Why was habeas corpus established

Today, habeas corpus is mainly used as a post-conviction remedy for state or federal prisoners who challenge the legality of the application of federal laws that were used in the judicial proceedings that resulted in their detention.

Other uses of habeas corpus include immigration or deportation cases and matters concerning military detentions, court proceedings before military commissions, and convictions in military court. Finally, habeas corpus is used to determine preliminary matters in criminal cases, such as: i an adequate basis for detention; ii removal to another federal district court; iii the denial of bail or parole; iv a claim of double jeopardy; v the failure to provide for a speedy trial or hearing; or vi the legality of extradition to a foreign country.

The writ of habeas corpus primarily acts as a writ of inquiry, issued to test the reasons or grounds for restraint and detention. The writ thus stands as a safeguard against imprisonment of those held in violation of the law, by ordering the responsible enforcement authorities to provide valid reasons for the detention.

Thus, the writ is designed to obtain immediate relief from unlawful impeachment, by ordering immediate release unless with sufficient legal reasons and grounds. The purpose of the writ of habeas corpus is not to determine the guilt or innocence of a prisoner, but only to test the legality of a prisoner's current detention. The habeas corpus is not a narrow, static, and formalistic remedy, and must retain the flexibility to cut through various barriers of forms and procedural complexities by which a person may be imprisoned or detained.

Accordingly, the writ of habeas corpus is a flexible writ that can be administered with initiative and flexibility to obtain release from illegal custody. Although the writ of habeas corpus is thus a flexible writ for obtaining a release from custody when one is illegally detained, there are some limitations to the rule of habeas corpus.

For example, circuit precedent cannot refine or sharpen a general principle of Supreme Court habeas corpus jurisprudence into a specific legal rule that the Supreme Court has not yet announced.

There are only two rare exceptions to this general rule of retroactivity: 1 When a subsequent decision places a certain conduct or defendant beyond the reach of the criminal law that convicted the defendant. Lynaugh , U. It violates the Constitution and basic American values. No, Section 6 of the Military Commissions Act is unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down by the U. Supreme Court. Several cases challenging the law are already working their way through the courts.

What Can I Do? Two bills have been introduced in Congress that would restore habeas corpus rights — the Restoring the Constitution Act of H. Alexander Hamilton wrote in his Federalist Paper No. It allows our government to continue to hold hundreds of prisoners for more than five years without charges, with no end in sight. Additionally, the MCA gives any president the power to declare — on his or her own — who is an enemy combatant, decide who should be held indefinitely without being charged with a crime and define what is — and what is not — torture and abuse.

Turpin , U. In particular, Felker argued that the provisions of 28 U. As before, the Court took no offense to the limitation of habeas appellate jurisdiction. Review remained possible under the "original" writ of habeas corpus.

After McCardle and Yerger , Congress restored the Court's jurisdiction to review habeas cases under less cumbersome appellate procedures in , 23 Stat.

Once Congress reopened more normal means of Supreme Court review in habeas cases, recourse to the original writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court described in McCardle and Yerger had been infrequent and rarely successful.

Seen only as a burdensome way station of the unartful and ill advised, its best known chronicler urged its effective abandonment.

Yet it offered the Court in Felker precisely what it supplied in McCardle and Yerger , a means of preserving Supreme Court review, under circumstances where Congress rather clearly intended to deny that possibility, without forcing the Court to address the question of whether Congress' efforts exceed its constitutional authority. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, declared that "although the Act does impose new conditions on [the Court's] authority to grant relief, it does not deprive [the] Court of jurisdiction to entertain original habeas petitions," Felker v.

Of course Felker sought not only review, but reversal. The Court refused to grant relief under its original writ authority because Felker's claims satisfied neither the demands of the Act nor those of the Court's Rule Its reticence may have been calculated to avoid any suggestion that suspension or exception clauses have become dead letters. Although it concluded that Felker had not satisfied the requirement that the original writ issue only upon "exceptional circumstances," the Court did not say why nor did it indicate when such exceptional circumstances might exist.

On the other hand, the Court's denial makes it clear that McCardle and Yerger notwithstanding, legislative barriers blocking access to the more heavily traveled paths to review do not by themselves constitute the necessary exception circumstances.

It is interesting that the Court sought refuge in the arcane confines of "original" habeas rather than acknowledging that the gatekeeper provision came within Congress' power under the exceptions and regulations clause whatever limitations that power might otherwise be subject to.

Given the expedited nature of the proceedings, it might have meant no more than the Court lacked the time to formulate an opinion outlining the dimensions of the clause in terms that a majority on the Court could endorse.

Historically, the Court has been reluctant to holding that the privilege of the writ had been denied other than through a lawful exercise of the suspension clause.

The suspension clause, housed among the explicit limitations on the Constitutional powers of Congress, declares that "[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it," U. The English history of the writ helps explains its purpose. When the King and the royal courts began to recognize restrictions on the writ, the English Parliament had responded with the Habeas Corpus Act of Perhaps the most notable of these suspensions occurred during the American Revolution when Parliament annually enacted suspension provisions to permit temporary imprisonment of the rebelling colonists without bail or trial for the duration of the year.

Early in the Republic, President Jefferson sought and was denied a suspension. He simply instructed his military commanders, in ever broadening terms, to suspend access to the writ as they felt appropriate. After Chief Justice Taney, acting upon a petition presented in chambers, held the President had exceeded his authority, Ex parte Merryman , 17 Fed. The writ issues as a matter of course; and on the return made to it, the court decides whether the party applying is denied the right of proceeding further with it.

Ex parte Milligan and experience during the period leading up to the drafting of the suspension clause offer scant support for the suggestion that the suspension clauses must be read as a general limitation upon Congress' authority to enact habeas legislation. Nevertheless, there were grounds for the contention that suspension of the privilege of the writ meant more than that, in times and places of trouble, particular individuals might be temporarily denied access to the writ and jailed without bail or trial by a court of competent jurisdiction.

In more contemporary times, the Court and scholars pondered the extent to which the suspension clause marks an outer limit of the authority of Congress and the courts to adjust the procedures associated with the writ.

First, as part of the Reconstruction after the Civil War, Congress expanded federal habeas to make it available to state prisoners held in violation of federal law. The Georgia Attorney General and the Solicitor General each denied that the suspension clause had been violated.

The Court agreed. It did not rely on the proposition that the suspension clause does not extend to convicted prisoners or any other prisoners ineligible for the writ under common law, however, but "assume[d], for purposes of decision here, that the Suspension Clause of the Constitution refers to the writ as it exists today, rather than as it existed in ," U. Even under this relaxed standard, it found any claim based on Felker's case wanting. The AEDPA's limitation on repetitious or stale claims was seen as a variation of res judicata, which in the area of habeas had been an "evolving body of equitable principles informed and controlled by historical usage, statutory developments, and judicial decisions," U.

Shortly after Felker , however, the Court narrowly construed Congressional efforts to restrict review of various immigration decisions and recognized that the courts retained jurisdiction to review habeas petitions, with the observation that otherwise serious suspension clause issues would arise. The Court was compelled to face the issue of Congress' constitutional authority to absolutely bar access to the writ, which the Court avoided in Felker , in Boumediene v.

Boumediene was among the foreign nationals detained at the U. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Until Hamdi v. Rumsfeld , U.

Thereafter, the Defense Department established tribunals to determine whether detainees were in fact enemy combatants. However, until Rasul v. Bush , U. While the detainees' subsequent habeas petitions were pending, Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, providing combatant status review tribunal procedures and stating that "no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider" a habeas petition filed on behalf of a foreign national detained in Guantanamo, Stat.

After the Court held that the Detainee Treatment Act provision did not apply to cases pending prior to its enactment, Hamdan v. At this point, the constitutional issue could not be avoided.

The government argued in Boumediene "that noncitizens designated as enemy combatants and detained in territory located outside our Nation's borders have no constitutional rights and no privilege to habeas corpus. The Court began with the observation that, "[t]he Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom.

The Clause protects the right of the detained by a means consistent with the essential design of the Constitution. It ensures that, except during periods of formal suspension, the Judiciary will have a time-tested device, the writ, to maintain the delicate balance of government that is itself the surest safeguard of liberty. These separation of powers concerns and the history of the territorial scope of the writ led the Court to conclude that "Art. Since the Military Commissions Act did not constitute a formal suspension of the writ, the issue was "whether the statute stripping jurisdiction to issue the writ avoids the Suspension Clause mandate because Congress has provided adequate substitute procedures for habeas corpus" in the Detainee Treatment Act's combatant status review tribunal procedures.

The Court found little precedent to guide its "adequate substitute" assessment. Felker involved a suspension clause challenge, but the provisions there did little more than replicate and codify pre-existing habeas jurisprudence. Besides, Felker arose following a state criminal conviction, hardly a close parallel to the federal detention without trial of Boumediene.

Two other "habeas substitute" cases— Swain v. Pressley , U. Hayman , U. So the Court identified, in context of Boumediene , the essential features of habeas corpus and any adequate substitute.

First, it noted that "the privilege of habeas corpus entitles the prisoner to a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate that he is being held pursuant to the erroneous application of interpretation of relevant law. It also must have the authority to admit and consider relevant exculpatory evidence that was not introduced during the earlier proceeding. The Court found the Detainee Treatment Act procedures wanting when assessed against the standards of an adequate substitute for normal habeas procedures.

Friendly, Is Innocence Irrelevant? John's Law Review Habeas Corpus: Hearings Before the Subcom m. The Clash of Ring v. Arizona and Teague v. Boumediene v. Black's Law Dictionary, 7 th ed. And by the habeas corpus act [of ], the methods of obtaining this writ are plainly pointed out and enforced, that, so long as this statute remains unimpeached, no subject of England can be long detained imprison, except in those cases in which the law requires and justifies such detainer," 1 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England italics in the original Then, as now, federal authorities kept prisoners in local jails since they rarely maintained federal jails except in the territories, see 1 Stat.

Section 7 of the Act of March 2, , ch. At the same time, Congress modified and codified much of the procedure associated with the writ, including an appellate provision that was soon thereafter repealed, 15 Stat. See e. Lange had been convicted of an offense punishable by a fine or term of imprisonment. The trial court had sentenced him to a fine and a term of imprisonment. Lange paid his fine and was imprisoned. The Court held that once Lange had paid the fine the trial court lost all jurisdiction over the case and thus his confinement was subject to the writ.

Ex parte Siebold , U. In Siebold , although the statute in question was found to be within the power of Congress, the Court held that had the prisoner been convicted under an unconstitutional law he would have been entitled to discharge upon the writ. Ex parte Wilson , U. The Court held that Wilson was entitled to discharge on the writ because the trial court had exceeded its jurisdiction when it tried, convicted and sentenced him to fifteen years hard labor based upon an information filed by the district attorney rather than upon a grand jury indictment as required by the Fifth Amendment in the case of all capital and otherwise infamous crimes.

In re Snow , U. Snow was convicted of three counts of cohabitation based on the same conduct during three different periods of time. The Court found that the misconduct was one continuous offense rather than three offenses.

Since three sentences would constitute multiple punishment contrary to the Fifth Amendment, the trial court had acted beyond its jurisdiction and the writ should issue.

Ex parte Royall , U. Cronan , U. Johnson , U. One has been the Supreme Court's imposition of the rules of the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments concerning unreasonable searches and seizures, double jeopardy, speedy trial, compulsory self-incrimination, jury trial in criminal cases, confrontation of adverse witnesses, assistance of counsel, and cruel and unusual punishments, upon state criminal trials.

The other has been a tendency to read these provisions with ever increasing breadth. The Bill of Rights, as I warned in , has become a detailed Code of Criminal Procedure, to which a new chapter is added every year.

The result of these two developments has been a vast expansion of the claims of error in criminal cases for which a resourceful defense lawyer can find a constitutional basis," Friendly, Is Innocence Irrelevant? Brown is an interesting decision. The Court was divided on the questions of habeas corpus, the effect to be given a denial of certiorari, and equal protection. There are six separate opinions; two by Justice Frankfurter and two by Justice Black.

Justice Reed's opinion for the Court also includes the minority position on the certiorari question, and on the two questions for which he wrote the majority opinion for the Court his views must be read in conjunction with those of Justice Frankfurter "[t]his opinion is designed to make explicit and detailed matters that are also the concern of Mr. Justice Reed's opinion. The uncommon circumstances in which a district court should entertain an application ought to be defined with greater particularity, as should be the criteria for determining when a hearing is proper.

The views of the Court on these questions may thus be drawn from the two opinions jointly," U. Commentators suggested, in fact, that the Court intended the denial of certiorari and the anticipated subsequent recourse to federal habeas to permit it to enlist the aid of the lower federal courts to review the federal constitutional questions raised in state cases, Friendly, Is Innocence Irrelevant? Gavin , F. The state requires that the applicant exhaust available state remedies.

To show that the time was passed for appeal [without an appeal by the prisoner] is not enough [to demonstrate the absence of a state remedy and] to empower the Federal District Court to issue the writ.

If a habeas applicant, after consultation with competent counsel or otherwise, understandingly and knowingly forewent the privilege of seeking to vindicate his federal claims in the state courts, whether for strategic, tactical, or any other reasons that can fairly be described as the deliberate by-passing of state procedures, then it is open to the federal court in habeas to deny him all relief if the state courts refused to entertain his federal claims on the merits—though of course only after the federal court has satisfied itself, by holding a hearing or by some other means, of the facts bearing upon the applicant's default," U.

Parker v. North Carolina , U. Richardson , U. Henderson , U. Litigation generally involves finding facts, identifying the legal principles necessary to resolve the dispute arising from the facts, and applying the legal principles to the facts. Federal courts, sitting to consider habeas petitions from state prisoners, generally deferred to the fact finding decisions of state courts.

The habeas reform proposals called for deference to state court rulings of law and applications of the law to the facts. Endorsing a similar proposal in an earlier Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee cited finality and judicial economy, S. The report also noted academic support and that a comparable state of the law existed before the Court's decision in Brown v.

Opponents of the proposals generally responded first to what they saw as a shrinking of the Great Writ and that prisoners with federal claims ought to be entitled to present them in a federal forum, Cong. H daily ed. Williams , U. Rompilla v. Beard , U. Smith , U. Andrade , U.

Taylor , U. Cone , U. Landerigan , U. Mirzayance , S. Brown v. Payton , U. Packer , U. Musladin , U. Kane v. Garcia Espitia , U. Van Patten , U. Rice v. Dretke , S. Cockrell, U. McCollum , S. The requirement is subject to exception when "it appears that Dretke , U. Greer , U. It will also help avoid potentially burdensome and protracted inquiries as to whether state remedies have been exhausted, in cases in which it is easier and quicker to reach a negative determination of the merits of a petition The [Act] further provides that a state shall not be deemed to have waived the exhaustion requirement or be estopped from reliance on the requirement unless it waives the requirement expressly through counsel.

This provision accords appropriate recognition to the important interests in comity that are implicated by the exhaustion requirement in cases in which relief maybe granted.