AEDPA — State and Local Issues — Galsworthy Criminal Justice Reform Program

State and Local Issues

Because 90% of all prisoners in the United States are in state facilities, the work that states are doing to reduce their prison populations is crucial. Attempting to end mass incarceration necessitates realizing this is a situation requiring not one national solution, but fifty state solutions. Below are current state solutions that could be effectively modeled by other states for meaningful reform.

A death penalty case shows the absurdity of the worst crime bill from the ’90s

“The rules laid out by AEDPA are incredibly complicated, but for the purposes of this post, the relevant provision states that to get a federal court to review a state court’s ruling, a defendant must show not only that the state court (and the state courts that upheld the ruling) were wrong, but that the prevailing ruling was either ‘contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law,’ or an ‘unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented.’ Put plainly, you must convince the federal courts not only that the state courts were wrong, but also that they were unreasonably wrong.“

Washington Post

May 20, 2019

SenatePhillip ReevesMay 20, 2019Washington Post, AEDPAComment

State and Local Issues

Galsworthy CJR Program

Info