Scotuscast

On April 4, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Woods v. Etherton without oral argument. -- Timothy Etherton was convicted in Michigan state court of possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and the conviction was affirmed on direct appeal. His efforts to obtain post-conviction relief in state court--which related to his lawyer’s failure to raise a Confrontation Clause objection to the admission into evidence of the anonymous tip that led to his arrest--were rejected. A federal district court also rejected Etherton’s subsequent attempt to obtain federal habeas relief, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed that judgment. Etherton’s appellate counsel had been constitutionally ineffective, the Sixth Circuit concluded, and no fairminded jurist could conclude otherwise. -- By a vote of 8-0, the Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Sixth Circuit in a per curiam opinion issued without oral argument. Without reaching the Sixth Circuit’s holding that counsel had been constitutionally