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"The Great Writ Diminished"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this piece on SSRN by US District Judge Lynn Adelman.  Here is the abstract: In 2007, an empirical study of 2,384 randomly-selected habeas corpus petitions filed in United States District Courts by state prisoners in non-capital cases found that district courts granted relief in only seven. This amounts to one grant out of every 284 petitions, or a grant rate of approximately 0.35 percent. The author, himself a district judge, has granted habeas relief in 12 cases out of approximately 300, resulting in a grant rate that is much higher than the rate found by the empirical study. Thus, if the author?s experience is any indication, on average district courts are not granting habeas petitions as often as they should be...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 15, 2009 (boomark / email).