Richard Hurles v. Charles L. Ryan

Today the majority offers a new way to evade AEDPA deference: make an unsupported — and unsupportable — assertion that the state court’s fact finding process is “unreasonable” for purposes of § 2254(d)(2).

In this case, the state judge resolved a recusal motion based on the judge’s own understanding of whether her impartiality might be questioned. Nothing about that is unusual: federal courts, including this one, uniformly adopt this approach. See, e.g., Suever v. Connell, 681 F.3d 1064, 1065 (9th Cir.2012); see also Miles v. Ryan, 697 F.3d 1090, 1090 (9th Cir.2012). Yet the majority notes…