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Federal habeas review of criminal convictions is not supposed to be a second opportunity to adjudge guilt. Oliver Wendell Holmes, among others, has said that the sole question on federal habeas is whether the prisoner's constitutional rights were violated. By the early 1970s, however, scholars criticized this rights-based view of habeas and sounded the alarm that postconviction review had become too far removed from questions of innocence. Most famously, in 1970 Judge Friendly criticized the breadth of habeas corpus by posing a single question: Is innocence irrelevant? In his view habeas review that focused exclusively on questions of rights in isolation from questions of innocence was misguided. Over the last forty years the habeas landscape has changed so dramatically--through both statutory and common law limits on the writ--that it is appropriate to ask a very different question: Is guilt dispositive? Both substantive law and habeas procedure have evolved so as to substantially disadvantage a guilty habeas petitioner. In many cases, regardless of the merits of the constitutional claim, strong evidence of guilt is dispositive in ensuring that relief is denied. A recent trilogy of cases--Holland v. Florida, Maples v. Thomas, and most importantly, Martinez v. Ryan--signals a potential shift in the Court's innocence orientation. This Article explores the potential impact of these decisions and, in particular, argues that they may provide a roadmap for a proceduralist approach to modern habeas review that prioritizes fair procedures over innocence. The impact of Friendly's call for greater focus on innocence was gradual but profound, and this Article argues that the Martinez trilogy may be similarly important in reversing habeas's four-decade-long infatuation with innocence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habeas scholarship has repeatedly assessed whether the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's (AEDPA's) limitations on federal habeas relief were as severe in practice as they appeared to be on paper. By analyzing recent doctrinal shifts--particularly focusing on two Supreme Court decisions from this Term--and substantial new empirical data, this Article acknowledges that AEDPA's bite has reached substantial proportions, in many ways exceeding the initial concerns and hype surrounding the legislation. More importantly, after acknowledging that federal habeas relief from state court convictions has become "microscopically" rare, this Article considers what the rarity of relief ought to mean as a prescriptive matter for federal oversight of state convictions. Contrary to the dramatic proposals of scholars who have recently suggested that the general futility of habeas litigation dictates that individual, case-by-case habeas review should be abolished, this Article seeks to regain intellectual and practical traction for the longstanding view that federal courts play an important role in overseeing and enforcing the Constitution. To be sure, the path to success for state prisoners on federal habeas review has become infinitesimally narrow, but the recent scholarly interest in abandoning federal review of state convictions in nearly all circumstances other than capital cases misses the mark. This Article suggests that the paucity of success by habeas petitioners does not naturally or necessarily justify the abandonment of federal oversight, as the scholarly trend suggests. Instead, scholars and courts should recognize the critical role federal courts play in ensuring that the state court process is fundamentally fair. Indeed, if the primary responsibility for substantive review now rests with the state courts, the need for federal oversight of the procedures is heightened. To this end, this Article makes the case for focusing more attention on the need for challenges of process rather than result and discusses novel methods, both under § 1983 and § 2254, for bringing such litigation. By focusing federal review on the adequacy of the state process, the deterrence model of federal oversight retains a position of importance and distinction, and principles of comity, federalism, and fair process are well protected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]