SCOTUS ruled yesterday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support their claims that they were represented at trial and on appeal in state courts by unqualified or otherwise deficient lawyers:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support claims they were inadequately represented at trial and on appeal in state courts.
In 2012 the court ruled that when a state court"substantially" interferes with a defendant's constitutional right to be represented by counsel, the defendant, with a new lawyer, may appeal to federal court to show that he was denied his right to effective counsel. Back then, the majority was 7-to-2, with Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent.
University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman sums up the decision this way:"Basically you can have a federal court hear the claim, you just can't present any evidence to support that claim because Congress... greatly restricted the availability of evidentiary hearings." A second case before the court today did not involve a claim of innocence. David Ramirez didn't dispute that he killed his girlfriend and her 15-year-old daughter. But when his case got to federal court, his federal public defenders presented evidence of his intellectual disability and his horrific childhood, mitigating evidence that the lawyer appointed to represent Ramirez at trial did not present to the jury in an effort to prevent a sentence of death.
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