Law Commons^™

Possible Reliance: Protecting Legally Innocent Johnson Claimants, Keagan Potts

Michigan Law Review

The writ of habeas corpus presents the last chance for innocent defendants to obtain relief from invalid convictions and sentences. The writ constitutes a limited exception to the finality of judgments. Given the role finality plays in conserving judicial resources and deterring criminal conduct, exceptions created by habeas must be principally circumscribed. Since the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause in Johnson v. United States, the federal courts of appeals have attempted to develop a test that protects the writ from abuse by Johnson claimants.

This Note first contributes a new understanding of the …

A Suspended Death Sentence: Habeas Review Of Expedited Removal Decisions, Lauren Schusterman

Michigan Law Review

Expedited removal allows low-level immigration officers to summarily order the deportation of certain noncitizens, frequently with little to no judicial oversight. Noncitizens with legitimate asylum claims should not find themselves in expedited removal. When picked up by immigration authorities, they should be referred for a credible fear interview and then for more thorough proceedings.

Although there is clear congressional intent that asylum seekers not be subjected to expedited removal, mounting evidence suggests that expedited removal fails to identify bona fide asylum seekers. Consequently, many of them are sent back to persecution. Such decisions have weighty consequences, but they have remained …

Equitable Gateways: Toward Expanded Federal Habeas Corpus Review Of State Court Criminal Convictions, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

State prisoners who file federal habeas corpus petitions face a maze of procedural and substantive restrictions that effectively prevent almost all prisoners from obtaining meaningful review of their convictions. But it is a mistake to think that habeas litigation is just a Kafkaesque nightmare with no constructive potential. Federal courts do sometimes cut through the doctrinal morass to consider state prisoners’ claims, relying on what this Articleterms "equitable gateways" to federal habeas relief. Litigants and courts generally underestimate the potential these gateways offer, with the result that habeas litigation does not focus on them as often as it should. Here …

Looking Backward And Forward At The Suspension Clause, G. Edward White

Michigan Law Review

Review of Amanda L. Tyler's Habeas Corpus in Wartime: From the Tower of London to Guantanamo Bay.

What Is "New"?: Defining "New Judgement" After Magwood, Patrick Cothern

Michigan Law Review

Habeas corpus petitioners must navigate the procedural barriers of the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) before courts consider their petitions on the merits. Among the barriers imposed is a general prohibition on “second or successive” habeas petitions, meaning a petitioner who previously filed a habeas petition may not bring another, with limited exceptions. One such exception, recognized by the Supreme Court in Magwood v. Patterson, allows for a second habeas petition after the petitioner obtains a “new judgment.” Magwood and AEDPA, however, left the term “new judgment” undefined. This Note summarizes the history of habeas corpus in the …

Litigating Federal Habeas Corpus Cases: One Equitable Gateway At A Time, Eve Brensike Primus

Other Publications

Habeas corpus, also known as the Great Writ, was meant to be a “bulwark against convictions that violate fundamental fairness,” according to the Supreme Court. Yet today, federal courts provide relief in fewer than half of one percent of cases in which a non-capital state prisoner seeks relief through habeas. The Great Writ, it would seem, is no longer so great. In Litigating Federal Habeas Corpus Cases: One Equitable Gateway at a Time, Eve Brensike Primus examines the various procedural and substantive hurdles that have been erected in the past half century that make it nearly impossible for state prisoners …

Pinholster's Hostility To Victims Of Ineffective State Habeas Counsel, Jennifer Utrecht

Michigan Law Review

Cullen v. Pinholster foreclosed federal courts from considering new evidence when reviewing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) petitions for claims previously adjudicated on the merits in state court. This decision has a particularly adverse effect on petitioners whose state habeas counsel left an incomplete or undeveloped record. This Note discusses strategies for victims of ineffective state habeas counsel to avoid the hostile mandate of Pinholster. It argues that, in light of Martinez v. Ryan’s recognition of the importance of counsel in initialreview collateral proceedings, courts should be wary of dismissing claims left un- or underdeveloped by ineffective state habeas counsel. It …

The Demise Of Habeas Corpus And The Rise Of Qualified Immunity: The Court's Ever Increasing Limitations On The Development And Enforcement Of Constitutional Rights And Some Particularly Unfortunate Consequences, Stephen R. Reinhardt

Michigan Law Review

The collapse of habeas corpus as a remedy for even the most glaring of constitutional violations ranks among the greater wrongs of our legal era. Once hailed as the Great Writ, and still feted with all the standard rhetorical flourishes, habeas corpus has been transformed over the past two decades from a vital guarantor of liberty into an instrument for ratifying the power of state courts to disregard the protections of the Constitution. Along with so many other judicial tools meant to safeguard the powerless, enforce constitutional rights, and hold the government accountable, habeas has been slowly eroded by a …

Substantive Habeas, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

Substantive Habeas identifies the US. Supreme Court's recent shift in its habeas jurisprudence from procedure to the substance of habeas review and explores the implications of this change. For decades, the US. Supreme Court has attempted to control the flood of habeas corpus petitions by imposing procedural requirements on prisoners seeking to challenge constitutional error in their cases. These restrictive procedural rules have remained at the center of habeas decision making until recently. Over the past few years, instead of further constraining the procedural gateway for habeas cases, the Supreme Court has shifted its focus to the substance of habeas. …

Effective Trial Counsel After Martinez V. Ryan: Focusing On The Adequacy Of State Procedures, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Everyone knows that excessive caseloads, poor funding, and a lack of training plague indigent defense delivery systems throughout the states, such that the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright is largely unfulfilled. Commentators have disagreed about how best to breathe life into Gideon . Many disclaim any possibility that federal habeas corpus review of state criminal cases could catalyze reform give n the many procedural obstacle s that currently prevent state prisoners from getting into federal court. But the Supreme Court has recently taken a renewed interest in using federal habeas review to address the problem of ineffective attorneys in state …

To Plea Or Not To Plea: Retroactive Availability Of Padilla V. Kentucky To Noncitizen Defendants On State Postconviction Review, Jaclyn Kelley

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The United States incarcerates hundreds of thousands of noncitizen criminal defendants each year. In 2010, there were about 55,000 "criminal aliens" in federal prisons, accounting for approximately 25 percent of all federal prisoners. In 2009, there were about 296,000 noncitizens in state and local jails. Like Jose, these defendants usually do not know that their convictions may make them automatically deportable under the INA. Under the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky, criminal defense attorneys have an affirmative duty to give specific, accurate advice to noncitizen clients regarding the deportation risk of potential pleas. This rule helps assure …

Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak

Michigan Law Review

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client's agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is …

A Crisis In Federal Habeas Law, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Everyone recognizes that federal habeas doctrine is a mess. Despite repeated calls for reform, federal judges continue to waste countless hours reviewing habeas petitions only to dismiss the vast majority of them on procedural grounds. Broad change is necessary, but to be effective, such change must be animated by an overarching theory that explains when federal courts should exercise habeas jurisdiction. In Habeas for the Twenty-First Century: Uses, Abuses, and the Future of the Great Writ, Professors Nancy King and Joseph Hoffmann offer such a theory. Drawing on history, current practice, and empirical data, King and Hoffmann find unifying themes …

The Illusory Right To Counsel, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Imagine a woman wrongly accused of murdering her fianc6. She is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, she faces a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Her family scrapes together enough money to hire two attorneys to represent her at trial. There is no physical evidence connecting her to the murder, but the prosecution builds its case on circumstantial inferences. Her trial attorneys admit that they were so cocky and confident that she would be acquitted that they did not bother to investigate her case or file a single pre-trial motion. Rather, they waived the …

A Structural Vision Of Habeas Corpus, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

As scholars have recognized elsewhere in public law, there is no hermetic separation between individual rights and structural or systemic processes of governance. To be sure, it is often helpful to focus on a question as primarily implicating one or the other of those categories. But a full appreciation of a structural rule includes an understanding of its relationship to individuals, and individual rights can both derive from and help shape larger systemic practices. The separation of powers principle, for example, is clearly a matter of structure, but much of its virtue rests on its promise to help protect the …

Litigation Strategies For Dealing With The Indigent Defense Crisis, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

The indigent defense delivery system in the United States is in a state of crisis. Public defenders routinely handle well over 1,000 cases a year, more than three times the number of cases that the American Bar Association says one attorney can handle effectively. As a result, many defendants sit in jail for months before even speaking to their court-appointed lawyers. And when defendants do meet their attorneys, they are often disappointed to learn that these lawyers are too overwhelmed to provide adequate representation. With public defenders or assigned counsel representing more than 80% of criminal defendants nationwide, the indigent …

Examining Presidential Power Through The Rubric Of Equity, Eric A. White

Michigan Law Review

In this Note I propose a method to examine presidents' actions taken outside the normal bounds of executive power by employing the general rubric of equity, in an attempt to find when the president acts with what I term "practical legitimacy." This would be a new category for executive actions that, while perhaps arguably illegal, are so valuable that we want to treat them as legitimate exercises of executive power. To do so, I first examine the history of equity, noting the many relevant parallels to our modern conception of executive power In light of these parallels, I argue that …

Procedural Obstacles To Reviewing Ineffective Assistance Of Trial Counsel Claims In State And Federal Postconviction Proceedings., Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Ineffective assistance of trial counsel is one of the most frequently raised claims in state and federal postconviction petitions. This is hardly surprising given reports of trial attorneys who refuse to investigate their cases before trial, never meet with their clients before the day of trial, and fail to file any motions or object to inadmissible evidence offered at trial. Unfortunately, the current structure of indigent defense funding makes it impossible for many public defenders to provide effective representation to their clients.

Mostly Harmless: An Analysis Of Post-Aedpa Federal Habeas Corpus Review Of State Harmless Error Determinations, Jeffrey S. Jacobi

Michigan Law Review

Sixty years ago, in Kotteakos v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a small class of so-called harmless errors committed by courts did not require correction. The Court acknowledged that some judicial errors, though recognizable as errors, did not threaten the validity of criminal convictions and therefore did not quite require reversal. Specifically, the Court held that errors that violated federal statutes should be deemed harmless unless they had a "substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." While Kotteakos represented the Supreme Court's first treatment of the concept of harmlessness, other courts had a …

When Constitutional Worlds Colide: Resurrecting The Framers' Bill Of Rights And Criminal Procedure, George C. Thomas Iii

Michigan Law Review

For two hundred years, the Supreme Court has been interpreting the Bill of Rights. Imagine Chief Justice John Marshall sitting in the dim, narrow Supreme Court chambers, pondering the interpretation of the Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process in United States v. Burr. Aaron Burr was charged with treason for planning to invade the Louisiana Territory and create a separate government there. To help prepare his defense, Burr wanted to see a letter written by General James Wilkinson to President Jefferson. In ruling on Burr's motion to compel disclosure, Marshall departed from the literal language of the Sixth Amendment - …

Incorporating The Suspension Clause: Is There A Constitutional Right To Federal Habeas Corpus For State Prisoners?, Jordan Steiker

Michigan Law Review

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court adopted generous standards governing federal habeas petitions by state prisoners. At that time, the Court suggested, rather surprisingly, that its solicitude toward such petitions might be constitutionally mandated by the Suspension Clause, the only provision in the Constitution that explicitly refers to the "Writ of Habeas Corpus." Now, thirty years later, the Court has essentially overruled those expansive rulings, and Congress has considered, though not yet enacted, further limitations on the availability of the writ. Despite these significant assaults on the habeas forum, the constitutional argument appears to have been entirely abandoned. The …

Guilt: Henry Friendly Meets The Maharal Of Prague, Irene Merker Rosenberg, Yale L. Rosenberg

Michigan Law Review

So while the overnight deliberation rule is at least partially bound up with the question of reliability and relates to the judicial process itself, the broader and more fundamental issue raised by this law is whether we should free the guilty to preserve a value that we deem necessary to proper working of the criminal justice process, regardless of the culpability of individual defendants. To this Judge Friendly's answer is generally no, 113 and the MaHaRaL's is yes.

Form And Function In The Administration Of Justice: The Bill Of Rights And Federal Habeas Corpus, Larry W. Yackle

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I critiques the Report's insistence that accurate fact finding exhausts, or nearly exhausts, the objectives of criminal justice, identifies the fundamental role of the Bill of Rights in the American political order, and situates federal habeas corpus within that framework. Part II traces the Report's historical review of the federal habeas jurisdiction and critiques the Report's too-convenient reliance on selected materials that, on examination, fail to undermine conventional understandings of the writ's development as a postconviction remedy. Part III responds to the Report's complaints regarding current habeas corpus practice and refutes contentions that the habeas jurisdiction overburdens federal dockets …

Federal Habeas Corpus Review Of State Judgments, Department Of Justice Office Of Legal Policy

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Report carries out a review of the historical development of the federal habeas corpus jurisdiction; examines its contemporary character and operation; and discusses relevant policy considerations. The Report concludes that federal habeas corpus as a post-conviction remedy for state prisoners should be abolished or limited as far as possible. The limited reform proposals that were passed by the Senate in 1984 and that are currently before Congress as Title II of the proposed Criminal Justice Reform Act provide the best immediate prospect for improvement.

Habeas Corpus: Its History And Its Future, Charles Alan Wright

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Constitutional History of Habeas Corpus by William F. Duker

Stone V. Powell And The Effective Assistance Of Counsel, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Part I briefly identifies the considerations underlying the Stone Court's decision to limit habeas corpus review of fourth amendment claims. Part II then argues against applying Stone to the sixth amendment claim. After establishing the analytic difference between the two constitutional claims and examining Stone's "opportunity for full and fair litigation" standard, it concludes that Stone is fully consistent with free review of habeas corpus petitions alleging incompetent handling of fourth amendment questions. Finally, responding to a popular interpretation of Stone, Part II demonstrates that the possibility that ineffectiveness claims may not further the determination of a defendant's …

Beyond Custody: Expanding Collateral Review Of State Convictions, Timothy C. Hester

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article advocates extension of collateral review to embrace all parties alleging deprivation of federally guaranteed rights in the state criminal process, regardless of whether the party fulfills the habeas corpus custody requirement. Part I assesses the sufficiency of Supreme Court certiorari jurisdiction to monitor adequately state adjudications of federal constitutional rights, coupled with an evaluation of the technical competency and institutional posture of state courts. Part II examines the significance of the custody limitation on collateral review, both as a substantive element of habeas corpus relief and as a mechanism for funnelling limited judicial resources. Part III presents two …

The Citizen On Trial: The New Confession Rules, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Commenting on why it has taken the United States so long to apply "the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to counsel to the proceedings in the stationhouse as well as to those in the courtroom" - as the Supreme Court did in Miranda v. Arizona - this author notes that, "To a large extent this is so because here, as elsewhere, there has been a wide gap between the principles to which we aspire and the practices we actually employ."

Habeas Corpus - Procedural Prerequisites - Motion Denied For Failure To Appeal Convicion Despite Failure Being Excusable, Harvey O. Mierke Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff was convicted of robbery in a federal district court and, although represented by counsel, failed to appeal within the statutory ten-day period. Three months later he filed a motion in the same court under section 2255 of the judicial code to vacate the sentence on the ground that the conviction, because it was based on a coerced confession, was unconstitutionally obtained without due process of law. The motion was denied and the denial affirmed, in the absence of any attempt to excuse the failure to appeal. On reargument, plaintiff attempted to excuse his failure to appeal by alleging that …

Constitutional Law - Post-Conviction Due Process - Right Of Indigent To Review Of Non-Constitutional Trial Errors, Robert C. Casad S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this comment is to examine a new development. in post-conviction due process: Griffin v. Illinois. This case announces a new principle of constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment based on an almost indistinguishable combination of due process and equal protection elements.