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Harbison v. Bell

By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

The Court today released  Harbison v. Bell. The nutshell holding of the case is that federally funded counsel  can do  state clemency proceedings. The 7-2 opinion reads provides a lot of great verbage. The real joy of the opinion, however, is Justice Scalia’s dissent in which he lays into Congress for reasons that most of us know, the AEDPA is — in the words of that Justice, “shoddy.” The best I can tell, a broad majority of the Court has now declared Congress did a poor job in adopting the AEDPA. With both right and left on the Court indicating that the AEDPA is a “sow’s ear,” McFarland v. Scott, or otherwise written in a “shoddy” manner,  this maybe the year where Congress’s finally fixes the AEDPA.continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on April 01, 2009 (boomark / email).