Tim Shoop, Warden v. Ahmad Fawzi Issa

At Ahmad Issa’s 1998 trial, two witnesses described statements that their friend (and Issa’s accomplice) made to them about Issa’s involvement in a murder-for-hire scheme. Before Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), the Ohio Supreme Court rejected Issa’s Confrontation Clause challenge to the admission of this hearsay. It held that these statements bore sufficient indicia of reliability, and that they could therefore be admitted without violating the Confrontation Clause under then-binding precedent. See Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980); Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805 (1990). In 2018, notwithstanding AEDPA’s deferential standards, the Sixth Circuit disagreed and granted Issa relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The Sixth Circuit concluded that it could grant § 2254 relief without deciding whether the admission of these statements violated the Confrontation Clause. That was so, the court held, because their admission violated the Clause as it was understood under the now-overruled Roberts regime applicable at the time of Issa’s trial. This case presents two questions:

1. If a state prisoner’s conviction is constitutional under now-binding Supreme Court precedent, can a federal court nonetheless award habeas relief on the ground that state courts misapplied now-overruled Supreme Court precedents that governed at the time of trial?

2. Did the Sixth Circuit correctly hold that the Ohio Supreme Court failed to consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the challenged hearsay, and that its decision was therefore “contrary to” Idaho v. Wright under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)?