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On September 23, 1982, they agreed to rob a bar in Philadelphia, eventually settling on Prince\u0027s Lounge. During the robbery, one man walked to the rear bar and pointed a gun in the face of a barmaid, Janet Ryan. A different man instructed another barmaid, Sarah Clark, to \u0022get the money.\u0022 While Clark was placing money in a bag, she heard two gunshots from the back of the bar; a single actor had shot and killed two patrons.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ETwo weeks later, Jackson identified Lambert and Reese while in custody for an unrelated robbery. Lambert and Reese were tried jointly, with Jackson testifying against them. Janet Ryan also testified, and was at first unable to identify Lambert; shortly after stepping down from the stand, however, she approached the prosecutor and indicated that Lambert was the man who pointed the gun in her face. No other witness was able to identify Lambert or Reese, but the jury found Lambert guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, robbery, criminal conspiracy, and possession of an instrument of crime. He was sentenced to death.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EA few months later, the Federal Capital Habeas Corpus Unit of the Federal Defender Association of Philadelphia seized the police investigatory file in what was later ruled to be an abuse of subpoena power. Lambert\u0027s lawyers declared that several seized documents should have been available to the defense at trial, filing a claim under Pennsylvania\u0027s Post Conviction Relief Act. One document indicated that Jackson named a \u0022Lawrence Woodlock\u0022 as a co-defendant. The district court denied this claim, concluding that there was no reasonable likelihood the disclosure would have changed the verdict. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the additional evidence was not significant because the defense had already thoroughly impeached Jackson\u0027s testimony. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, reasoning that Jackson\u0027s statement about an additional co-defendant opened up an entirely new line of impeachment.\u003C\/p\u003E\n","question":"\u003Cp\u003EDid the Third Circuit properly apply the habeas deference standard to the state courts\u0027 rejection of Lambert\u0027s claim?\u003C\/p\u003E\n","conclusion":"\u003Cp\u003ENo. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that the Third Circuit improperly rejected the state courts\u0027 reasonable conclusion about the contents of the document. It cited the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which precluded a federal court from granting a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner unless the adjudication of his claim by state courts involved an unreasonable application of federal law.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe Court argued that the Third Circuit overlooked the determination of the state courts that the documents were entirely ambiguous; instead, the Third Circuit focused solely on the state courts\u0027 statements on the impeachment value of the evidence. The Court noted that the document did not explicitly link Woodlock to the Prince\u0027s Lounge robbery, that Jackson committed a dozen or so similar robberies, that Jackson was being held on several charges while the document was prepared, that Woodlock\u0027s name didn\u0027t appear anywhere else in the evidence, and that the two barmaids did not verify Woodlock\u0027s involvement.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EJustice Stephen Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. He disputed the majority\u0027s notion that the document was entirely ambiguous, and moreover argued that the state courts did not arrive at that conclusion at all. Instead, Justice Breyer pointed out that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was merely quoting the state\u0027s argument, not agreeing with it. 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