Seeking more number crunching and deep thoughts on the great writ
US District Judge Lynn Adelman’s new article titled “The Great Writ Diminished” aspires to “stimulate a discussion about the current state of habeas corpus. Wonderfully, the article has already started such a discussion in these blog comments, and I want to keep the momentum going in this post.
Specifically, I would like to see a lot more number crunching concerning habeas appeals of state convictions in federal courts. Judge Adelman builds off the ground-breaking 2007 Vanderbilt study which, as discussed here, found that of 2384 non-capital filings examined, petitioners received relief a rate of 1 in every 341 cases filed, whereas of the 267 capital cases examined, about 1 in 8 petitioners received relief. These national numbers may obscure lots of significant state variations and also significant issue-specific variations that could and should tell us a lot more about how the great writ is really working.
I also would like to hear more thoughts about what might seem like the “right” number of habeas grants, especially in light of the inevitable need to triage federal resources. I share Judge Adelman’s instinct that habeas relief is granted too infrequently in non-capital cases, but I also fear that habeas relied is grant too frequently in capital cases. And yet, maybe this is a healthy pattern of “habeas irregularity” on the theory that, given the stakes involved, it is generally sensible for federal courts to micro-manage state capital cases even though this might necessarily mean they will often show perhaps too much deference to state non-capital convictions. Indeed, arguably this is exactly what the Congress that passed AEDPA might want to be happening.
Some related posts: