After the gun and violent crime "excitement" of day 1, the Supreme Court moved on to hearing cases involving the ever-popular AEDPA law and hearsay evidence. Talk about exciting! (Ok, maybe not ... these are not the most exciting cases in the world, but this is the bread and butter of the Court's docket, in reality!). Here are the news and notes from Day 2 of the Court's term.
(1) A small bit of background is necessary to understand what is going on in this case. First, when a state court is holding someone under color of law and there is an allegation that there is something unconstitutional about the detainment, the incarcerated person may want to try to get into federal court for review of their situation, thinking the federal government will be both more fair and more educated/professional. The path to do this is to file a write of habeas corpus with the appropriate federal court. Because prisoners who had been sentenced to death were using the habeas process essentially to delay their executions, Congress in 1996 passed AEDPA - the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This act provides a huge amount of deference to the state courts and severely curtails the length of time a prisoner has to challenge their detention through a habeas petition. Essentially, to survive a habeas motion now, the prisoner must show that the decision of the state court "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court."
(2) In Brown v. Davenport, yesterday's first case, the Court asked a rather technical question - whether AEDPA's requirements are satisfied if a court reviews a state decision and determines that the standards established by the Supreme Court in the case of Brecht v. Abrahamson were violated, or if the court has to conduct an independent, secondary review to determine whether statutory standards for the issuance of habeas relief as found in section 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1) also need to be independently satisfied. Everyone was a bit confused, because the Brecht standards are mostly subsumed within the basic AEDPA standard already - this led to lots of open speculation over whether this was turning into overly technocratic hairsplitting. Most of the circuits that have considered this question say that both standards need to be met - here, the 6th Circuit was striking out a bit on its own in suggesting that the Brecht standards were enough. Because of that, it seems likely that moving forward lip service will at least have to be paid to both tests to make sure both constitutional requirements and statutory requirements are being appropriately met.
(3) If you're confused after reading those two paragraphs, welcome to the club. This is a confusing subject area. The bottom line: it's really, really hard to get a writ of habeas corpus from a federal court overruling state court findings that someone should be put to death, and it requires a pretty extraordinary amount of incompetence or blatant disreagard for Constitutional principles on the part of the state court to be overturned on habeas grounds.
(4) In Hemphill v. New York, the Court was asked when a defendant forfeits the right to exclude evidence under the Confrontation Clause by 'opening the door' to the evidence coming in. To vastly simplify the situation, the defendant in this case argued that someone else committed the crime he was accused of committing, and suggested that the crime was committed with a 9 millimeter weapon. The police had found a 9 millimeter bullet at a third party's house during the investigation. The prosecution used this testimony from the defendant to introduce evidence of the third party admitting to having a .357 rather than a 9 millimeter gun, attempting to rebut the argument that the third party was using a 9 millimeter. Under New York law, the defendant "opened the door" to the prosecution introducing the .357 evidence when the defense referenced the third party having been in the presence of a bullet from a different kind of gun. The third party himself was not brought in as a witness - a statement from questioning the third party during the investigation is what was introduced. As a result, the defendant had no chance to cross-examine, and the Confrontation Clause was arguably violated. Got all that? *Deep Breath* I'll do my best to explain all of this more clealry when the opinion itself is released and we see what the Court ends up really focusing on.
(5) Quote of the day: MS. MIGNOLA: "... Again, if you -- well, I -- I see that you -- you doubt what I'm saying there, Justice Breyer." JUSTICE BREYER: "No, I'm not doubting it. I just want you to explain it." Justice Breyer, definitely doubting what the attorney for New York was saying during her argument.
(6) Justice Thomas continued to ask the first question of each half of the argument today, and Chief Justice Roberts continued to ask around to see if people have additional questions, so some of the new features of the Post-Pandemic oral argument process at SCOTUS seem to be coalescing.
(1) A small bit of background is necessary to understand what is going on in this case. First, when a state court is holding someone under color of law and there is an allegation that there is something unconstitutional about the detainment, the incarcerated person may want to try to get into federal court for review of their situation, thinking the federal government will be both more fair and more educated/professional. The path to do this is to file a write of habeas corpus with the appropriate federal court. Because prisoners who had been sentenced to death were using the habeas process essentially to delay their executions, Congress in 1996 passed AEDPA - the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This act provides a huge amount of deference to the state courts and severely curtails the length of time a prisoner has to challenge their detention through a habeas petition. Essentially, to survive a habeas motion now, the prisoner must show that the decision of the state court "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court."
(2) In Brown v. Davenport, yesterday's first case, the Court asked a rather technical question - whether AEDPA's requirements are satisfied if a court reviews a state decision and determines that the standards established by the Supreme Court in the case of Brecht v. Abrahamson were violated, or if the court has to conduct an independent, secondary review to determine whether statutory standards for the issuance of habeas relief as found in section 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1) also need to be independently satisfied. Everyone was a bit confused, because the Brecht standards are mostly subsumed within the basic AEDPA standard already - this led to lots of open speculation over whether this was turning into overly technocratic hairsplitting. Most of the circuits that have considered this question say that both standards need to be met - here, the 6th Circuit was striking out a bit on its own in suggesting that the Brecht standards were enough. Because of that, it seems likely that moving forward lip service will at least have to be paid to both tests to make sure both constitutional requirements and statutory requirements are being appropriately met.
(3) If you're confused after reading those two paragraphs, welcome to the club. This is a confusing subject area. The bottom line: it's really, really hard to get a writ of habeas corpus from a federal court overruling state court findings that someone should be put to death, and it requires a pretty extraordinary amount of incompetence or blatant disreagard for Constitutional principles on the part of the state court to be overturned on habeas grounds.
(4) In Hemphill v. New York, the Court was asked when a defendant forfeits the right to exclude evidence under the Confrontation Clause by 'opening the door' to the evidence coming in. To vastly simplify the situation, the defendant in this case argued that someone else committed the crime he was accused of committing, and suggested that the crime was committed with a 9 millimeter weapon. The police had found a 9 millimeter bullet at a third party's house during the investigation. The prosecution used this testimony from the defendant to introduce evidence of the third party admitting to having a .357 rather than a 9 millimeter gun, attempting to rebut the argument that the third party was using a 9 millimeter. Under New York law, the defendant "opened the door" to the prosecution introducing the .357 evidence when the defense referenced the third party having been in the presence of a bullet from a different kind of gun. The third party himself was not brought in as a witness - a statement from questioning the third party during the investigation is what was introduced. As a result, the defendant had no chance to cross-examine, and the Confrontation Clause was arguably violated. Got all that? *Deep Breath* I'll do my best to explain all of this more clealry when the opinion itself is released and we see what the Court ends up really focusing on.
(5) Quote of the day: MS. MIGNOLA: "... Again, if you -- well, I -- I see that you -- you doubt what I'm saying there, Justice Breyer." JUSTICE BREYER: "No, I'm not doubting it. I just want you to explain it." Justice Breyer, definitely doubting what the attorney for New York was saying during her argument.
(6) Justice Thomas continued to ask the first question of each half of the argument today, and Chief Justice Roberts continued to ask around to see if people have additional questions, so some of the new features of the Post-Pandemic oral argument process at SCOTUS seem to be coalescing.
