A couple of interesting items on latest SCOTUS order list

Most of the case dispositions on this morning’s Supreme Court’s order list are cert denials, though there are a couple of items of interest for sentencing and criminal justice fans. 

First, the Supreme Court issued another Sixth Amendment GVR based on Erlinger, but this one comes in a state case out of Colorado involving application of its habitual offender law.  (Here is a link to the cert petition that secured the GVR in Fields v. Colorado.)

Second, Justice Thiomas, joined by Justice Alito, dissented from the denial of certiorari in a criminal case from Ohio that involved a conviction reversed by the Sixth Circuit on habeas review.  As suggested by the start of his eight-page dissent in Davis v. Smith, Justice Thomas is quite displeased with both the disposition of this case and the Sixth Circuit’s habeas work more generally:

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) sharply limits the power of federal habeas courts to review state criminal convictions.  The statute permits relief only when there is “no possibility fairminded jurists could disagree that the state court’s decision conflicts with this Court’s precedents.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102 (2011).  Unfortunately, some Sixth Circuit judges have “acquired a taste for disregarding AEDPA” and our cases on how to apply it. Rapelje v. Blackston, 577 U.S. 1019, 1021 (2015) (Scalia, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). The decision below is the latest example of this practice.  Because I would not overlook the Sixth Circuit’s blatant and repeated disrespect for the rule of law, I respectfully dissent.