The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today in Andrew v. White merits at least passing attention. Though a capital murder case—not the sort of case that most of this blog’s readers are ever likely to confront—it provides a useful discussion of how holdings of the Supreme Court, or the fact of the Court’s having no precedent at all, should be applied to lower court proceedings.
In the case at bar, an Oklahoma jury convicted Brenda Andrew of murdering her husband and sentenced her to death. At trial, the state adduced substantial evidence concerning Ms. Andrew’s adulterous sex life and her failings as a wife and mother. In response to a subsequent habeas petition, the state conceded that much of this evidence was irrelevant. Ms. Andrew predictably contended that its admission violated the Due Process Clause. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rejected that claim because it assumed that no holding of the Supreme Court established a general rule that the erroneous admission of prejudicial evidence could violate due process. In a per curiam decision, the Supreme Court held that the circuit court “was wrong. By the time of Andrew’s trial, this Court had made clear that when ‘evidence is introduced that is so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides a mechanism for relief.’ Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 825 (1991).”
Having erroneously assumed that no relevant, clearly established law existed, the lower court never considered whether the state court’s application of such law was reasonable. Thus, on remand, the Tenth Circuit must initially consider whether a fair-minded jurist could disagree with Andrew that the trial court’s mistaken admission of irrelevant evidence was so “unduly prejudicial” as to render her trial “fundamentally unfair.” See Payne at 825. “The Court of Appeals must ask that question separately for the guilt and sentencing phases. As to each phase, it might consider the relevance of the disputed evidence to the charges or sentencing factors, the degree of prejudice Andrew suffered from its introduction, and whether the trial court provided any mitigating instructions.”
Justice Alito concurred in the judgment “because our case law establishes that a defendant’s due-process rights can be violated when the properly admitted evidence at trial is overwhelmed by a flood of irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence that renders the trial fundamentally unfair.” He emphasized that he left open the question, to be determined on remand, of whether the high standard for such a conclusion had been met here.
Justice Thomas, joined in dissent by Justice Gorsuch, opined on the question of whether there was, in fact, “clearly established federal law” for the trial court to have applied in this case. He expressed his view that the Court’s “precedent under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) establishes several rules for identifying clearly established federal law. 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1),” adding:
We have instructed lower courts to avoid framing our precedents at too high a level of generality; to carefully distinguish holdings from dicta; and to refrain from treating reserved questions as though they have already been answered. The Tenth Circuit followed these rules. The Court today does not. Instead, it summarily vacates the opinion below for failing to elevate to “clearly established” law the broadest possible interpretation of a one-sentence aside in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808 (1991). In doing so, the Court blows past Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62 (1991), which, months after Payne, reserved the very question that the Court says Payne resolved. And, worst of all, it redefines “clearly established” law to include debatable interpretations of our precedent. It is this Court, and not the Tenth Circuit, that has deviated from settled law.
One notes that this is a highly contentious view that seven other Justices—across the spectrum of jurisprudential philosophy—have not accepted. However, the dissenters have posited a division that will likely come up in future cases, and not just criminal ones.
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