Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-826_p702.pdf
Page Number: 17

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

was inappropriate for use in federal habeas review of final 
state-court judgments.  507 U. S., at 633–634.  Instead, the 
Court reasoned, a state prisoner should not receive federal
“habeas relief based on trial error unless” he can show the 
error had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence” 
on the verdict.  Id., at 637 (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).  In reaching its judgment, the Court stressed that un-
doing a final state-court judgment is an “extraordinary rem-
edy,” reserved for only “ ‘extreme malfunctions in the state 
criminal justice system’ ” and different in kind from provid-
ing relief on direct appeal.  Id., at 633–634.  To allow a fed-
eral habeas court to set aside a conviction based on nothing 
more than “speculation that the defendant was prejudiced
by  trial  error”  would  be  to  give  short  shrift  to  the  State’s
“sovereign  interes[t]”  in  its  final  judgment.  Calderon  v. 
Coleman, 525 U. S. 141, 146 (1998) (per curiam).  Much as 
the  Court  had  “filled  the  gaps  of  the  habeas  statute  with 
respect  to  other  matters,”  it  found  it  “necessary  to  do  so” 
again, in a by-now familiar exercise of its equitable discre-
tion.  Brecht, 507 U. S., at 633. 

C 
Three  years  after  Brecht,  and  apparently  finding  the
Court’s  equitable  doctrines  insufficient,  Congress  intro-
duced its own reforms in AEDPA. 

In  many  ways,  the  statute  represented  a  sea  change  in
federal habeas law.  As we have seen, Congress instructed
that, if a state court has adjudicated the petitioner’s claim
on the merits, a federal court “shall not” grant habeas relief 
“unless” certain conditions are satisfied.  § 2254(d).  Some 
of these conditions were new to the law at the time of their 
adoption; all are demanding.  See Richter, 562 U. S., at 102. 
Still, Congress did not wash away everything that came 
before.  While AEDPA announced certain new conditions to 
relief,  it  did  not  guarantee  relief  upon  their  satisfaction.