Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-679_f2bh.pdf
Page Number: 12.0

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SHOOP v. CASSANO 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

reversed the Sixth Circuit almost two dozen times for fail-
ing  to  apply  AEDPA  properly.  See  10  F. 4th,  at  696–697 
(listing  cases).  Many  of  those  reversals  have  been  sum-
mary.  See ibid.  The Court should add this case to the list. 
Instead, the Court chooses to leave in place a clearly er-
roneous  decision  that  relieves  Cassano  of  his  death  sen-
tence.  In doing so, the Court inflicts a harm on “the State
and its citizens.”  Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, 596 U. S. ___, 
___ (2022) (slip op., at 22).  By saddling the State with the
risk and expense of retrying a repeat murderer’s quarter-
century-old capital case, the Court permits the Court of Ap-
peals  to  “intrud[e]  on  [Ohio’s]  sovereignty  to  a  degree
matched by few exercises of federal judicial authority.”  Id., 
at ___ (slip op., at 7) (internal quotation marks omitted).  At 
worst, the State has lost its sovereign right to “enforce soci-
etal norms through criminal law.”  Ibid. (internal quotation
marks omitted).  At best, if the retrial results in the same 
verdict  and  sentence,  the  Court  will  have  consigned  the
State to several decades’ worth of additional death penalty 
appeals.  See  Ramirez  v.  Collier,  595  U. S.  ___,  ___–___ 
(2022) (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 6–7).  Ohio and 
its citizens deserve better. 

* 

* 

* 

The  Court  of  Appeals  should  have  faithfully  applied 
AEDPA deference and denied the writ.  Its failure to do so 
“illustrate[d] a lack of deference to the state court’s deter-
mination  and  an  improper  intervention  in  state  criminal 
processes, contrary to the purpose and mandate of AEDPA 
and to the now well-settled meaning of and function of ha-
beas corpus in the federal system.”  Harrington, 562 U. S., 
at 104.  Because I would grant the State of Ohio’s petition 
and summarily reverse, I respectfully dissent from denial 
of certiorari.