Court Opinion

ID: 9491924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:27:45.564762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:01.028448
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately.
I concur in the result reached by the majority. I write separately because I disagree with the majority’s approach to the “unreasonableness” standard. The majority combines the not entirely consistent standards enunciated by the First and Fifth Circuits. See O’Brien v. Dubois, 145 F.3d 16, 25 (1st Cir.1998); Drinkard v. Johnson, 97 F.3d 751, 769 (5th Cir.1996). The amalgamation of the two standards creates too rigid a bar to proper relief. Either standard alone gives deference to a state court’s application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent as required by the language in the AEDPA. I prefer the Fifth Circuit’s standard articulated in Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 769, which this circuit previously adopted in Herbert v. Billy, 160 F.3d 1131, 1135 (6th Cir.1998). In adopting the standard, we stated as follows:
Under the AEDPA, the district court could find the state court determinations unreasonable “only when it can be said that reasonable jurists considering the question would be of one view that the state court ruling was incorrect. In other words, we can grant habeas relief only if a state court decision is so clearly incorrect that it would not be debatable among reasonable jurists.”
Herbert, 160 F.3d at 1135 (quoting Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 769).
The adoption of “the rule that the unreasonableness of a state court’s application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent will not be ‘debatable among reasonable jurists,’ Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 769, if it is ‘so offensive to existing precedent, so devoid of record support, or so arbitrary, as to indicate it is outside the universe of plausible, credible outcomes,’ O’Brien, 145 F.3d at 25[,]” Maj. Op. at 362, approaches a suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. We must be mindful of the constitutional restriction of Article I, Section 9, which, among other things, states “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The privilege of the great Writ of Habeas Corpus is an ancient and important one. The congressional admonitions must be read in light of the writ’s extensive history. In terms of this case and other cases in which the great Writ is granted, the main purpose of the Writ is to release a person immediately from an unconstitutional constraint on that person’s liberty. The “reasonable jurist” approach properly balances the statutory language of the AED-PA with the constitutional restriction against suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.
The standard in Herbert clearly accords with the language of the AEDPA. To articulate in this case a standard for unreasonableness other than that adopted in Herbert seems unwise and unnecessary.