{"id":54040,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ability-fl-prod.internetbrands.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/the-supreme-courts-most-kafkaesque-decision-penalizing-a-criminal-defendant-for-relying-on-a-courts-official-statement-of-the-due-date-for-his-habeas-corpus-appeal.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"the-supreme-courts-most-kafkaesque-decision-penalizing-a-criminal-defendant-for-relying-on-a-courts-official-statement-of-the-due-date-for-his-habeas-corpus-appeal","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/the-supreme-courts-most-kafkaesque-decision-penalizing-a-criminal-defendant-for-relying-on-a-courts-official-statement-of-the-due-date-for-his-habeas-corpus-appeal.html","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court’s Most Kafkaesque Decision Penalizing a Criminal Defendant for Relying on a Court’s Official Statement of the Due Date for His Habeas Corpus Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Supreme Court’s Most Kafkaesque Decision: Penalizing a Criminal Defendant for Relying on a Court’s Official Statement of the Due Date for His Habeas Corpus Appeal<\/h1><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

By MICHAEL C. DORF<\/h2><\/a><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

Wednesday, Jun. 20, 2007<\/td>\n\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n \n\n\n

Last week, in Bowles v. Russell<\/i><\/a>, the Supreme Court held that a federal appeals court had no jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the denial of a habeas corpus petition because the notice of appeal was filed two days late–even though it was filed one day before<\/u> the date that the federal district judge had (mistakenly) told the petitioner that it was due. As a consequence of the ruling, Keith Bowles loses his one chance to have a federal appeals court correct what he alleges were errors resulting in his murder conviction and sentence of fifteen-years-to-life in prison.<\/p>

Of course, no legal system could function without deadlines, and sometimes missed deadlines unavoidably result in miscarriages of justice. However, the majority opinion in Bowles<\/i>–written by Justice Clarence Thomas–appears to go out of its way to avoid doing justice. It is the reductio<\/u> ad<\/u> absurdum<\/u> <\/i>of legal formalism. It is, as I argue below, almost literally Kafkaesque.<\/p>

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