Kernan v. Cuero
U.S. Supreme Court · decided November 6, 2017 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Decided
- November 6, 2017
- Term
- October Term 2017
- Vote
- 9–0
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
PER CURIAM. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 provides that a federal court may grant habeas relief to a state prisoner based on a claim adjudicated by a state court on the merits if the resulting decision is "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). In this case, a California court permitted the State to amend a criminal complaint to which the respondent, Michael Cuero, had pleaded guilty. That guilty plea would have led to a maximum sentence of 14 years and 4 months. The court acknowledged that permitting the amendment would lead to a higher sentence, and it consequently permitted Cuero to withdraw his guilty plea. Cuero then pleaded guilty to the amended complaint and was sentenced to a term with a minimum of 25 years. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit subsequently held that the California court had made a mistake of federal law. In its view, the law entitled Cuero to specific performance of the lower 14-year, 4-month sentence that he would have received had the complaint not been amended. The question here is whether the state-court decision "involved an unreasonable application o[f] clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." Ibid . Did our prior…
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