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Another AEDPA habeas win for a defendant produces fascinating 5-4 SCOTUS split

By Douglas A. Berman

Though sure to be lost in the all attention given to the honest services ruling today, hard-core habeas fans will be eager to check out the result and the voting patterns in today's SCOTUS ruling in Magwood v. Patterson. Here is how the folks at SCOTUSblog describe the ruling: Justice Thomas writes for the Court. The lower court is reversed and the case is remanded. The vote is 5-4. Justice Kennedy dissents, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Ginsburg and Alito. The Court rules that the defendant's habeas application is not a "second or successive" petition because it challenges a new judgment for the first time. If memory serves, I believe Blakely-Crawford guru Jeff Fisher argued Magwood, and he obviously has figured out the secret trick for convincing Justices Thomas and Scalia to vote in favor of a state criminal defendant...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 24, 2010 (boomark / email).