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- Title
The Plain Error of Cause and Prejudice.
- Authors
Hintz, Charles Eric
- Abstract
When parties fail to raise claims at the proper time, courts often subject those claims to heightened standards that impose additional hurdles to relief. One of the most common is "plain error," which only permits correcting an error that is obvious, that affects substantial rights, and that seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. In the 1982 decisions of United States v. Frady and Engle v. Isaac, however, the Supreme Court rejected plain error's applicability to procedural default in federal habeas corpus proceedings--i.e., to claims that should have been, but were not, timely presented at a pre-federal habeas stage. Instead, it applied the rule of "cause and prejudice," which allows review only if a petitioner has a valid reason for a default and can show actual prejudice as a result of the alleged violation of federal law. Recent scholarship has largely ignored Frady and Engle's rejection of plain error. But that rejection warrants academic scrutiny--especially as we mark the fortieth anniversary of these decisions this year--and this Article presents the argument that it must now be rethought. Frady and Engle were premised on the idea that plain error was less stringent than cause and prejudice, but subsequent doctrinal developments have rendered that premise false. And beyond that, the present-day manifestation of plain error much more effectively serves the core purposes of habeas and procedural default. Given that, the choice of cause and prejudice over plain error is now itself plainly erroneous.
- Subjects
MISTAKE (Law); PREJUDICES; HABEAS corpus; JUDICIAL process; WARRANTS (Law)
- Publication
Seton Hall Law Review, 2022, Vol 53, Issue 2, p439
- ISSN
0586-5964
- Publication type
Article