Opinion ID: 626317
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Standard of review for relief.

Text: Next, the Court must determine the standard by which to determine whether the Saltses are entitled to relief under Holloway. The dissent argues that Neal v. Puckett [44] directs, under the guise of confining our review to the state court's decision, that we ignore the state appeals court's application of law contrary to Supreme Court precedent, and instead presume the state appeals court identified and applied Holloway. The Court is then to determine whether it can imagine any possible reasonable analysis of that precedent that could support the state appeals court's decision. Neal, however, considered a state court of appeals's decision identifying the correct legal rule and the question was solely whether the state court was unreasonable in its application of that rule. [45] Neal does not speak to the standard of review where a state court applies erroneous law. Nor can Neal be read beyond the situation before the Court there, to stand for the proposition that, to grant habeas relief, the habeas court must always determine that the relevant legal tests could not have been reasonably applied by the state court to deny relief. Such a reading would require, for example, a habeas court to assume a state court applied legal rules it did not, and then ask whether such rules could still reasonably support the result. That reading, however, would run afoul of the Supreme Court's command that, where a state court does not apply a legal test, our review is not circumscribed by a state court conclusion. [46] Indeed, applying Neal to the case before us would ignore the text of AEDPA. The statute states habeas relief shall not be granted unless the state court's adjudication resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law .... [47] The Supreme Court, in the seminal AEDPA case of Williams v. Taylor , stressed the need to provide these two grounds with separate and independent meaning. [48] The Saltses have shown that the state appeals court's decision was contrary to clearly established Federal law. That is sufficient to remove § 2254(d)(1)'s bar to relief. They need not also show that the state appeals court's decision involved an unreasonable application of such law. [49] Accordingly, as the Saltses have demonstrated that the Mississippi Court of Appeal's decision was contrary to established Supreme Court precedent, they may obtain relief if they can show, on de novo review, that they are in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States. [50]