US District Judge Lynn Adelman's new article titled "The Great Writ Diminished" aspires to "stimulate a discussion about the current state of habeas corpus. Wonderfully, the article has already started such a discussion in these blog comments, and I want to keep the momentum going in this post.
Specifically, I would like to see a lot more number crunching concerning habeas appeals of state convictions in federal courts. Judge Adelman builds off the ground-breaking 2007 Vanderbilt study which, as discussed here, found that of 2384 non-capital filings examined, petitioners received relief a rate of 1 in every 341 cases filed, whereas of the 267 capital cases examined, about 1 in 8 petitioners received relief. These national numbers may obscure lots of significant state variations and also significant issue-specific variations that could and should tell us a lot more about how the great writ is really working.
Happy to oblige.
In Texas, evaluating (and mostly denying) habeas writs makes up a large amount of the caseload for judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals and their staff. According to the annual activity report for the CCA (pdf, page 2, right column), in fiscal year 2008 Texas high criminal court considered 5,290 individual habeas writs, but granted relief in only 8 of them. That's a rate of about one out of every 661 cases, or about half as often as federal judges evaluated in the Vanderbilt study. (Another 350 were remanded for evidentiary hearings by a trial judge and not finally decided.)
Hey Scott, are there any data on how any of these cases fared once brought to federal court?
ReplyDeletePrisoners in Texas are routinely led to believe that if they write a writ, they will not be granted parole. If this is true, it is a denial of their constitutional rights.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, prisoners in Texas are routinely lied to about a great number of things. These lies are promulgated by the entire staff and management of TDCJ. I'm enough of a realist to know that it will not stop because it serves the purposes of TDCJ to continue to lie to prisoners. These lies are in themselves criminal acts and work to undermine the very rule of law that TDCJ is supposed to enforce.
This sad state of affairs will be brought to light someday. Just as everyone feels bad about Mr. Cole's incarceration, everyone can feel bad about what TDCJ does everyday to the constitutional rights of inmates.
I dont have any information on that, Doug, beyond what's in the linked document. These are all state-level habeas writs under Ch. 11 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.
ReplyDeleteI read there were over 15,000 writs per year filed in the State of Texas. Given my experience in the church members and community members that I know who have been incarcerated on false allegations, or physically / emotionally tortured ( coerced into false confessions) or had pressure put on their families financially or family members arrested on false charges that were subsequently dropped when the pressure caused the indivdual to take the plea, that if what is occuring among the middle class in Williamson county is prevalent across Texas, and people are not recieving justice, then perhaps there are close to 15,000 innocent people who had a poor lawyer, or were co-erced into a confession or taking the plea and resultant imprisonment. As "criminal" habeas rights have been taken away over the last several years this is a travesty- Sandra
ReplyDeletehere are a couple of links to statistics / numbers.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.courts.state.tx.us/pubs/AR2008/toc.htm#appellate
http://www.courts.state.tx.us/tjc/reports.asp
Grits...where do you get the 8 granted number from? In looking at the document you linked, it lists 205 habeas applications granted (page 2 left column). Also, in the right column it lists 197 writs "filed and set". Often that means granted as well since a writ must be filed and set before it is granted by the CCA.
ReplyDeleteThe 205 in the left-hand column are Ch. 64 requests for DNA testing, which fall under a much less stringent standard. The CCA has been pretty routinely granting those.
ReplyDeleteThe right-hand column on page 2 is the one to look at - 8 is the final stat in the column, cases remanded with an order, which is the only item on the list that sounded like the defendant received relief. There's no definition listed for "filed and set," but I'll try to find out (and correct it if I'm wrong). In this post, I was just responding to Doug's request for state-level numbers (and gave a quick first take) because I knew I'd recently seen Texas' topline data. I haven't thoroughly reviewed that report or checked its definitions, etc., at all.
That 8 is for death penalty, 11.071 writs only. 11.07 is non-death writs, 11.071 is death penalty only. Also, remanded with order means nothing other than it was sent back to a lower court with instructions of some sort. I believe you'll find that most of those 197 filed and set were granted.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information!
The "205" number is not the number of Chapter 64 requests for post-conviction DNA testing granted by the CCA. The total direct DNA appeals handled by the CCA is the "2" number listed above. The CCA only does direct appeals on DNA requests on death penalty cases. DNA appeals in non-death penalty cases are handled by the intermediate courts of appeal and only go the the CCA on petition for discretionary review.
ReplyDeleteAs a previous poster noted, habeas cases are "filed and set" before a written opinion is issued -- which typically only occurs when relief is granted -- rather than simply a white card. From my reading of the report, "205" is the number of cases where habeas corpus relief was granted in FY 2008.
The 8 number is a huge gaffe. There is no way it is right. Grits has lost all perspective with respect to the CCA. They granted at least 5 habeas corpus writs the week of May 6 alone.
ReplyDeleteThree days and not even an attempt to correct this wildly inaccurate and misleading post?
ReplyDelete