Advanced Criminal Procedure: Post-Conviction Remedies

Catalog description

This seminar examines the procedural and substantive law governing collateral challenges to criminal convictions in state and federal courts, and explores the tensions between the criminal justice system's competing interests in finality and production of reliable convictions and sentences. The course includes a historical overview of modern habeas corpus, and will examine substantive areas of habeas law, including exhaustion, procedural default, successive petitions, cognizable claims, prejudice and harmless error, the role of innocence, the enactment and interpretation of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), statutes of limitations and equitable tolling.