Divided Court, in 2 Rulings, Makes It Easier to Challenge Criminal Convictions.
In a pair of 5-to-4 decisions that divided along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday made it easier for inmates to challenge their convictions.
In McQuiggin v. Perkins, No. 12-126, the majority said that a one-year filing deadline for prisoners seeking federal review of their state court convictions under a 1996 law may be relaxed if they present compelling evidence of their innocence. The new “miscarriage of justice exception†to the deadline, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority, “applies to a severely confined category†— cases in which no reasonable juror aware of the new evidence would have voted to convict the defendant. . . .
In dissent, Justice Scalia wrote that “there is not a whit of precedential support†for the idea that the Supreme Court was entitled to alter the deadline set out in the 1996 law. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas joined all of the dissent, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined most of it.
Justice Ginsburg dismissed the dissent as “bluster.â€
In the second decision issued Tuesday, in Trevino v. Thaler, No. 11-10189, the same five-justice majority extended a ruling last year that had allowed prisoners to challenge their state convictions in federal courts based on the argument that their trial lawyers had been ineffective, even though the prisoners had not raised the issue in earlier proceedings. . .
In another case on Tuesday, Secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana, No. 12-1039, the court let stand without comment an appeals court ruling blocking an Indiana law that would have withheld Medicaid money from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/us/justices-make-it-easier-for-inmates-to-challenge-convictions.html?hp
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