Overview
- The Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit on Monday, finding that a 1996 federal law restricting habeas relief prevented the appeals court from undoing Hernandez’s 2017 conviction.
- Prosecutors argued that retrying Hernandez would be impractical because the case dates to 1979 and several witnesses are dead or elderly, and the court’s decision removes the immediate prospect of release or retrial.
- Hernandez was identified as a suspect in 2012, confessed to police during lengthy questioning and repeated those statements on tape, and was convicted at a 2017 retrial after a 2015 mistrial.
- The appeals court had overturned the conviction because the trial judge answered a juror question about whether later, Mirandized confessions must be disregarded if an earlier, pre-Miranda confession was involuntary, a ruling the Supreme Court said federal courts could not substitute their judgment for state-court decisions.
- Beyond this case, the ruling highlights two lasting issues: how courts treat contested confessions and how AEDPA’s limits on federal review shape finality in old or evidence-light cases that include no recovered body or physical proof.