Over the last half-century, the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress have significantly restricted the availability of habeas corpus. The Warren Court expanded the ability of those convicted in state court to raise constitutional issues in federal court on habeas corpus, but since then, the court has created numerous restrictions. These have included imposing strict exhaustion requirements, limiting habeas corpus to already existing constitutional rights, preventing Fourth Amendment claims from being relitigated on habeas corpus and precluding raising issues that were not litigated in state court.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Brown v. Davenport, upholding the murder conviction of a man who was shackled at trial in view of the jury, makes an unjust federal review law more potent, and points to the conservative supermajority’s increasing antagonism toward writs of habeas corpus, says Christopher Wright Durocher at the American Constitution Society.
A federal court may not toss a conviction because of an error at trial simply based on its own assessment of legal precedent, but rather must also consider a state's own evaluation of the mistake through the lens of a federal law, the U.S. Supreme Court held Thursday in a case involving a Michigan man who was shackled during a murder trial.
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