A Good Day for Judicial Discretion

New York Times
Editorial
June 14, 2010

Equity is an elusive legal concept that occasionally allows some leeway in applying the rules of the law and is often unappreciated by judges who insist the law means only what it says. That was clear in 2008 when the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit refused to allow federal courts to consider a death-penalty conviction of Albert Holland because his lawyer had inexcusably let the filing deadline pass. Fortunately, seven members of the Supreme Court proved less rigid in their thinking on Monday and reversed that blinkered decision.

Mr. Holland, who was convicted of first-degree murder and is on Florida’s death row, continually asked his court-appointed lawyer about the paperwork deadlines and pressed him to keep all options of appeal open. But the lawyer barely communicated with his client and missed the filing deadline set by Congress in 1996.

In giving Mr. Holland a second chance to make his case, the Supreme Court acted in the highest legal tradition and demonstrated why society invests so much hope in the wisdom of justices — and not just their knowledge of legal principles. Writing for the court’s majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said that a hard and fast adherence to absolute legal rules could impose “the evils of archaic rigidity.”

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