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Page Number: 22

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

17 

Opinion of the Court 

Court of Common Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus, and ob-
tained  discharge  in  an  opinion  by  Chief  Justice  Vaughn.
Jones  points  to  one  part  of  Vaughn’s  opinion,  which  criti-
cized the return of the writ for not specifying that the jurors
“kn[e]w and believe[d] th[e] evidence to be full and manifest
against the indicted persons,” without which the jurors’ ver-
dict was “no cause of fine or imprisonment.”  Id., at 142, 124 
Eng. Rep., at 1009.  Jones asks us to read this passage as
reflecting  a  supposed  common-law  rule  that  habeas  relief 
was  available  whenever  a  convicting  court  had  not  found 
the necessary mens rea of a crime.  That reading, however,
entirely misses the actual basis of Vaughn’s opinion, which
was  the  judge’s  absolute  want  of  power  to  question  the
jury’s determination of the facts.  See id., at 149, 124 Eng.
Rep.,  at  1013  (“It  is  absurd  a  jury  should  be  fined  by  the
Judge for going against their evidence, when he who fineth
knows not what it is . . . .  [I]f it be demanded, what is the
fact?  the  Judge  cannot  answer  it”);  see  also  Stephen  375
(“[T]he judges who heard the argument . . . decided that the 
discretion of the jury to believe the evidence or not could not 
be questioned”).  Thus, Bushell’s Case no more undermines 
Watkins than do the justice-of-the-peace cases. 

The  principles  of  Watkins  guided  this  Court’s  under-
standing  of  the  habeas  writ  throughout  the  19th  century 
and well into the 20th.  See Brown, 596 U. S., at ___, n. 1 
(slip  op.,  at  9,  n. 1)  (collecting  cases);  see  also  Johnson  v. 
Zerbst,  304  U. S.  458,  465–466  (1938).    Even  in  Ex parte 
Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 (1880), which held that the constitu-
tionality  of  a  prisoner’s  statute  of  conviction  could  be  re-
viewed  on  habeas  (as  going  to  jurisdiction),7  the  Court 

—————— 

7 The Court seemingly abandoned that notion in Glasgow v. Moyer, 225 
U. S. 420 (1912), which explained that “[t]he principle” that nonjurisdic-
tional errors of substantive law are not cognizable in habeas “is not the 
less applicable because the law which was the foundation of the indict-
ment  and  trial  is  asserted  to  be  unconstitutional  . . . .  [I]f  a  court  has 
jurisdiction of the case the writ of habeas corpus cannot be employed to