Deadlines and Dead Lives: Actualizing Equity Through Habeas Corpus

The “Great Writ,” or the writ of habeas corpus, is the only court order enshrined in the Constitution. The Latin phrase means “you have the body,” a mandate requiring authorities to bring an inmate before the courts to assess the legality of their detention following their petition for habeas corpus. Although legal scholars have traditionally framed the writ of habeas corpus as an equitable means to protect due process, interpretations of the writ have evolved, leading to increasing restrictions on its availability. 

Over the last 30 years, approximately 57 people have been denied the “Great Writ” of habeas corpus in death penalty cases because their attorneys missed deadlines to file for the process. [1] 30 of them have been executed – the most recent being Jeffrey Hutchinson in May 2025. Hutchinson was a Gulf War Veteran who urged his attorney to act swiftly and file on his behalf, yet a combination of attorney misconduct and court error resulted in his death. 

Tensions between rigidity and equity have complicated the writ’s function as a safeguard of due process in post-conviction review. Courts have stressed the importance of strict deadlines, reasoning that such rigidity promotes judicial economy, which is the efficient allocation of limited court resources. To uphold the equitable intention at the heart of the constitutional enshrinement of the writ of habeas corpus, the Supreme Court must prioritize flexibility in cases where petitioners miss deadlines, especially in capital cases. One avenue for flexibility is a procedural accommodation that allows judges to waive habeas petitioners’ missed deadlines through a process called equitable tolling. Petitioners must argue that extraordinary circumstances during trial, such as an attorney's abandonment, stifled the success of their case. In Holland v. Florida, the Court’s flexible standard for defining “extraordinary circumstances” rightly affirmed the spirit and equitable foundations of habeas corpus; however, its reasoning remained overly narrow, constraining the doctrine’s ability to address the full breadth of habeas review cases.

In 1996, after decades of conflicting rulings on which habeas petitions federal courts could entertain, Congress codified restrictions on federal habeas corpus review into law. The congressional action, titled the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), was initiated to address political backlash from the catastrophic Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, in which 168 people were killed and 700 were injured in an act of domestic terrorism. The terrorist attack incited bipartisan demands for a tightened death penalty process, ultimately affecting state prisoners’ access to federal habeas relief, even in cases unrelated to terrorism. [2] 

Before the AEDPA, there was no fixed deadline for filing a post-conviction habeas corpus petition. With the Act, Congress aimed to "curb the abuse of the statutory writ of habeas corpus” and, in the process, also imposed barriers upon state petitioners attempting to gain federal review to expedite delays in capital cases. [3] The AEDPA compressed the writ’s historically unrestricted timeline to a one-year deadline, with the clock starting immediately following the trial judge’s ruling. One year may seem like ample time to file a petition; however, habeas and capital proceedings are highly complex and require careful review of the case. Moreover, many inmates, the vast majority of whom lack formal legal training, file habeas petitions pro se to argue that ineffective trial counsel negatively impacted the outcome of their case. In the late 1990s, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 76% of inmates filed their habeas petitions pro se. [4] Factors such as federalism, strict procedural requirements, and the irreversible nature of execution often contribute to an attorney’s default on their responsibilities. [5] Thus, some inmates file for equitable tolling to potentially provide their new post-conviction counsel with time to reargue their case, which also adds to the complexity of filing the “Great Writ.”  

The conditions under which one can receive equitable tolling vary state by state. Holland v. Florida permitted federal courts to grant more time if certain “extraordinary circumstances” were proven, along with an inmate pursuing their rights diligently. [6] Yet post-conviction counsel in capital cases is not universally guaranteed, and court-appointed counsel vary in experience. Thus, a client must rely on overwhelmingly underqualified and overextended counsel to argue that they had ineffective trial counsel in the first place. [7]

 In 1997, a Florida state court sentenced Albert Holland to death for first-degree murder and other aggravating factors. During the trial, Holland’s attorney effectively abandoned him. Holland argued that he qualified for equitable tolling because his attorney failed to research the filing deadline, withheld information about the case, and did not communicate with him for years–even though Holland wrote letters to him repeatedly. These acts of misconduct mirror the types of attorney failings identified in the Holland v. Florida majority opinion as warranting equitable tolling in the lower courts. These include failure to conduct client communication, execute basic legal research, and release client files. [8]

The Eleventh Circuit denied Holland’s pro se petition because it ruled that “mere negligence” does not equate to “egregious [counsel] misconduct.” They also applied a mechanical two-prong test that required a relationship between a petitioner “pursuing his rights diligently” and some “extraordinary circumstance” that inhibited their pursuit of a timely filing. [9] The Court emphasized that the Circuit’s demands were unprecedented in lower courts. By noting the Eleventh Circuit’s divergence from other courts’ equitable interpretations, the Court reaffirmed its intention for uniformity in promoting equitable access and consistent application of habeas corpus law. The Supreme Court’s 7-2 Holland v. Florida decision upheld the Eleventh Circuit’s two-prong test but ruled that its application was “too rigid” and overturned the Circuit’s ruling because “at least sometimes, an attorney’s unprofessional conduct can be so egregious as to create an extraordinary circumstance warranting equitable tolling of [an AEDPA deadline].” [10] The Court’s scrutiny of the Eleventh Circuit’s application prioritized flexibility over mechanical rules. The majority opinion stressed the importance of honoring the flexible principles that habeas corpus is intended to provide under the U.S. Constitution. 

In its decision, the Supreme Court highlighted the plight of inmates who endure the hardship of egregious and unprofessional attorney misconduct. The ruling affirmed that “habeas corpus pertains to an area of the law where equity finds a comfortable home.” [11] Such interpretations avoided procedural rigidity and remained consistent with lower courts’ rulings on similar cases, reinforcing itself as a credible court that rules with equity. The Court could have dismissed Holland’s petition for equitable tolling because the AEDPA does not explicitly state grounds for tolling for attorney negligence. Yet, the majority opted to wield a flexible interpretation of the law to create a standard that aimed to accommodate those like Holland. 

Justice Scalia’s dissent in Holland v. Florida embodied an archaically rigid, mechanical application of the law, contradicting the “equitable principles [that have] traditionally governed” habeas corpus. [12] He presumptuously claimed that a “petitioner is out of luck” in cases of attorney error, which is no different, in his view, than if the petitioner had filed pro se and neglected the petition themselves. [13] Such “hard-and-fast adherence” to “absolute legal rules”  disregards inmates’ agency against systemic barriers. Moreover, a legal system cannot be based on luck, but on equitable procedures that allow everyone to interact with the law relative to their circumstances. In doing so, Scalia’s dissent rejected flexible interpretations altogether, insisting on strict adherence to the AEDPA’s text. Because the statute makes no explicit provision for equitable tolling, he argued, the Supreme Court had no authority to create one. This textualist position, the only part of Scalia’s dissent that Justice Thomas declined to join, left little room for judicial discretion, which is paramount in capital cases where marrying equitable principles with the relevant law can safeguard the constitutional protections inherent in habeas corpus.

Over a 23-year study period, legal scholars from NYU and Columbia Law found “serious reversible error in almost 7 out of every 10 of the thousands of capital sentences.” Of the 2,370 death sentences with such errors, 90% were overturned by state judges. [14] This staggering margin for error makes rigid application of the AEDPA not only impractical but dangerous. In capital cases, where the cost of error is irreversible, refusing to temper strict textualism with equitable judgment risks turning the law into an instrument of injustice. Examining habeas petitions through a flexible lens does not undermine judicial economy or flood the courts. It controls for risk in a historically flawed process and upholds the Constitution’s promise that no life should be taken without full and fair review. The permanence of capital punishment should warrant more flexibility, not less, and the gravity of death should serve as a reason to strengthen, not weaken, equitable habeas protections.       

Holland v. Florida rightfully established the importance of equity in legal analysis, yet its narrow scope left lower courts without clear guidance. Maples v. Thomas illustrated the consequences of this gap. Holland should have served as a controlling precedent, but instead just became one piece in a patchwork understanding of equitable tolling. In 1997, Corey Maples was sentenced to death and later abandoned by both his attorneys without notice. Their failure to meet filing deadlines was held against him by the Alabama courts and the Eleventh Circuit. The Supreme Court reversed both courts’ decisions, holding that total abandonment severs the attorney–client agency relationship, and that courts cannot hold a defendant responsible when their attorneys have ceased to represent them without their knowledge. [15] While Justice Ginsburg, writing for the Court, drew parallels between Maples and Holland, she distinguished abandonment from gross negligence in Holland, treating them as separate legal categories.  This distinction may be doctrinally sound, but it reinforces the problem: because Holland was framed so narrowly, lower courts failed to treat it as the dominant precedent on equitable tolling. This lack of clarity has had tangible consequences in the lower courts, where inconsistent interpretations have deepened the divide on what qualifies as “extraordinary circumstances.”    Mandi Moroz, a former student at the University of Georgia School of Law, explained that a split in the interpretation of Maples and Holland between the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits left petitioners subject to vastly different definitions of “extraordinary circumstances.” [16] She emphasized that without clear Supreme Court guidance on how Holland and Maples should be read together, this disparity continues to undermine consistent access to equitable tolling.   

Without a comprehensive understanding of flexible precedent, equity becomes futile because there is a patchwork application of the law, not based on individual circumstances but ideological differences on various benches. The lower courts’ denial of relief in Maples and the Ninth and Eleventh circuits' split, even after the Holland decisions, exemplify how this fractured approach not only creates inconsistency in equitable tolling but also undermines the writ’s core principles of equity.

The fragmented interpretations following Maples reinforce Leah Litman’s argument that excessive focus on procedural or technical concerns, such as the definition of negligence versus abandonment, can overshadow the humanity and justice the legal system is meant to uphold, and by extension, the promise of the “Great Writ.” Historically, habeas corpus has not been solely about protecting an inmate’s freedom; it has also served as a mechanism to reinforce systems of racism and colonialism. As Litman explains in The Myth of the Great Writ, habeas corpus is not simply a process to legitimize the legal system and fortify jurisdictional power. [17] At the writ’s core, it should serve the people, protect inmates under Article I, not raise the credibility of the legal system.

As the only writ enshrined in the Constitution, habeas corpus is too significant to be defined narrowly or applied inconsistently. While the Court in Holland v. Florida exercised commendable flexibility, its narrow scope left room for confusion, as seen in Maples v. Thomas, where Holland was neither overturned nor applied as a clear, controlling precedent. In some contexts, courts interpret Holland expansively; in others, it remains fragmentary. Given the writ’s centrality to due process and the integrity of the justice system, a clear and unified standard must guide its application. The need is urgent: lower courts still lack a coherent consensus on what constitutes grounds for habeas relief, and this patchwork approach has already cost 30 people their lives and has left others on death row with uncertain rights. Without a unified and equitable standard, the “Great Writ” risks becoming an empty constitutional promise, one that, in the most extreme cases, costs lives.

Edited by Ashley Park

[1] Leah Roemer, “The Fiction of Agency: Jeffrey Hutchinson Is the Latest of Many Executed After Attorneys Missed Deadlines to File Federal Appeals,” Death Penalty Information Center, May 30, 2025, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/the-fiction-of-agency-jeffrey-hutchinson-is-the-latest-of-many-executed-after-attorneys-missed-deadlines-to-file-federal-appeals. 

[2] Bryan Stevenson, “The Politics of Fear and Death: Successive Problems in Capital Federal Habeas Corpus Cases,” New York University Law Review 77, no. 3 (June 2002): 669–1240, https://nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/NYULawReview-77-3-Stevenson.pdf.

[3] Brandon L. Garrett and Kaitlin Phillips, “AEDPA Repeal,” Cornell Law Review 108, no. 3 (March 2023): 1742, https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawreview/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Garrett-Phillips-final.pdf.

[4] John Scalia, Prisoner Petitions in the Federal Courts, 1980–96, NCJ 164615 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 1997), https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoner-petitions-federal-courts-1980-96.

[5] Roger A. Hanson and Henry W. K. Daley, Federal Habeas Corpus Review: Challenging State Court Criminal Convictions, NCJ 155504 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 1995), https://static.prisonpolicy.org/scans/bjs/fhcrcscc.pdf.

[6] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 631-32 (2010).

[7] Donald J. Farole Jr. and Lynn Langton, County-Based and Local Public Defender Offices, 2007, NCJ 231175 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2010), https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/clpdo07.pdf.

[8] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. at 649.

[9] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. at 646.

[10] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. at 633 (Syllabus).

[11] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. at 644.

[12] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. at 647.

[13] Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. at 635.

[14] James S. Liebman, Jeffrey Fagan, and Valerie West, A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973–1995 (New York: Columbia Law School, 2000), https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1219.

[15] Maples v. Thomas, 565 U.S. 266 (2012).

[16] Mandi R. Moroz, “Protecting Access to the Great Writ: Equitable Tolling, Attorney Negligence, and AEDPA,” Georgia Law Review 51, no. 2 (2017): 648–672.

[17] Leah M. Litman, “The Myth of the Great Writ,” Virginia Law Review 107, no. 2 (December 2021): 285–356, https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/2329/.