Court Opinion

ID: 9494970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:51:26.16083+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:44.364413
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment of the court as expressed in Part II.D. However, I am unable to concur in the court’s holding, in Part II.C, that denial of a jury instruction on self-defense violates the United States Constitution as a matter of “clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.... ” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The opinion does not cite, and I have been unable to find, any Supreme Court case holding that the right to present a defense includes a right to specific jury instructions at all, much less an instruction on any particular ground on which the criminal defendant has offered sufficient evidence to support a jury verdict.
The opinion states that this proposition is a rare bird: a fundamental constitutional rule so unexceptional that it has never been drawn into question. This is probably true; however, we are not free to make our own constitutional adjudication.1 We must find that this fundamental eonstitu-*855tional rule has been clearly established by Supreme Court precedent. It has not been.2
This principle does not mean that we can never interpret the contours of a clearly established Supreme Court precedent, nor that the Court must have ruled on exactly this same set of facts. However, to interpret clearly established precedent as resting primarily on “the statement of broad principles and standards,” as our court states at page 9, would go too far. This is particularly true when our judgment is based on principles as broad as “our legal heritage” and “the right to present a meaningful defense.” (Page 9). At a high enough level of generality, virtually any result can be derived from principles as broad as “due process” or “the rule of law.” If AEDPA is to have any meaning, the phrase “clearly established precedent” must refer to results that logically follow from a Supreme Court decision, not simply holdings that are congruent with, or would be an appropriate extension of, such precedent.
I believe that the silence of the Supreme Court may not be construed as clearly established law sufficient to allow a federal court to reverse a state determination. To do so is to slip the constraints imposed by AEDPA, and allow speculation, even if wise speculation, based on what the Supreme Court has not held, to satisfy AED-PA. Given that the Supreme Court has inevitably not held far more than it has held, the exception proposed today would certainly open the door to undermining the AEDPA rule.

. Were we not constrained by AEDPA, we might undertake our own constitutional analysis and find such a constitutional right. For example, the cases cited to show that a failure to grant a defense instruction is a constitutional violation rested on pre-AEDPA decisions by those circuits. See, e.g., Sloan v. Gramley, 215 F.3d 1330, 2000 WL 536164, at *3 (7th Cir. May 1, 2000), citing Everette v. Roth, 37 F.3d 257, 261 (7th Cir.1994); Clemmons v. Delo, 177 F.3d 680 (8th Cir.1999), citing United States v. Solem, 646 F.2d 322, 328 (8th Cir.1980). Furthermore, these deci*855sions are not Supreme Court precedent, and cannot have any impact whatsoever on our analysis.

. The court agrees, at page 8: "There is no Supreme Court decision unmistakably setting down this precise rule ....our inquiry should be ended at that point.