“ ... no rational judicial system would have upheld her conviction”
At The Volokh Conspiracy, you’ll find a fascinating post about an equally fascinating opinion by Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Here’s the backstory: a conservative judge like Alex Kozinski will tell you that he believes in judicial restraint and the rule of law. Among other things, this means he’s obligated to apply the law even when he disagrees with it. But what’s a conservative judge to do when his principles conflict with … justice? From the opening paragraph of his opinion, here’s a hint of what Judge Kozinski did:
Petitioner spent 12 years in prison for conduct that is not a crime. We vacate her conviction pursuant to Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979).
There’s just one problem with that assertion. The Nevada Supreme Court, whose interpretation of state law was binding on Judge Kozinski in a federal habeas proceeding, says the petitioner’s conduct was a crime.
Tsk, tsk, eh? But there’s a second problem: if you read the Nevada law for yourself, it’s clear, as Orin Kerr suggests, that the Nevada Supreme Court misinterpreted it, meaning that Judge Kozinski is right. There was no crime.
Now procedurally speaking, that shouldn’t matter. Nevada law is what the Nevada Supreme Court says it is, even if the Nevada Supreme Court is wrong. And federal courts have only limited power to grant habeas relief:
An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim —
(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; [28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1); emphasis added.]
Finally, a third problem: the petitioner is not a sympathetic character, and certainly not the type of the person you would expect a federal judge to stick his neck out for. It would have been easy enough to affirm her conviction.
Question: should a conservative federal judge affirm a procedurally correct but unjust result, especially when the petitioner is a low sort?
(My own answer after the jump.)
For what little it’s worth, I would have affirmed Joni Goldyn’s conviction. In the first place, the law requires affirmance. In the second place, Ms. Goldyn has a history of fraud and she was writing hot checks. So it doesn’t strike me as alarming that she was in prison. (She’s now on parole.)
But the case is nevertheless interesting because it raises the question of what a conservative should think, under a different fact pattern, of a serious conflict between the law and justice.