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Page Number: 24.0

20 

BROWN v. DAVENPORT 

Opinion of the Court 

With nothing in this holding to help him, Mr. Davenport
again asks us to focus on a carefully curated snippet.  Bor-
rowing language from Fry, Ayala observed that “a prisoner
who seeks federal habeas corpus relief must satisfy Brecht, 
and if the state court adjudicated his claim on the merits, 
the  Brecht  test  subsumes  the  limitations  imposed  by
AEDPA.”  Ayala, 576 U. S., at 270 (citing Fry, 551 U. S., at 
119–120).  Again,  though,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  this  much
might carry the day.  When a federal court determines, as 
we  did  in  Ayala,  that  a  petitioner  has  failed  to  carry  his
burden under Brecht, that conclusion subsumes (or perhaps
more  precisely,  obviates  the  need  for)  a  separate  AEDPA 
inquiry; relief must be denied.  But none of this resolves the 
distinct question we face today—whether a petitioner who 
can satisfy Brecht also necessarily secures a victory under
AEDPA.  The Ayala Court had no occasion to address that 
question.  And to the extent it spoke to it, it spoke much as 
Fry had, taking pains to reject any suggestion “that Brecht 
somehow abrogates the limitation on federal habeas relief 
that § 2254(d) plainly sets out.”  Ayala, 576 U. S., at 268.5 
In  the  end,  Mr.  Davenport’s  appeals  to  Fry  and  Ayala
(echoed by the dissent) rest on a misunderstanding of stare 
decisis.  At its best, that doctrine is a call for judicial humil-
ity.  It is a reminder to afford careful consideration to the 
work of our forbearers, their experience, and their wisdom. 
But respect for past judgments also means respecting their 
limits.  This Court has long stressed that “the language of 
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5 If Fry doesn’t seal a win for Mr. Davenport, the dissent argues, Ayala 
does the job on its own.  Post, at 10–12.  But Ayala does no more than 
Fry  to  compel  the  dissent’s  Brecht  2.0  approach.    To  the  contrary,  the 
Ayala Court reversed a lower court that had overturned a conviction un-
der Brecht “ ‘without regard for the state court’s harmlessness determi-
nation.’ ”  Ayala, 756 F. 3d, at 674.  It issued a stern reminder that “the 
highly deferential AEDPA standard applies.”  Ayala, 576 U. S., at 269. 
And its harmless-error analysis deferred repeatedly to the state court’s 
findings.  Id., at 271–285.  These are not the actions of a Court that saw 
Brecht as a stand-alone gateway to habeas relief.