Supreme Court decides, via usual 6-3 vote, to read AEDPA restrictively to limit federal habeas efforts

The Supreme Court this morning released two opinion, one of which dealt with federal habeas process in a capital case.  The ruling was the product of a 6-3 vote in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, No. 20-1009 (S. Ct. May 23, 2022) (available here), with the opinion for the Court authored by Justice Thomas and the dissent authored by Justice Sotomayor.  Here is how the opinion for the Court gets started:

A federal habeas court generally may consider a state prisoner’s federal claim only if he has first presented that claim to the state court in accordance with state procedures.  When the prisoner has failed to do so, and the state court would dismiss the claim on that basis, the claim is “procedurally defaulted.”  To overcome procedural default, the prisoner must demonstrate “cause” to excuse the procedural defect and “actual prejudice” if the federal court were to decline to hear his claim. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991). In Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1 (2012), this Court explained that ineffective assistance of postconviction counsel is “cause” to forgive procedural default of an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim, but only if the State required the prisoner to raise that claim for the first time during state postconviction proceedings.

Often, a prisoner with a defaulted claim will ask a federal habeas court not only to consider his claim but also to permit him to introduce new evidence to support it.  Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), the standard to expand the state-court record is a stringent one.  If a prisoner has “failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings,” a federal court “shall not hold an evidentiary hearing on the claim” unless the prisoner satisfies one of two narrow exceptions, see 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(2)(A), and demonstrates that the new evidence will establish his innocence “by clear and convincing evidence,” §2254(e)(2)(B).  In all but these extraordinary cases, AEDPA “bars evidentiary hearings in federal habeas proceedings initiated by state prisoners.” McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U.S. 383, 395 (2013).

The question presented is whether the equitable rule announced in Martinez permits a federal court to dispense with §2254(e)(2)’s narrow limits because a prisoner’s state postconviction counsel negligently failed to develop the state-court record.  We conclude that it does not.

Here is how the dissent gets started:

The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to the effective assistance of counsel at trial.  This Court has recognized that right as “a bedrock principle” that constitutes the very “foundation for our adversary system” of criminal justice.  Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1, 12 (2012).  Today, however, the Court hamstrings the federal courts’ authority to safeguard that right. The Court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.

In reaching its decision, the Court all but overrules two recent precedents that recognized a critical exception to the general rule that federal courts may not consider claims on habeas review that were not raised in state court. Just 10 years ago, the Court held that a federal court may consider a habeas petitioner’s substantial claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel (a “trial-ineffectiveness” claim), even if not presented in state court, if the State barred the petitioner from asserting that claim until state postconviction proceedings, and the petitioner’s counsel in those proceedings was also ineffective. See id., at 17; see also Trevino v. Thaler, 569 U.S. 413, 429 (2013).  Martinez and Trevino establish that such a petitioner is not at fault for any failure to bring a trial-ineffectiveness claim in state court. Despite these precedents, the Court today holds that such a petitioner is nonetheless at fault for the ineffective assistance of postconviction counsel in developing the evidence of trial ineffectiveness in state court.  The Court instead holds that a petitioner in these circumstances, having received ineffective assistance of trial and postconviction counsel, is barred from developing such evidence in federal court.

This decision is perverse. It is illogical: It makes no sense to excuse a habeas petitioner’s counsel’s failure to raise a claim altogether because of ineffective assistance in postconviction proceedings, as Martinez and Trevino did, but to fault the same petitioner for that postconviction counsel’s failure to develop evidence in support of the trial-ineffectiveness claim. In so doing, the Court guts Martinez’s and Trevino’s core reasoning.  The Court also arrogates power from Congress: The Court’s analysis improperly reconfigures the balance Congress struck in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) between state interests and individual constitutional rights.

By the Court’s telling, its holding (however implausible) is compelled by statute.  Make no mistake.  Neither AEDPA nor this Court’s precedents require this result.  I respectfully dissent.