Source: https://habeascorpusblog.typepad.com/habeas_corpus_blog/apprendi/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 10:44:22+00:00

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Habeas Corpus - District Court Review - COA's Granted!
During the week of July 25, 2011, there were two COA's issued in the district courts.* I am only going to mention the details below without analysis. It's more about the D/D associated with one of the cases that I am going to refrain from any analysis here. I am just going to list them here and then add them to the Pending Second Circuit Cases page.
*Of course, other COA's may have been issued that week (or in prior weeks/months) in unpublished orders. As I have complained about before, those represent a gap in my knowledge about what's pending before the Second Circuit.
I am out of the office for one day and I miss a whole bunch of Supreme Court stuff. I am going to break it up into multiple posts.
I'll start with the cert. denial in Portalatin v. Graham and the companion cases. It's a disappointing ending to these cases. It was a lot more fun and exciting when the Second Circuit had concluded that the statute was unconstitutional. I guess hope now rests on the cert. petition in Battles, the recent New York Court of Appeals case in which the court upheld the statute (for the fourth time, I think), but that had a good dissent from Chief Judge Lippman.
One note on this cert. denial. Sotomayor did not take part in the consideration of the petitions. I am guessing that she did not participate because she was a panel member in one of the Second Circuit's previous decisions reviewing the statute (Brown v. Miller). She also did not participate in the decision on the cert. petition in one of the other cases heard in tandem with Portalatin, Besser v. Walsh.
Courtesy of Sentencing Law and Policy, I see that the Supreme Court denied cert. in those relisted cases that raised a challenge to the "prior conviction" exception to the Apprendi rule. Darn. I was really hoping that that issue would be re-opened.
One other relist matter. One case that had been relisted a bunch of times was Sheets v. Simpson. I had mentioned in my previous post on relists that I am guessing that the relisting would stop and it was now being held in light of the cert. grant in Howes v. Fields. Just to follow up, it was not relisted for this past conference. While it is impossible to know, it appears that the non-relist does appear to mean that it is simply being held by the Court.
If I hear more relisting news, I'll pass it along.
Whether the Ninth Circuit failed to follow the deferential standard under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) when it found that a prosecutor’s proffered race-neutral bases for striking two African-American jurors was insufficient?
As a relisted case, I wonder if this is going to eventually be a GVR under the recent decision in Harrington v. Richter, which criticized the Ninth Circuit for failing to properly apply the deferential standard. Worth watching.
I neglected to post about a summary order from last week. It was a straightforward Portalatin denial. The most notable aspect of it was that the summary order was issued only one day after the argument. That's about the quickest I've seen.
Petitioners have now filed their cert. petitions in Portalatin v. Graham. There are three separate petitions, one each for each of the petitioners, namely Portalatin, Morris, and Phillips.
Should this Court grant this petition for a writ of certiorari to determine whether, when a New York judge imposes an enhanced sentence upon a criminal defendant pursuant to the State’s persistent felony offender statute, the judge’s determination that, considering the history and character of the defendant and the nature and circumstances of his criminal conduct, the imposition of a life sentence would best serve the public interest is itself a factfinding for Apprendi purposes that is required to be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, and whether imposing such enhanced sentence violates clearly-established holdings of this Court under Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and its progeny?
The Court should decide whether it is erroneous and unreasonable to broadly interpret the "fact of a prior conviction" exception to the Apprendi rule so that it encompasses findings regarding the seriousness and extensiveness of those convictions.
If I get a hold of the Phillips petition, I'll add it to the post.
1. The Court should decide the dispositive threshold question as to what rule to use in determining the relevant time for deciding in a post-AEDPA habeas case what Supreme Court precedent applies, i.e. what is “clearly established federal law” under 28 U.S.C. §2254 - - either the date-of-finality rule or the date-of-the-last-reasoned-state-court-decision rule - - thereby resolving the current split among federal Circuit Courts recently deciding this issue.
2. Whether it is erroneous and unreasonable to interpret broadly the "fact of a prior conviction" exception to the Apprendi rule so that it encompasses findings regarding the seriousness and extensiveness of those convictions?
Two really interesting posts over at SCOTUSblog the past couple of days.
The first post has to do with the Troy Davis actual innocence case. According to this Davis's attorneys have filed two separate actions with the Supreme Court asking the Court to accept review of the case. The two actions raise many novel questions, including whether the Circuit Court had the authority to review the district court's decision (which represents the sole issue raised in one of the actions) and the really important question of what's the standard in a free-standing actual innocence claim. Interestingly, it does not appear that Davis is asking the Court to consider whether the free-standing claim actually exists. The questions presented all seem to take for granted that it does exist. That's a big leap forward. Is it justified? Of course, I would say yes, but I am guessing some of the judges would disagree with that.
The second post has to do with some current relists. According to the post, the Court has relisted two cases that directly raises the issue of whether the Court should overule the "prior conviction" exception to the Apprendi rule. Based on the number of relists, it is most likely that a judge is writing a dissent from the denial of certiorari. The other plausible speculation is that three judges are campaigning a fourth (mostly likely Kagan) to agree to grant cert. This could be a big, big deal.
Congratulations to Raymond Lohier! On Sunday, he was confirmed as a Second Circuit judge. Have to say, certainly did take awhile for the Senate to confirm such an uncontroversial nominee.
This post over at BLT states that the Second Circuit is now "Back in Democrats' Hands." Technically that's true as there are now six judges who were appointed by Democratic presidents compared to 5 Republican appointees. But I am not quite sure what that means in reality. Or at least in the reality known as habeasland. Didn't seem to provide much help in Portalatin, where only one of those Democrats voted for petitioner.
There are still two Second Circuit nominations pending before the Senate: Chatigny and Carney. If I hear anything about either, I'll share the news.
A couple of Apprendi-related items this week.
First, on Monday, the Second Circuit issued a summary order in Kross v. Napoli, 08-2507-pr, affirming the denial of habeas under Portalatin. As I have stated previously, I think we can expect to see more of these.
Second, while not exactly habeas-related, the New York Court of Appeals on Tuesday once again rejected a constitutional challenge to the persistent felony offender statute. The case is People v. Battles. That is not particularly interesting. But what is interesting about the decision is the dissent. Despite the fact that this was the fourth time that the Court of Appeals considered this issue, this was the first time that Chief Judge Lippman took part in a decision addressing the issue. In a well-reasoned dissent*, he concluded that the statute was unconstitutional.
*Yes, I know, I am saying well-reasoned because I agree with it. Probably unnecessary to include the "well-reasoned" part. But I did anyways.
Will this well-reasoned dissent raise the Supreme Court's interest in hearing the case? Will the Supreme Court finally and definitively resolve this prolonged legal battle over the constitutionality of the statute? One can only hope.
In between the Second Circuit's decision in Besser and the en banc decision in Portalatin vacating Besser, district court judges granted habeas relief based on Besser in three cases.
Then, there was Barney (habeas was granted on the issue of judicial misconduct at sentencing).
Finally, there was the recent decision in Stevens.
And the funny thing is that, even though there always was the chance that Besser would get vacated by an en banc court, the habeas relief stuck.
As it turns out, the State did not appeal the habeas grant in any of these three cases.
Stevens is currently sitting on the Pending Second Circuit Cases page. But the 30 days ran out last Friday and no notice of appeal was filed. I guess there is a chance that the notice of appeal was filed but it has not been docketed yet. Highly unlikely at this point. I'll remove the case from the list of pending cases once I think it's absolutely clear that no notice of appeal was filed. For now, though, it appears that there is no appeal.
This means that, overall, four petitioners who were sentenced to persistent felony offender sentences were able to get out from under those enhanced sentences.
I know, you are saying, where did you get four? The fourth is Washington, who was one of the four petitioners in the Besser/Portalatin cases. More specifically, he is the petitioner who was granted relief in Washington v. Poole, 507 F.Supp.2d 342 (SDNY 2007).* After habeas relief was granted, the DJ denied the State's request for a stay and Washington was released from prison. As noted in the en banc decision, Washington died while the appeal was pending before the Second Circuit. His case was remanded to the district court for the court to dismiss the petition as moot.
*D/D: I was the attorney in that case. All of this information is public.
Although the petition was eventually dismissed, I think it is fair to count Washington as a fourth case in which the petitioner was able to get the benefit of habeas relief on this issue. Washington received the full relief that was sought in the petition and he was able to experience the full benefit of that relief up until the day he died.

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