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The New Habeas Corpus In Death Penalty Cases, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers the first systematic examination of Chapter 154, United States Code, which establishes new statutory arrangements for cases in which state prisoners under sentence of death file federal habeas corpus petitions challenging their convictions or sentences. Chapter 154 was enacted as part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Yet its provisions were made applicable only in capital cases arising from states that established qualifying schemes for providing indigent death row prisoners with counsel in state postconviction proceedings. No state’s system for supplying lawyers in state court won approval and, in consequence, Chapter 154’s rules …