Mike Brown, Warden v. Louis Chandler

Criminal defendants are guaranteed “a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.” Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 689–90 (1986). Yet the states maintain “broad latitude under the Constitution to establish rules excluding evidence from criminal trials.” United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 308 (1998). That latitude is curtailed only if the rules are “arbitrary or disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve,” Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 55– 56 (1987), or if they “infringe[ ] upon a weighty interest of the accused,” Scheffer, 523 U.S. at 308. “Only rarely ha[s] [this Court] held that the right to present a defense was violated by the exclusion of defense evidence under a state rule of law.” Nevada v. Jackson, 569 U.S. 505, 509 (2013). And when, as here, the right is implicated in a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition, the state court’s application of this Court’s precedents must be given “substantial deference.” Jackson, 569 U.S. at 512. The questions presented are:

1. Do this Court’s precedents prohibiting the application of arbitrary rules to exclude evidence “clearly establish,” under § 2254(d)(1), that a state court’s misapplication of a valid state rule can rise to a federal constitutional violation?

2. Do this Court’s precedents, which generally have found that a defendant has a weighty interest in presenting “ ‘facts’ about the alleged crime at hand,” Scheffer, 523 U.S. at 316–17 n.13, clearly establish that a defendant also has a weighty interest in presenting extrinsic credibility evidence unrelated to the facts of the underlying crime?