You’d think it was, at best, a misguided opinion piece: A Hartford Courant story decrying prisoners’ exercise of their habeas rights. To read it, you’d think these pesky hellraisers are abusing the justice system rather than exercising one of Americans’ most fundamental legal rights.
The right of habeas corpus has deep roots. Like came-from-English-law roots. It’s the last line of defense against unjust detention, suspended only in times of emergency or war. A writ of habeas corpus, to put it simply, is a challenge to government to justify an individual’s detention.
In a 1969 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said the "writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.”
Habeas is critical right now.
Socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and anti-LGBTQ bias affect who’s suspected of crimes, who’s investigated for crimes, who’s convicted for crimes, and how long people spend in prison. The groups most likely to be targets of the justice system are simultaneously least equipped to secure meaningful representation. If they are indigent, these defendants are usually at the mercy of an overloaded criminal defense system and receive poor representation.
Even when the quality of representation affects the result, steep legal standards make prevailing on appeal impossible. When out of direct grounds for appeal, habeas corpus is all that’s left for defendants who’ve been multiply disadvantaged. It’s also one of their only means of getting a federal court to step in when states violate defendants’ constitutional rights.
Yet the Hartford Courant apparently wants to convince readers to oppose habeas petitions on the grounds that processing habeas petitions is … inconvenient?
The system is flooded with petitions deemed to lack merit, costing taxpayers millions and making some legitimate claims almost impossible to be heard.
In the last decade, 7,442 habeas petitions have been filed. As of March, about 1,600 were pending. The vast majority, prosecutors say, are without merit. Since 1994, only 24 prisoners have received new trials through the habeas process, and several of those were convicted again at their new trials.
Here’s a radical thought: The problem is the justice system that (1) leaves so many prisoners with so few options that they have to resort to habeas then (2) processes those habeas petitions inefficiently. It’s a stunning thing to place the blame on prisoners instead, vocally opposing their exercise of a basic right rather than advocating a better process for reviewing petitions. Unfortunately, Connecticut’s General Assembly is trying to fast-track dismissals and reduce petitions rather than figure out how to accommodate them.
This week, the General Assembly passed a bill that will create a task force to study habeas corpus matters and then recommend changes to the legislature. The bill charges the task force with examining methods to evaluate petitions and how to reduce frivolous claims.
Connecticut is attempting to follow in the footsteps of Congress, which passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 in response to what legislators viewed as an excess of prisoner-initiated litigation. The PLRA imposes draconian—and, to a civil rights lawyer’s view, dystopian—restrictions on how, when, and how often prisoners can raise legal claims.
There’s a lot of language to be ashamed of in the Courant’s story, perhaps none more shameful than reductive and dehumanizing terms like “career criminal” and inaccurate, derogatory characterizations of the habeas process.
Jailhouse lawyers and prisoners with free time help clog the docket with habeas petitions. There’s also a cadre of defense attorneys who bill the state millions of dollars each year to represent those prisoners and their mostly frivolous claims. Prisoners abuse the system with repeat filings because state courts allow unlimited habeas petitions, said Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane.
The success story the Courant cites? The case of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel. So, shed a tear for poor Skakel and his ilk. The article blames “frivolous claims” for “delay[ing] … the small percentage of prisoners who may win new trials.”
The thing is, even unsuccessful challenges can play a significant role in achieving a just result.
Christine Perra Rapillo, the chief public defender, said she is not opposed to the creation of a task force to tackle habeas corpus reform, but is also concerned about limiting prisoners’ opportunities to challenge their convictions. “It’s easy for people to say people are getting multiple bites at the apple,” Rapillo said. “But sometimes it takes a couple of times to get to the bottom of why a conviction was wrong. The catch is how do you determine what’s frivolous and what’s not frivolous.”
Unsurprisingly, civil rights organizations are pointing out these very problems.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut opposes the task force bill. In testimony to the judiciary committee, Kaley Lentini said it was important for prisoners to have a habeas corpus petition readily available. If the bill were to pass, she asked the committee to ensure deep representation by defense lawyers.
It’s a pretty basic principle that the validity of legal challenges and habeas petitions is for the judiciary, not the legislature, to adjudicate. But Connecticut legislators haven’t been shy about asserting their intention to usurp these roles.
Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, co-chairman of the judiciary committee. “If we can come up with a way to weed out the writs that really are frivolous, that’s going to save taxpayer dollars. It’s also going to be helpful to the agencies.”
Defendants need greater access to the justice system and better representation. Connecticut’s underlying policy permitting habeas petitions is progressive, a step in the right direction. Limiting petitions, and imposing non-judicial review, would be a major step back.