Fay v. Noia
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
3,951 later cases cite Fay v. Noia; 317 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Fay v. Noia?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Overruled in Part
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The Supreme Court replaced Fay's deliberate-bypass rule for a prisoner's failure to appeal with a uniform cause-and-prejudice standard for claims defaulted under independent and adequate state procedural rules.
Coleman v. Thompson · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
We now make it explicit: In all cases in which a state prisoner has defaulted his federal claims in state court pursuant to an independent and adequate state procedural rule, federal habeas review of the claims is barred unless the prisoner can demonstrate cause for the default and actual prejudice as a result of the alleged violation of federal law, or demonstrate that failure to consider the claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Fay was based on a conception of federal/state relations that undervalued the importance of state procedural rules. The several cases after Fay that applied the cause and prejudice standard to a variety of state procedural defaults represent a different view.
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Limited
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The Supreme Court rejected Fay's sweeping deliberate-bypass language and required cause and prejudice for federal habeas review of a defaulted claim.
Wainwright v. Sykes · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
It is the sweeping language of Fay v. Noia, going far beyond the facts of the case eliciting it, which we today reject.
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The Supreme Court confined Fay's broad federal-habeas approach by barring relief for Fourth Amendment exclusionary claims after a full and fair state opportunity to litigate them.
Stone v. Powell · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
This final barrier to broad collateral re-examination of state criminal convictions in federal habeas corpus proceedings was removed in Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963). … We hold, therefore, that where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, the Constitution does not require that a state prisoner be granted federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial.
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Criticized
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The Alaska Court of Appeals criticized Fay's broad account of common-law habeas and declined to use it to enlarge Alaska's Suspension Clause.
Flanigan v. State · Alaska Court of Appeals · filed
The Fay Court's broad view of the scope of common law habeas corpus is now disfavored in the U.S. Supreme Court and there is no reason to conclude that our supreme court would now find that the seope of the writ protected by the suspension clause adopted at the Alaska Constitutional Convention was broader than the then-prevailing view of the common law writ's scope.
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The Sixth Circuit criticized Fay as a results-oriented decision that mischaracterized habeas history and paid only lip service to section 2254.
Johnson v. Bauman · Sixth Circuit · filed
Instead, their guiding light was the Supreme Court’s notorious decision in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391 (1963), one that, over time, has dimmed, with the opinion largely discarded to the dustbin of legal history. … Fay’s results-oriented approach left the availability of the writ to turn on the Court’s desire to “achieve[] . . . swift and imperative justice on habeas corpus.” … Conspicuously, the opinion paid only lip service to the text of § 2254 and the pre-statutory exhaustion doctrine. … History, it is fair to say, has not been kind to Fay’s approach.
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Does this case still carry your argument?
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