We lost our Supreme Court case

As a law clerk these last two years at the Portland, Oregon office of the Federal Public Defender, I have come to specialize in habeas corpus. As a habeas geek, it has been one of the greatest privileges of my nascent professional life to work on a US Supreme Court case with former Southern Poverty Law Center legal director Dennis Balske. Unfortunately, we lost it today, 8-1 (Breyer opinion, Stevens dissent).

The (very) brief version is that our loss will make it harder for many state prisoners to get federal relief from unconstitutional convictions or sentences, even after they exhaust their state appeals, if they have not used exactly the right magic words in those state appeals. We did our best, but we knew after the oral argument in December that our 2-1 judgment in the Ninth Circuit was unlikely to survive. It was an honor to go, but this is a sad result.

•  Sorry you lost

  but congratulations on making it to The Show.  

  by Passing Shot on Tue Mar 02, 2004 at 04:25:20 PM PDT

•  Chin Up Son !

  ...And keep fighting the good fight.  Ever since the Crime Bill passed in the Clinton Administration, there has been an attack on habeas corpus in the United States that only just culminated with the Patriot Act.  So you're allowed to feel sad for a day or two, then brush yourself off and get ready to go back out there and fight.  Many depend on legal warriors like yourself.  

  by Grand Poobah on Tue Mar 02, 2004 at 08:12:02 PM PDT