Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-826_p702.pdf
Page Number: 43.0

14 

BROWN v. DAVENPORT 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

is no.  And that is not just what our precedents say.  It is 
also what the real world shows.  Several Circuits formerly
followed  the  rule  the  majority  announces  today:  Habeas 
courts there could not grant relief before separately apply-
ing Brecht and AEDPA/Chapman.  Yet neither the majority
nor the State has come up with a single case (nor have I) in
which a court held that a petitioner satisfied Brecht but not 
AEDPA/Chapman.  Which  for  all  the  reasons  Fry,  Ayala, 
and I have given is no wonder.  Apply Brecht alone or apply 
both Brecht and AEDPA: The same people will, and will not, 
receive habeas relief.6 

All today’s holding does going forward is compel habeas
courts,  and  the  parties  before  them,  to  spin  their  wheels.
All it does is what Fry observed “certainly makes no sense”: 
require “formal application of [two] tests” when only one— 
Brecht—matters.  551 U. S., at 120.  Of course, it is not the 
worst thing in the world to have to do unnecessary work of
this kind; parties and courts alike will find ways to limit the
inefficiencies  involved.  But  really,  why  should  they  have 
to?  Our  prior  decisions  got  the  question  here  right.  The 
courts that have followed their instructions did everything
needed.  Better, by far, to have left it at that. 

—————— 

6 The  decision  here  does  not  show  otherwise,  contra  the  majority’s 
claim  that  it  “illustrates”  how  today’s  apply-both-tests  directive  “mat-
ter[s].”  Ante, at 16. The only way that claim could be true is if the ma-
jority  believed  Davenport’s  claim  passes  the  Brecht  test  (and  yet  fails 
AEDPA/Chapman, as it holds).  But the majority believes nothing of the 
sort.    The  majority  merely  indulges  the  “assum[ption]”  that  the  Sixth 
Circuit could have found Brecht satisfied.  Ante, at 16, 25.  And the ma-
jority’s  analysis  shows  how  far-fetched  it  thinks  that  assumption  is. 
Though  under  the  banner  of  AEDPA,  the  majority  disagrees  at  every 
turn with the Sixth Circuit’s reasons for granting relief under Brecht— 
both the Sixth Circuit’s assessment of the record and its reading of this 
Court’s precedent.  See ante, at 21–25.  No one could read today’s opinion 
and  think  the  majority  harbors  “grave  doubt”  that  the  trial  error  here 
affected the verdict.