Davis v. Ayala (13-1428)

argument 13-1428

Davis v. Ayala

Supreme Court of the United States 49 min 4 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 4 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the legal significance of the California Supreme Court’s harmlessness determination in Davis v. Ayala?

John G. Roberts 0:01

In the argument next this morning, case thirteen, fourteen, twenty eight, Davis versus Ayala. Uh Mr. Bansky.

Unknown 0:09

Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the court. The California Supreme Court's harmlessness determination was an adjudication on the merits Because it denied relief on the basis of the intrinsic rights and wrongs of Mr Ayala's claim. A federal habeas court is authorized to set aside that final state judgment. Only if Ayala can show two things first, a legal error as a matter of this court's clearly established laws, and second, actual prejudice under Brecht. As to the first point, the Ninth Circuit took the view here that there was no adjudication on the merits, and it proceeded to review the entirety of Mr. Ayala's claim under the denotes.

Elena Kagan 0:49

Your your brief confused me and it took me a while to pull it apart. All right. I I I don't know that there's a dispute or or at least there's a dispute in application. But really the deference here was given to the harmless error finding. or purported to have been given. So there's no um There's no dispute that the court below committed an error, meaning that the court below didn't apply the right standard. It's a factual question. The issue I think that you're trying to arrive at is under the circumstances of this case that the court also reach the uh performance prong of Strickland. And that's really where the dispute is, isn't it?

Unknown 1:35

Well, the issue before the court was a batson issue. It was whether uh the procedures employed by the trial court had in fact um were the proper procedures in terms of excluding defense counsel. And the Ninth Circuit in this case took the view that there was no adjudication on the merits with respect to the state court's finding of harmlessness and it proceeded to review the legal claim. Mr.

Anthony M. Kennedy 1:58

Vansky, let's let's say that the uh that the Ninth Circuit is wrong in that respect. Let's say there's an adjudication on the merits here, all right? But I think that that doesn't solve the basic problem of this case. There's an adjudication on the merits. But There are these two prongs, there's the harmlessness prong and then there's the substantive violation prong, whether a batson violation occurred. And what the court here said was if a Batson violation occurred It doesn't matter, it would be harmless. So if you For whatever reason, right or wrong, if you take that harmlessness determination Out of the picture. If you say that that was an unreasonable application of law, all right. We're left with essentially a vacuum, right?

Anthony M. Kennedy 2:45

And so what happens? What does the court do? Where there's been no finding as to a bat bats in violation, and you're saying That it should kind of make up a reason why there might not have been a Batson violation and and go with that. And why is that the proper approach?

Unknown 3:05

Your Honor, the reason why that is a proper approach is because on Federal habeas corpus, what the Federal Court is doing is deferring to the state the final State Court judgment of conviction. Even in the case that Your Honor has presented, the State Court has ultimately denied belief. It simply did so on harmless error grounds. Had the state court done precisely the same thing as a matter of a silent denial, that decision would have been entitled to deference. Wha why is why is the harmless air thing out of out of the picture. I I don't really understand that. I mean if in fact the state court found that whatever error there was, if there was any, was harmless. And if that's a merits determination, why do we even have to get to the point of whether there was a violation?

Unknown 3:54

The problem, Your Honor, that is correct, but the problem, Your Honor, is it leaves us with what the Ninth Circuit did here, which was to look at the underlying constitutional issue from a de novo perspective. That is not the proper start for saying you don't have to look at the underlying constitutional issue. Once there's been a determination that it's harmless uh whether there was a violation or not. If there was one, it was harmless. Once there's been that determination, why do you have to investigate whether there was one or not?