith
No, they are supposed to use the Supreme Court's like the statute says.
Posted by: Matt | Oct 7, 2014 12:49:25 AM
The statute says (and the Supreme Court has explained on multiple) that established federal law refers to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. If the lower federal court is trying to add together Supreme Court decisions on different issues to decide how the Supreme Court would decide a novel issue, it is not looking at established federal law.
I know that a lot of appellate decisions cite to circuit precedent rather than Supreme Court decisions. What the Supreme Court is saying (and some circuits are ignoring) is that the lower courts need to be careful in doing that to make sure that their precedents accurately reflect what the Supreme Court has have actually held. More importantly, lower federal courts need to avoid creating their own test for analyzing an issue. If the Supreme Court has not bothered to create a test, the state courts are not unreasonably applying established federal law in coming up with a test that differs from the lower federal courts (at least as long as the state court test reflects the principles from the relevant Supreme Court precedents).
Posted by: tmm | Oct 7, 2014 10:04:23 AM
How Orwellian for a "reporter" to blast a Federal Court for failing to respect governmental restraints created to deny relief to condemn citizens and equating this with the mobs that opposed Brown v. Board of Education (the lingering opposition to which brought us the Federal Sentencing Guidelines to take power away from federal judges who historically provided the safeguards guaranteeing the rights of unpopular and oppressed minorities." Talk about "doublespeak"
Posted by: DCH | Oct 7, 2014 10:26:02 AM
The comparison to the resistance to Brown v. Bd is a tad over the top but it might not surprise that former comment regular Bill Otis favors that blog.
There are tons of habeas rulings. Of the mass, now and then, the USSC picks one out of the pile and decides that the courts of appeals -- this one bigger than the others and having to deal with the very populous state of CA -- stretch things too far. In several of these cases, there is a division. In others, probably one or more of the justices think things are a bit more unclear than the per curiam suggests. Sometimes, they might support a grant, but release they don't have the votes.
Meanwhile, other courts -- like the 5th -- stretch things in a conservative direction. KS, however, being conservative leaning, is somewhat less concerned about this. As to the last comment, true enough the law being applied here leaves something to be desired and concern for habeas which now and then goes too far arguably is worth it given the overall job of appellate judges to concern themselves about rights.
Posted by: Joe | Oct 7, 2014 8:50:54 PM
