In a deci­sion most sig­nif­i­cant for what it declined to do, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed efforts by state pros­e­cu­tors to fur­ther lim­it the scope of fed­er­al habeas cor­pus review of state crim­i­nal cas­es. In a 6 – 3 vote with Justice Breyer writ­ing for the major­i­ty, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Georgia death-row pris­on­er Marion Wilson (pic­tured), say­ing that he was enti­tled to fed­er­al-court review of the rea­sons why the Georgia state courts had reject­ed his claim that he had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive penal­ty-phase rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dis­sent­ed. The Court reversed a deci­sion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that had denied Wilson’s inef­fec­tive assis­tance claim based upon spec­u­la­tion as to why the state appeals court — which had issued only a one-sen­tence deci­sion — had ear­li­er denied the claim, rather than con­sid­er­ing the rea­sons the tri­al court had actu­al­ly done so. The tech­ni­cal legal issue in the case was how a fed­er­al court should han­dle a habeas cor­pus case filed by a state pris­on­er when the state appel­late court, with­out expla­na­tion, sum­mar­i­ly affirmed a rea­soned low­er-court rul­ing against the pris­on­er. Wilson had been sen­tenced to death in Baldwin County, Georgia in 1997. In his state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings, he alleged that he had been denied the effec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel in his penal­ty-phase pro­ceed­ings when his lawyer failed to inves­ti­gate and present avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that could have spared his life. The state post-con­vic­tion court con­duct­ed an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, after which it denied relief, issu­ing a writ­ten order that explained the court’s rea­son­ing. Wilson then asked the Georgia Supreme Court for per­mis­sion to appeal the order but the court sum­mar­i­ly turned him down say­ing only that ​“it be here­by denied.” Wilson next filed a habeas cor­pus peti­tion ask­ing the fed­er­al courts to review his inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel claim, argu­ing that, under the fed­er­al habeas statute, he was enti­tled to relief because the state court had unrea­son­ably deter­mined the facts and unrea­son­ably applied the law when it reject­ed his claim. The fed­er­al dis­trict court agreed that Wilson had been inef­fec­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ed, but ruled against him nonethe­less, defer­ring to the state court’s con­clu­sion that his tri­al coun­sel’s fail­ures had not been prej­u­di­cial. In an opin­ion that would have cre­at­ed a near­ly insur­mount­able bar for a habeas peti­tion­er to meet, the Eleventh Circuit held that fed­er­al courts should ​“not ​‘look through’ a sum­ma­ry deci­sion on the mer­its to review the rea­son­ing of the low­er state court,” but should lim­it their review to whether any pos­si­ble ratio­nale could sup­port the state appeals court judg­ment. The Supreme Court dis­agreed. Rather than adopt­ing ​“an approach … that would require a fed­er­al habeas court to imag­ine what might have been the state court’s sup­port­ive rea­son­ing,” Justice Breyer said that the habeas court should ​“look through” an unex­plained state court deci­sion on the mer­its and ​“pre­sume that the unex­plained deci­sion adopt­ed the same rea­son­ing” as that employed by the low­er court. That pre­sump­tion, he wrote, may be rebutted if the state is able to show that the unex­plained deci­sion most like­ly rest­ed on oth­er grounds. The Court returned Wilson’s case to the Eleventh Circuit with instruc­tions to review his inef­fec­tive­ness claim under the cor­rect stan­dard. The rul­ing is the sec­ond time this Term the Court has sided with death-row pris­on­ers on pro­ce­dur­al issues affect­ing access to fed­er­al review of their cas­es. In March, the Court issued a rul­ing pre­serv­ing indi­gent death-row pris­on­ers’ access to inves­tiga­tive funds ​“rea­son­ably nec­es­sary” to devel­op their habeas cor­pus claims, over­turn­ing a rul­ing by the Fifth Circuit that had required habeas peti­tion­ers to meet a harsher standard.

(Ram Eachambadi, Supreme Court: fed­er­al habeas court should ​‘look through’ unex­plained state court judg­ment, Jurist, April 17, 2018; Mariam Morshedi, Wilson v. Sellers, Subscript Law, April 17, 2018.) Read the Decision. See U.S. Supreme Court.

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