Edmonds v. Smith

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Edmonds and Hall were together convicted in state court of beating and sodomizing a homeless man to death. After their joint state appeals were rejected, Hall brought a federal habeas action, 28 U.S.C. 2254, which was rejected on the merits. Then Edmonds brought a section 2254 collateral attack, arguing that his conviction was similarly infected by constitutional error. Rather than assess all of Edmonds’s claims on the merits, the district court held that the law-of-the-case doctrine precluded Edmonds from obtaining relief on four claims that were rejected in Hall’s collateral action. The Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded. The law-of-the-case doctrine applies only to later decisions in the same case. Different habeas actions brought by different petitioners are different cases. A post-conviction habeas action is not a subsequent stage of the underlying criminal proceedings; it is a separate civil case. Applying the law-of-the-case doctrine across separate habeas cases would deprive the second petitioner of the opportunity to present his own arguments, implicating due process concerns. The court noted that due process limits res judicata to preclude parties from contesting only matters that they have had a full and fair opportunity to litigate; a person who was not a party to a suit generally has not had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the claims and issues settled in that suit. Edmonds’s claims must be assessed on their merits. View "Edmonds v. Smith" on Justia Law