Whether the habeas statute can be reinterpreted to allow application of a later Supreme Court decision to deny relief that would otherwise obtain based on the law at the time of the last adjudication on the merits

QUESTION PRESENTED The Petitioner, Edward Mitchell, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment by a state trial court in 2001 based on testimony that, all agree, was introduced in direct violation of the constitutional standards governing the rights of confrontation and cross-examination, as defined in then-controlling decisions of this Court. A co-defendant in Mr. Mitchell’s case, who was convicted based on the same testimony at the same trial, sought and was granted habeas relief given that violation. Mr. Mitchell sought the same relief on the same basis. His petition was denied by the court of appeals, however, on grounds that the testimony at issue — although constitutionally inadmissible at the time of trial — would now be admissible under the intervening change in constitutional law effected by Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). The question presented is whether the habeas statute, which has for more than a century been interpreted to require a federal court to evaluate the state court ruling based solely on “clearly established law” at the time when it was rendered, as held in Greene v. Fisher, 565 U.S. 34, 44 (2011), can be reinterpreted by a circuit court to allow application of a decision by this Court issued long after the state court ruling, when it serves to deny relief that would otherwise obtain based on the law in existence at the time of the last adjudication on the merits. i