Politics And Current Events

[count2infinity]

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

meowd and meowd hard

[MR25]

I feel like this is going to set a bad precedent. So much for the "right to a fair trial" part of the Constitution

[NTP66]

Somewhere, Shyster just got a tingle

[count2infinity]

Very pro-life...

[AuthorTony]

I'm sure shyster will be along shortly to explain how what Thomas meant was the exact opposite of what that tweet says, but if there's any semblance of truth, that's horrifying.

[Viva la Ben]

I’m sure the leftist judges have said worse

[faftorial]

lol

[count2infinity]

Why did I feel like I was watching a Sunday sermon?

[Tomas]

What's wrong with you, Hungary...

[iamjs]

Russia permanently banned more than 900 American politicians, celebrities and executives from entering the country, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and actor Morgan Freeman.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced the bans on Saturday as part of a response to sanctions imposed on the country as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, as well as others who have publicly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin. In total, 963 people are now banned.

Also on the list: Senators John McCain and Harry Reid.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 884122002/

[NTP66]

[MR25]

lol

We're **** doomed.

[tifosi77]

The good news: Taylor is polling at 5% in a survey with a margin of error of +/- 4.4%.

Kemp is comfortably north of 60%, and it feels icky to be thankful for that.

[faftorial]

There is the American Taliban.

[Viva la Ben]

[faftorial]

That should set Trump off. Changing the rules after the fact...

[Shyster]

I feel like this is going to set a bad precedent. So much for the "right to a fair trial" part of the Constitution

To be clear, the "affront" described in the opinion is federal courts interfering with state courts, not the notion that someone might be innocent. There are very, very limited circumstances where a federal court can review what a state court did. That's been the case for literally the entire history of this country. And that is because the states are sovereign entities, and the decisions of their courts cannot be interfered with lightly. The same sort of thing applies to the division of tasks between courts in the same state, and between lower and higher federal courts. Trial courts, for example, are generally the exclusive venue for weighing the credibility of witnesses and the veracity of testimony, and those credibility determinations generally cannot be overturned on appeal, no matter how much the appellate judges might disagree. As someone who has handled dozens of appeals, appeals are not "do overs."

In terms of a "right to a fair trial," this case is addressing post-conviction habeas review. Before we get to that review, the defendant must have been found guilty at trial, that conviction must have been upheld on appeal, and every other state-court vehicle for review (such as the PA Post Conviction Relief Act) has also been exhausted. We're talking about something that happens years after a conviction. The SCOTUS has held that if the defendant didn't introduce evidence during all of those state-court proceedings, then they cannot introduce it for the first time on habeas review. That's the holding.

I'm sure I could also get plenty of social-media clicks by pulling one sentence out of a 27-page opinion and misrepresenting the meaning of that sentence to people who don't have the training and experience to understand what the case is about.

[RonnieFranchise]

The only way this could be better is if it was Trump’s real boy Oz looking for it instead of his fake boy McCormick.

[tifosi77]

Is there any exception that accounts for why such evidence was not presented at state-level proceedings? (Not that it's necessarily relevant here, just curious)

[Shyster]

Is there any exception that accounts for why such evidence was not presented at state-level proceedings? (Not that it's necessarily relevant here, just curious)

The petitioner here was arguing that there should be an exception because of ineffective assistance of counsel at the post-conviction-relief stage. Basically, the argument was that the lawyers at the post-conviction-relief stage were ineffective because they didn't argue that the trial lawyers were ineffective. The Court rejected that argument and said that unless the argument is raised before the state court during the state court's post-conviction-relief process, it cannot be raised for the first time during a habeas proceeding in federal court, which is basically a collateral attack on whatever occurred before the state court.

Not sure if that answers the question.

[tifosi77]

So here's a fun change of pace: With the ongoing drought in the American Southwest, Lake Mead is drying up and revealing the long-dumped corpses of mafia hit victims.

Mystery Of Lake Mead Body in Barrel

So that's fun.

[Shyster]

Also not mentioned by the clickbaity tweets above is that the case involves a statute. Specifically, under the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act*, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2):

(2) If the applicant has failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings, the court shall not hold an evidentiary hearing on the claim unless the applicant shows that-
(A) the claim relies on-
(i) a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable; or
(ii) a factual predicate that could not have been previously discovered through the exercise of due diligence; and
(B) the facts underlying the claim would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.

The Court's majority opinion held that when § 2254(e)(2) says that a federal court "shall not hold an evidentiary hearing," it means that a federal court shall not hold an evidentiary hearing (unless the delineated conditions apply). In other words, the statute means what it says. If Congress wants to amend the statute to add an exception for ineffective-counsel claims that arose during post-conviction proceedings, it can certainly do so. But a headline of "SCOTUS Holds That a Statute Means What It Says" isn't going to bring in the clicks like "Clarence Thomas Creates Sacred Right to Kill People."


* AEDPA passed the Senate 91–8 and the House 293–133 and was signed into law by President Clinton in April 1996.

[tifosi77]

AEDPA is one of the more sinister reforms from the 90s. But I've become anti-death penalty in every instance, so I guess that opinion follows.

[Shyster]

Today's decision does make it more difficult for defendants to raise a habeas challenge to their convictions, at least as to alleged errors at the post-conviction stage. Under AEDPA, a federal court cannot conduct a hearing to admit evidence of alleged ineffective assistance and must rely on the state-court record, but if the alleged error is the failure to put evidence in the state-court record, then the defendant is basically SOL because no such evidence will ever be in the record. But it does strike me that that result is compelled by the statute in question.

Seems to me like this is a case where Congress passed a s**tty statute that has unfair and s**tty consequences, which is hardly a novel event.