SUPREME COURT LAYS OUT GUIDELINES FOR HABEAS CORPUS REVIEW UNDER THE AEDPA

As I have pointed out the Federal Courts may deny a writ of habeas corpus in a state court case even if the state court is wrong as long as the state court reasonably interpreted a United States Supreme Court decision.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court in Renico v. Lett reversed a grant of habeas corpus by lower Federal Courts. The defendant was charged with murder. He killed a cab driver in a liquor store after Lett’s friend, Charles Jones, claimed the cab driver wrongfully ejected him from the cab.

After a nine hour trial and approximately four hours of deliberation the court declared a mistrial. During deliberation the jury sent several notes to the court. One of the notes asked if its deliberations were so loud that other trials were being disrupted. Another asked what would happen if it was unable to come to a verdict. The court called the jury back into the courtroom and after a brief discussion with the forewoman declared a mistrial.

In a second trial Lett was convicted of second degree murder. He appealed claiming a violation of double jeopardy since there was not a “manifest necessity to declare a mistrial.

Chief Justice Roberts., speaking for the majority said:

It is important at the outset to define the question before us. That question is not whether the trial judge should have declared a mistrial. It is not even whether it was an abuse of discretion for her to have done so—the applicable standard on direct review. The question under AEDPA is instead whether the determination of the Michigan Supreme Court that there was no abuse of discretion was “an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law.” . . .

We have explained that “an unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect application of federal law.” . . . Indeed, “a federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly.” . . . Rather, that application must be “objectively unreasonable.”

Therefore, according to the Court, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) as long as the state court is not unreasonable its decision will be upheld by the Federal Courts.

In what might be one of his last dissents, Justice Stevens pointed out that Supreme Court decisions going back to Chief Justice Story’s 1824 decision in United States v. Perez have insisted that the decision to declare a mistrial should not be taken easily. Stevens quoted various Supreme Court decisions as stating;

Thus, we have repeatedly reaffirmed that the power to discharge the jury prior to verdict should be reserved for “extraordinary and striking circumstances,” . . . that the trial judge may not take this “weighty” step, . . . unless and until he has “scrupulously” assessed the situation and “taken care to assure himself that it warrants action on his part foreclosing the defendant from a potentially favorable judgment by the tribunal,” . . . that, to exercise sound discretion, the judge may not act “irrationally,” “irresponsibly,” or “precipitately” but must instead act “deliberately” and “carefully,” . . . and that, in view of “the elusive nature of the problem,” mechanical rules are no substitute in the double jeopardy mistrial context for the sensitive application of general standards, . . . The governing legal principles in this area are just that—principles—and their application to any particular set of facts entails an element of judgment.

He pointed out that the trial judge acted abruptly and did not give counsel a chance to object. Furthermore the jury only had four hours to deliberate and some of that time was taken choosing a foreperson. The case, being a murder case was a serious case and rarely is four hours enough time to consider the various issues. As a result he did not feel that a manifest necessity existed to call a mistrial or that the judge gave the decision sufficient consideration. Steven was joined in the dissent by Sotomeyer and Breyer.