noting that “if I cannot depart from the law of the circuit, I may still ask the question as to consti- tutionality in light of governing decisions by the Supreme Court.”
How later courts described this case
- noting that “if I cannot depart from the law of the circuit, I may still ask the question as to consti- tutionality in light of governing decisions by the Supreme Court.”
- suggesting that § 2254(d)(1) is “inconsis- tent with our fundamental obligations as judges” and joining Judge Noo- nan’s “sagacious concurrence”
- applying “some evidence” standard to deny petition based on “especially cruel and callous” nature of the offense where petitioner had yet to complete minimum term
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
I fully join in Judge Noonan’s sagacious concurrence. Would that it were the law of the land. I add only a couple of thoughts.
After affording federal courts the power to issue writs of habeas corpus in state eases, Congress tells us in AEDPA that we may not grant relief to citizens who are being held in prison in violation of their constitutional rights unless the constitutional error that led to their unlawful conviction or sentence is one that could not have been made by a reasonable jurist. Whether it was reasonable for a state court to misapprehend the dictates of the Constitution in a particular case hardly seems relevant to a citizen’s right not to be imprisoned in violation of the fundamental liberties he is granted by the document that governs our societal structure. Nor is authorizing jurists to determine that a citizen’s detention is unlawful, but that he must remain incarcerated because a magistrate’s error is understandable, consistent with our duty as jurists to enforce the laws and protect the rights of our citizens against arbitrary state action.
Having granted the courts the authority to review state convictions under our habe-as powers, it seems to me inconsistent with our fundamental obligations as judges to require us, except in unusual or exceptional circumstances, to rule for the state regardless of whether it violated the Constitution. Such a mandate appears to me to tell us how to decide a case. That, for the reasons Judge Noonan so well expresses, Congress simply may not do.