The American Bar Association and Federal Habeas Corpus

Abstract

The ABA explains its proposed moratorium on capital punishment in part on the ground that recent decisions rendered by the Supreme Court and legislation enacted by Congress limit the ability of prisoners under sentence of death to challenge their sentences in the federal courts.1 According to the ABA, the Supreme Court has placed numerous hurdles in the path of prisoners who apply to the federal courts for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that their convictions were obtained or their sentences were imposed in violation of federal law. Congress, for its part, has added even more barriers in Title I of the AntiTerrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.2 The ABA contends that the Court's decisions and the new Act establish restrictions on habeas that are at odds with ABA policies on point, promulgated in 1990.3 My assignment is to evaluate the ABA's claims touching federal habeas in death penalty cases. In Part II, I will offer a quick primer on the way in which prisoners under sentence of death invoke the federal courts' jurisdiction to consider their claims in habeas corpus proceedings. In Part III, I will trace the ABA's involvement in the national debate regarding habeas and the process by which the ABA developed the positions the moratorium is meant to promote. In Part IV, I will take those positions in turn and compare them to what the Court and Congress have wrought.