Brian Coleman, Superintendent, State Correctional Institution At Fayette, et al. v. Lorenzo Johnson (566 U.S. 650)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 29, 2012 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 566 U.S. 650 · 132 S. Ct. 2060
- Decided
- May 29, 2012
- Term
- October Term 2011
- Vote
- 9–0
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. Respondent Lorenzo Johnson was convicted as an accomplice and co-conspirator in the murder óf Taraja Williams, who was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest in the early morning hours of December 15, 1995, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After his conviction was affirmed in state court, Johnson exhausted his state remedies and sought a writ of habeas corpus in Federal District Court pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U. S. C. §2254. The District Court denied habeas relief but the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, holding that the evidence at trial was insufficient to support Johnson’s conviction under the standard set forth in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (1979). We have made clear that Jackson claims face a high bar in federal habeas proceedings because they are subject to two layers of judicial deference. First, on direct appeal, “it is the responsibility of the jury — not the court — to decide what conclusions should be drawn from evidence admitted at trial. A reviewing court may set aside the jury’s verdict on the ground of insufficient evidence only if no rational trier of fact could have agreed with the jury.” Cavazos v. Smith, 565 U. S. 1, 2 (2011) (per curiam). And second, on habeas review, “a federal court may not overturn a state court decision rejecting a sufficiency of the evidence…
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