Samuel Anstey v. David Ballard, Warden

Oliver Wendell Holmes once stated: “Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cock-sure of many things that were not so.”1

That statement encapsulates the error of the majority in affirming the denial of habeas relief. The error is twofold. First, the majority fails to realize that the State’s investigating witnesses, based on group-think and the quantity of the evidence rather than its quality, concluded, unscientifically, that the fire was intentionally set. Second, the majority has accepted the determination of the habeas court that Anste/s assertion of newly-discovered evidence,…