SCOTUS issues another notable 7-2 per curiam procedural reversal in a capital habeas case

The first “opinion” of the current Supreme Court Term was handed down as a curious little per curiam ruling in Hamm v. Smith after a recond number of relists.  As dicussed in this post from early November 2024, the Court by a 7-2 voted GVRed a capital case conderning issues of intellectual disability (with Justices Thomas and Gorsuch indictating they would have granted cert to hear the case on the merits).  And thanks to this new ruling today from the court in Andrew v. White, this per curiam ruling in favor of a capital defendant’s cert petition no longer standar alone.   Here is how today’s ruling starts:

An Oklahoma jury convicted Brenda Andrew of murdering her husband, Rob Andrew, and sentenced her to death.  The State spent significant time at trial introducing evidence about Andrew’s sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife, much of which it later conceded was irrelevant.  In a federal habeas petition, Andrew argued that this evidence had been so prejudicial as to violate the Due Process Clause.  The Court of Appeals rejected that claim because, it thought, no holding of this Court established a general rule that the erroneous admission of prejudicial evidence could violate due process.  That was wrong.  By the time of Andrew’s trial, this Court had made clear that when “evidence is introduced that is so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides a mechanism for relief.” Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 825 (1991).

Intriguingly, Justice Alito concurs via an opinion of just one paragraph:

I concur in the judgment because our case law establishes that a defendant’s due-process rights can be violated when the properly admitted evidence at trial is overwhelmed by a flood of irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence that renders the trial fundamentally unfair. See Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 825 (1991); Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1, 12 (1994); cf. Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 726 (1963).  I express no view on whether that very high standard is met here.

JusticeThomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissents in an opinion that, at 18 pages, runes eight pages longer than the Court’s per curiam opinion. Here is how the dissent begins:

Our precedent under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) establishes several rules for identifying clearly established federal law. 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(1). We have instructed lower courts to avoid framing our precedents at too high a level of generality; to carefully distinguish holdings from dicta; and to refrain from treating reserved questions as though they have already been answered. The Tenth Circuit followed these rules.  The Court today does not. Instead, it summarily vacates the opinion below for failing to elevate to “clearly established” law the broadest possible interpretation of a onesentence aside in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991). In doing so, the Court blows past Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62 (1991), which, months after Payne, reserved the very question that the Court says Payne resolved.  And, worst of all, it redefines “clearly established” law to include debatable interpretations of our precedent.  It is this Court, and not the Tenth Circuit, that has deviated from settled law.  I respectfully dissent.