ABA opposes Senate Judiciary Committee provisions on habeas corpus
 In a letter (PDF) to the Chair and Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the ABA has objected to S.1088, a committee-proposed substitute to the proposed “Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005.” The ABA argues that the bill as amended would overturn several Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a comprehensive reform of habeas corpus that resulted in nearly 10 years of challenges and questions for courts to resolve. Contrary to the claimed goals of the Act, the letter says, the constitutional questions and legal inconsistencies raised by S.1088 are even more complicated and troubling than those that were posed by AEDPA.
Among the issues raised by S.1088 are that it would
- dismiss all federal claims “with prejudice” if the claimant has not exhausted state court remedies, including claims involving government misconduct;
- create “virtually unattainable procedural and other requirements to establish innocence”;
- strip the federal courts of their remaining, limited jurisdiction to review claims states have refused to consider on state procedural grounds, “leaving state courts at liberty to make erroneous or arbitrary decisions without oversight or possibility of correction”; and
- invite years of litigation and chaos.
“Instead of ‘streamlining’ the appellate process,” the letter says, “the bill will create additional delay and uncertainty for families of crime victims.”
Also on the habeas front, the ABA has filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of House v. Bell (PDF), urging the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt sufficiently robust standards for habeas corpus claims of actual innocence to accommodate evidentiary and procedural shortcomings of the criminal justice system that sometimes lead to erroneous conviction of innocent defendants.
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