High court rules for state in case of man shackled at trial
Source: Associated Press
High court rules for state in case of man shackled at trial
By JESSICA GRESKO
April 21, 2022
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Thursday that a federal appeals court was wrong when it ordered Michigan to retry or release a convicted murderer because his rights were violated when he was shackled at trial.
In a decision that split the court 6-3 along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority said that a federal appeals court was wrong to apply only one legal test to conclude that the man should be released or retried. The justices said the appeals court should have applied two different legal tests, not just one, and that the man’s case didn’t pass the second test.
State courts had agreed that shackling Ervine Davenport at his trial violated his rights but said the error was harmless because it did not affect the verdict in his case. Davenport then took his case to federal court, and an appeals court concluded he should be released or retried.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch disagreed. He said that: “When a state court has ruled on the merits of a state prisoner’s claim, a federal court cannot grant relief without first applying both” a test the court outlined in a 1993 Supreme Court case and a second one Congress mandated when it passed a 1996 law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The law made it more difficult for prisoners to challenge their convictions.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-michigan-state-courts-30cb4931721d20b310413930d287835c
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The Court's opinion: 20-826 Brown v. Davenport