A recent article in the
The New York Times Magazine examines
the effects of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
(AEDPA), which was intended to streamline and shorten capital appeals.
Its title summarizes the statute as "The Law That Keeps People on Death
Row Despite Flawed Trials." Emily Bazelon opens the article with the
story of death-row prison Hector Ayala, who was tried before a jury from
which prosecutors excluded all 7 black or Latino jurors. The federal
appeals court overturned Ayala's death sentence but in turn was reversed
in a 5-4 opinion by the Supreme Court, with Justice Alito saying that
habeas corpus judges should intervene only in "extreme" cases. AEDPA
restricts federal review of habeas corpus appeals, limiting federal
judges to overturning state courts only when a state court decision is
not just wrong, but "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable
application of, clearly established federal law” or “was based on an
unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence
presented in the state court proceeding." The High Court's
interpretation of this language, say Judges
Alex Kozinski and
Stephen Reinhardt of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in separate articles
criticizing the unjust impact of the statute, has often left federal
judges powerless to correct constitutional violations, even when the
defendant appears to be innocent. Bazelon highlights the consequences of
this judicial abstentionism on innocence cases, such as when Troy Davis
was denied a new trial by the federal courts and was executed despite
presenting evidence that "7 of the 9 eyewitnesses who testified against
[him] at trial had recanted, and new witnesses implicated someone else."
The Davis case produced a now-famous statement by Justice Scalia that
habeas corpus is not available to prevent the execution of an innocent
person if he was fairly convicted. A 2007 study showed that rather than
hastening appeals, the average time courts spend on habeas cases has
actually increased since the law went into effect. Instead, the law has
become, in the words of Cornell law professor John Blume, a vehicle
for “agenda-driven judicial policy-making.”
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