Law, Power, and Justice

As a result of this opinion, people with illegal convictions and sentences—people who are legally innocent—will be stuck in prison for no good reason.
— Read on slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/06/supreme-court-conservatives-jones-hendrix-disaster.html

Excepts:

The reasoning calls to mind one of Justice William J. Brennan’s famous lines from McCleskey v. Kemp: “Taken on its face, such [reasoning] seems to suggest a fear of too much justice.” Justice Thomas’ majority also relied on some pretty shoddy historical accounts of habeas corpus as well. (I’m sure they’ll get their history right one of these days.)

Last term, in one of the more ghastly Supreme Court decisions, the same 6–3 majority from Jones ruled for Arizona in a case where the state had loudly and proudly argued that “innocence is not enough” to remedy a conviction for innocent persons convicted in state courts

The court said too bad; it’s illegal for a federal court to consider evidence of his innocence, even if that evidence wasn’t ever introduced because the state appointed him an ineffective lawyer