Brown v. Davenport

Summary

When a state court has ruled on the merits of a state prisoner’s claim, a federal court cannot grant habeas relief without applying both the test this Court outlined in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, and the one Congress prescribed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996; the Sixth Circuit erred in granting habeas relief to Mr. Davenport based solely on its assessment that he could satisfy the Brecht standard.

Text

PRELIMINARY PRINT 
Volume 596 U. S. Part 1 
Pages 118–158 
OFFICIAL REPORTS 
OF 
THE SUPREME COURT 
April 21, 2022 
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 
reporter of decisions 
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118 OCTOBER TERM, 2021 
Syllabus 
BROWN, ACTING WARDEN v. DAVENPORT 
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 
the sixth circuit 
No. 20–826. Argued October 5, 2021—Decided April 21, 2022 
Ervine Davenport was convicted of frst-degree murder following a jury 
trial where, at times, he sat shackled at a table with a “privacy screen.” 
On appeal, he argued that his conviction should be set aside in light of 
Deck v. Missouri, 544 U. S. 622, in which this Court held that the Four-
teenth Amendment's Due Process Clause generally forbids shackling a 
criminal defendant at trial absent “a special need.” Id., at 626. Find-
ing no “special need” articulated in the record, the Michigan Supreme 
Court agreed that a Deck violation had occurred and remanded the case 
to the trial court to determine under Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 
18, whether the prosecution could establish that the Deck error was 
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. On remand, the trial court con-
ducted an evidentiary hearing at which jurors testifed that the shackles 
had not affected their verdict and concluded that the State had carried 
its burden. Mr. Davenport appealed again, and the Michigan Court of 
Appeals affrmed the trial court. The Michigan Supreme Court de-
clined review. 
Mr. Davenport petitioned for federal habeas relief. The District 
Court found relief unwarranted under the Antiterrorism and Effective 
Death Penalty Act of 1996, which limits the power of federal courts to 
issue habeas relief to state prisoners. See 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). A di-
vided Sixth Circuit panel reversed, declining to analyze the case under 
AEDPA. Instead, the court held that its review was governed only by 
Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, which held that a state prisoner 
seeking to challenge his conviction on the basis of a state court's Chap-
man error must show that the error had a “ `substantial and injurious 
effect or infuence' ” on the trial's outcome, id., at 637. Persuaded that 
Mr. Davenport could satisfy Brecht, the Sixth Circuit granted federal 
habeas relief and ordered Michigan either to retry or release Mr. Daven-
port. This Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit confict about 
the proper interaction between the tests found in Brecht and AEDPA. 
Held: When a state court has ruled on the merits of a state prisoner's 
claim, a federal court cannot grant habeas relief without applying both 
the test this Court outlined in Brecht and the one Congress prescribed 
in AEDPA; the Sixth Circuit erred in granting habeas relief to Mr. Dav-

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Syllabus 
enport based solely on its assessment that he could satisfy the Brecht 
standard. Pp. 127–145. 
(a) When Congress supplies a constitutionally valid rule of decision, 
federal courts must follow it. In AEDPA, Congress instructed that a 
federal court “shall not. . . gran[t]” relief with respect to a claim that 
has been adjudicated on the merits in state court “unless” certain condi-
tions are met. § 2254(d). To be sure, the court below in this case was 
required to ensure that petitioner carried his burden under the terms 
of Brecht. But satisfying Brecht is only a necessary condition to habeas 
relief here; AEDPA must also be satisfed. The Sixth Circuit erred in 
holding otherwise. P. 127. 
(b) Since the founding, Congress has authorized federal courts to 
issue habeas writs to federal custodians, and since the Civil War, Con-
gress has extended that authority to include issuance of writs to state 
custodians. All along, Congress's statutes used permissive rather than 
mandatory language; federal courts enjoy the “power to” grant writs of 
habeas corpus in certain circumstances. That structure persists today; 
federal courts “may” grant habeas relief “as law and justice require.” 
28 U. S. C. §§ 2241, 2243. 
Under the traditional understanding of habeas corpus, a prisoner 
could not usually use the writ to challenge a fnal judgment of conviction 
issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. But by 1953, this Court 
had begun to depart from that understanding. In Brown v. Allen, 344 
U. S. 443, 458, it held that a state-court judgment “is not res judicata” 
in federal habeas proceedings with respect to a petitioner's federal con-
stitutional claims. After Brown, federal courts struggled with an ex-
ploding caseload of habeas petitions from state prisoners. 
Eventually, this Court responded by devising new rules aimed at sep-
arating the meritorious needles from the growing haystack of habeas 
petitions. The Court's decision in Brecht—which reasoned that Chap-
man's harmless-error rule for direct appeals was inappropriate for use 
in federal habeas review of fnal state-court judgments, 507 U. S., at 
633–634—was part of that effort. Brecht, like this Court's other equita-
ble doctrines restricting habeas relief, stems ultimately from the discre-
tion preserved by Congress's habeas statutes. 
Congress later introduced its own reforms in AEDPA, instructing 
that, if a state court has adjudicated the petitioner's claim on the merits, 
a federal court “shall not” grant habeas relief “unless” the state court's 
decision was (1) “contrary to” or an “unreasonable application of” clearly 
established federal law, as determined by the decisions of this Court, or 
(2) based on an “unreasonable determination of the facts” presented in 
the state-court proceeding. 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). AEDPA thus left in-

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120 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Syllabus 
tact the equitable discretion invested in federal courts by earlier federal 
habeas statutes. Pp. 127–134. 
(c) Mr. Davenport's two arguments in defense of the Sixth Circuit's 
decision lack merit. Pp. 135–141. 
(1) Mr. Davenport argues that because the AEDPA inquiry repre-
sents a logical subset of the Brecht test, the Sixth Circuit necessarily 
found that he satisfed AEDPA when he satisfed Brecht. That argu-
ment is mistaken. Proof of prejudice under Brecht does not equate to 
a successful showing under AEDPA. The inquiries under Brecht and 
AEDPA are different. Where AEDPA asks whether every fair-minded 
jurist would agree that an error was prejudicial, Brecht asks only 
whether a federal habeas court itself harbors grave doubt about the 
petitioner's verdict. The legal materials a court may consult when an-
swering each test also differ. Where AEDPA requires state-court deci-
sions to be measured against this Court's clearly established holdings, 
Brecht invites analysis based on the whole body of law. Assuming that 
the Sixth Circuit's analysis was enough to satisfy Brecht, it was not 
enough to warrant eligibility for relief under AEDPA. Pp. 135–137. 
(2) Mr. Davenport argues that this Court's precedents in Fry v. 
Pliler, 551 U. S. 112, and Davis v. Ayala, 576 U. S. 257, require a ruling 
in his favor. But the holding in neither case helps Mr. Davenport, and 
neither case resolved the question now before the Court. Instead, 
Mr. Davenport focuses on a brief passage from Fry, repeated in Ayala— 
“it certainly makes no sense to require formal application of both tests 
(AEDPA/Chapman and Brecht) when the latter obviously subsumes the 
former,” 551 U. S., at 120—that he believes supports the theory that a 
court may grant relief without applying AEDPA. It does not. In any 
event, this Court has long stressed that “the language of an opinion is 
not always to be parsed as though we were dealing with [the] language 
of a statute.” Reiter v. Sonotone Corp ., 442 U. S. 330, 341. The Court 
will not override a lawful congressional command on the basis of curated 
snippets extracted from decisions with no reason to pass on the argu-
ments Mr. Davenport presses here. Pp. 137–141. 
(d) Even assuming that Mr. Davenport's claim can survive Brecht, he 
cannot satisfy AEDPA. Mr. Davenport argues the Michigan Court of 
Appeals' disposition of his shackling claim is contrary to, or an unreason-
able application of, this Court's decision in Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U. S. 
560. Holbrook rejected the defendant's claim that he was denied a fair 
trial due to the prejudicial effect of supplemental courtroom security on 
the jury. Id., at 562. The language in Holbrook Mr. Davenport high-
lights casts doubt only on attempts to assess trial prejudice based on 
speculative testimony by prospective jurors. Nothing in Holbrook is 
inconsistent with the Michigan Court of Appeals' reliance on post-trial

Cite as: 596 U. S. 118 (2022) 121 
Syllabus 
testimony from actual jurors concerning the effect on deliberations of 
security measures at Mr. Davenport's trial. Nor did the Michigan court 
unreasonably apply Chapman when it found that the prosecution had 
established Mr. Davenport's shackling was harmless beyond a reason-
able doubt. This Court cannot say that every fairminded jurist apply-
ing Chapman must reach a different conclusion. Similarly, the Court 
cannot say that every fairminded court would have both identifed and 
adopted Mr. Davenport's forfeited theory that his shackling might have 
infuenced the jury toward a frst-degree, rather than second-degree, 
murder conviction. Pp. 141–145. 
964 F. 3d 448, reversed. 
Gorsuch, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, 
C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. 
Kagan, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer and Sotomayor, 
JJ., joined, post, p. 145. 
Fadwa A. Hammoud, Solicitor General of Michigan, ar-
gued the cause for petitioner. With her on the briefs were 
Dana Nessel, Attorney General of Michigan, and Jared 
Schultz, Assistant Attorney General. 
Tasha J. Bahal argued the cause for respondent. With 
her on the brief were Reuven Dashevsky and Catherine M. 
A. Carroll.* 
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the State of Ar-
kansas et al. by Leslie Rutledge, Attorney General of Arkansas, Nicholas 
J. Bronni, Solicitor General, Vincent M. Wagner, Deputy Solicitor General, 
and Asher L. Steinberg, Assistant Solicitor General, by Dawn Cash, Acting 
Attorney General of Oklahoma, and by the Attorneys General for their 
respective States as follows: Steve Marshall of Alabama, Treg Taylor of 
Alaska, Mark Brnovich of Arizona, Christopher M. Carr of Georgia, Todd 
Rokita of Indiana, Tom Miller of Iowa, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Daniel 
Cameron of Kentucky, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Lynn Fitch of Missis-
sippi, Eric S. Schmitt of Missouri, Austin Knudsen of Montana, Douglas 
J. Peterson of Nebraska, Aaron Ford of Nevada, Dave Yost of Ohio, Josh 
Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Jason Ravns-
borg of South Dakota, Herbert H. Slatery III of Tennessee, Ken Paxton 
of Texas, and Sean D. Reyes of Utah; for the Criminal Justice Legal Foun-
dation by Kent S. Scheidegger and Kymberlee C. Stapleton; and for Jona-
than F. Mitchell et al. by Taylor A. R. Meehan, Thomas R. McCarthy, and 
Adam K. Mortara, pro se. 
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122 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the Court. 
After a state court determines that an error at trial did 
not prejudice a criminal defendant, may a federal court grant 
habeas relief based solely on its independent assessment of 
the error's prejudicial effect under Brecht v. Abrahamson, 
507 U. S. 619 (1993)? Or must a federal court also evaluate 
the state court's decision under the Antiterrorism and Effec-
tive Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)? The Sixth Cir-
cuit ruled that an individual who satisfes Brecht alone is 
entitled to habeas relief. This was mistaken. When a state 
court has ruled on the merits of a state prisoner's claim, a 
federal court cannot grant relief without frst applying both 
the test this Court outlined in Brecht and the one Congress 
prescribed in AEDPA. 
I 
A 
One evening in 2007, Annette White attended a gathering 
with Ervine Davenport. On the drive home, Mr. Davenport 
killed Ms. White. At trial, the only questions concerned 
why and how. Mr. Davenport claimed self-defense and testi-
fed to that effect. On his account, Ms. White grew angry 
during the trip and tried to grab the steering wheel from 
him while he was driving. Then she pulled out a box cutter 
and cut his arm. Mr. Davenport responded by extending 
one arm and pinning Ms. White against the passenger side 
of the car, with his hand under her chin. Eventually, she 
stopped struggling. On discovering that Ms. White was no 
longer breathing, Mr. Davenport panicked and left her body 
in a feld. 
The prosecution offered a very different version of events. 
It stressed that Ms. White was 5'2'' tall, 103 pounds, and had 
a broken wrist, while Mr. Davenport was 6'5'' tall and 
weighed nearly 300 pounds. The prosecution presented evi-
dence that Mr. Davenport had bragged to others before the 
killing that, if he had a problem with someone, he would 
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Opinion of the Court 
choke the person. Days before Ms. White's death, Mr. Dav-
enport had done just that—strangling another woman until 
she lost consciousness and urinated on herself. Nor, on the 
prosecution's account, were Mr. Davenport's actions after 
Ms. White's death consistent with his claim of self-defense. 
Instead of contacting the police, he not only abandoned his 
victim's body. He also fed the scene and later visited 
Ms. White's home where he stole electronics and food. He 
told a witness, too, that he “had to off” Ms. White. 
The prosecution offered additional proof. When police 
questioned Mr. Davenport, he gave differing accounts and 
initially denied any involvement in Ms. White's death. 
While authorities did locate a box cutter in the car, they did 
not fnd it inside the cab of the vehicle but in the trunk and 
untainted by blood. Also, a forensic pathologist testifed 
that Ms. White died of manual strangulation. The patholo-
gist explained that a victim of strangulation may lose con-
sciousness after 30 seconds, but that death does not occur 
until the victim is without air for at least four to fve minutes. 
After Mr. Davenport testifed that he merely extended his 
arm across Ms. White's neck to keep her from cutting him, 
the forensic pathologist offered his view that this account 
was not plausible. Ms. White's injuries, found on both sides 
of her neck, were consistent with strangulation—but incon-
sistent with the application of broad force across the front of 
her neck. 
After a 7-day trial, a jury convicted Mr. Davenport of frst-
degree murder. 
B 
On direct appeal in state court, Mr. Davenport sought to 
have his conviction set aside in light of Deck v. Missouri, 544 
U. S. 622 (2005). In Deck, this Court held that the Four-
teenth Amendment's Due Process Clause generally forbids 
shackling a criminal defendant at trial absent “a special 
need.” Id., at 626. Mr. Davenport noted that during his 
trial (but not his testimony) offcials shackled one of his

124 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
hands, his waist, and his ankles. Those shackles may not 
have been visible to many in the courtroom because of a “pri-
vacy screen” around the table where Mr. Davenport sat. 
But the trial court did not articulate on the record any spe-
cial need for its security measures. 
Ultimately, the Michigan Supreme Court agreed that the 
trial court's actions violated Deck. At the same time, the 
court sought to apply Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 
(1967). In Chapman, this Court held that a preserved claim 
of constitutional error identifed on direct appeal does not 
require reversal of a conviction if the prosecution can estab-
lish that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. 
Id., at 24. To answer Chapman's question, the Michigan Su-
preme Court remanded the case to the trial court with in-
structions to determine whether “the jury saw the defend-
ant's shackles” and, if so, “whether the prosecution can 
demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the shackling 
error did not contribute to the verdict against the defend-
ant.” People v. Davenport, 488 Mich. 1054, 794 N. W. 2d 
616 (2011). 
On remand, the trial court conducted an evidentiary hear-
ing in which it heard from all 12 jurors. Five remembered 
seeing Mr. Davenport's restraints; the remaining seven did 
not. All 12 testifed that Mr. Davenport's shackles did not 
enter into their deliberations or infuence their unanimous 
verdict. Based on this evidence, the trial court found that 
the State had carried its burden to show harmlessness be-
yond a reasonable doubt. 
Again, Mr. Davenport appealed. This time, Michigan's 
appellate courts declined to disturb the judgment. For its 
part, the Michigan Court of Appeals held that “the prosecu-
tion proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the shackling 
error did not affect the verdict.” People v. Davenport, 2012 
WL 6217134, *3 (Dec. 13, 2012) (per curiam ). In doing so, 
the court relied on both the jurors' testimony and that “the 
evidence at trial overwhelmingly established defendant's 
guilt and belied his contention that he killed the 103-pound 
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Opinion of the Court 
victim in self-defense, a theory that was explicitly disputed 
by expert medical testimony.” Id., at *2, n. 2. The Michi-
gan Supreme Court denied Mr. Davenport's request for dis-
cretionary review. People v. Davenport, 494 Mich. 875, 832 
N. W. 2d 389, 390 (2013). 
C 
Mr. Davenport next sought relief in federal district court, 
fling a habeas petition in the Western District of Michigan. 
Under AEDPA, however, a federal court may disturb a fnal 
state-court conviction in only narrow circumstances. As 
relevant here, the statute provides that, when a state court 
has already ruled on the merits of the habeas petitioner's 
claim, he must show that decision was either (1) “contrary 
to” or an “unreasonable application of ” clearly established 
federal law, as determined by the decisions of this Court, or 
(2) based on an “unreasonable determination of the facts” 
presented in the state-court proceeding. 28 U. S. C. 
§ 2254(d). 
The District Court found relief unwarranted under this 
standard. The Michigan state courts had ruled on the mer-
its of Mr. Davenport's claim of error. In doing so, they cor-
rectly identifed this Court's controlling harmless-error rule 
from Chapman. And their conclusions involved neither an 
unreasonable application of Chapman nor an unreasonable 
determination of the facts. To the contrary, the District 
Court agreed with a Magistrate Judge's assessment that the 
state-court record contained no evidence “that the jurors 
were infuenced” by his restraints and “overwhelming evi-
dence of [Mr. Davenport's] guilt.” Davenport v. MacLaren, 
2016 WL 11262506, *4 (WD Mich., Nov. 7, 2016); see also 
Davenport v. MacLaren, 2017 WL 4296808, *1–*2 (WD Mich., 
Sept. 26, 2017) (citing 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1)). 
D 
After that loss, Mr. Davenport appealed to the Sixth Cir-
cuit, where a divided panel reversed. Davenport v. 
MacLaren, 964 F. 3d 448 (2020). 
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126 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
Unlike the District Court, the Sixth Circuit declined to 
analyze the case under AEDPA. Instead, it held, only this 
Court's decision in Brecht v. Abrahamson governed its re-
view. Handed down before Congress adopted AEDPA, 
Brecht sought to adapt Chapman's harmless-error rule, de-
veloped for cases on direct appellate review, for use in fed-
eral habeas proceedings. Brecht, 507 U. S., at 633–635. 
Citing the need to afford appropriate respect to fnal state-
court decisions that have already endured direct appeal, in-
cluding potential review in this Court, Brecht effectively in-
verted Chapman's burden. 507 U. S., at 635. Rather than 
require the prosecution to prove that a constitutional trial 
error is harmless, Brecht held that a state prisoner seeking 
to challenge his conviction in collateral federal proceedings 
must show that the error had a “ `substantial and injurious 
effect or infuence' ” on the outcome of his trial. Id., at 637. 
Persuaded that Mr. Davenport could satisfy his burden 
under Brecht, the panel majority ordered Michigan to retry 
or release him promptly. 964 F. 3d, at 464–468. 
Judge Readler dissented. He argued that Brecht and 
AEDPA set forth independent tests, and that both must be 
satisfed before habeas relief becomes permissible. In Judge 
Readler's view, too, the District Court correctly rejected 
Mr. Davenport's petition under AEDPA because the state 
courts hearing his case had not acted contrary to, or unrea-
sonably applied, this Court's decisions. 964 F. 3d, at 469, 
478. 
The Sixth Circuit denied rehearing en banc by a vote of 8 
to 7. Davenport v. MacLaren, 975 F. 3d 537 (2020). Judges 
Griffn and Thapar issued dissenting opinions. They ex-
pressed agreement with Judge Readler and observed that 
the panel majority's decision conficted with those of other 
circuits where petitioners are required to satisfy both Brecht 
and AEDPA before becoming eligible for habeas relief. 975 
F. 3d, at 552 (Thapar, J., dissenting) (citing decisions from the 
Third, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits). We granted 
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Opinion of the Court 
Michigan's petition for certiorari to resolve the confict in the 
federal courts of appeals about the proper interaction be-
tween these two tests. 593 U. S. ––– (2021). 
II 
When Congress supplies a constitutionally valid rule of 
decision, federal courts must follow it. In AEDPA, Con-
gress announced such a rule. It instructed that a federal 
court “shall not . . . gran[t]” relief with respect to a claim 
that has been adjudicated on the merits in state court “un-
less” the state court's decision was (1) “contrary to” or an 
“unreasonable application of ” clearly established federal law, 
as determined by the decisions of this Court, or (2) based on 
an “unreasonable determination of the facts” presented in 
the state-court proceeding. § 2254(d) (emphasis added). 
The upshot of these directions for our case is straightfor-
ward. No one questions that a state court's harmless-error 
determination qualifes as an adjudication on the merits 
under AEDPA. See Davis v. Ayala, 576 U. S. 257, 269 
(2015); Fry v. Pliler, 551 U. S. 112, 119 (2007); Early v. 
Packer, 537 U. S. 3, 10–11 (2002) (per curiam ). No one dis-
putes that such a decision exists here. Nor does Mr. Daven-
port pursue any claim to relief under § 2254(d)(2). From 
this, it follows that he must satisfy § 2254(d)(1) to secure fed-
eral habeas relief. To be sure, where Brecht is implicated a 
federal court must also ensure a habeas petitioner has car-
ried his burden under its terms before granting relief. But 
in cases like ours satisfying Brecht is only a necessary, not a 
suffcient, condition to relief. AEDPA too must be satisfed. 
The Sixth Circuit erred in holding otherwise. 
A 
Some background helps explain this arrangement. From 
the founding, Congress authorized federal courts to issue ha-
beas writs to federal custodians. § 14, 1 Stat. 81–82. After 
the Civil War, Congress extended this authority, allowing 
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128 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
federal courts to issue habeas writs to state custodians as 
well. See Act of Feb. 5, 1867, ch. 28, § 1, 14 Stat. 385. But 
these statutes used permissive rather than mandatory lan-
guage; federal courts had the “power to” grant writs of ha-
beas corpus in certain circumstances. That same structure 
lives on in contemporary statutes, which provide that federal 
courts “may” grant habeas relief “as law and justice require.” 
28 U. S. C. §§ 2241, 2243; Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 285 
(1992) (plurality opinion). 
Over the centuries, a number of writs of habeas corpus 
evolved at common law to serve a number of different func-
tions. See Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch 75, 97–98 (1807); 3 
W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 129– 
131 (1768). But the most notable among these writs was 
that of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, often called the 
“Great Writ.” Id., at 131. When English monarchs jailed 
their subjects summarily and indefinitely, common-law 
courts employed the writ as a way to compel the crown to 
explain its actions—and, if necessary, ensure adequate proc-
ess, such as a trial, before allowing any further detention. 
See Petition of Right, 3 Car. 1, ch.1, ¶¶ 5, 8 (1628). The 
Great Writ was, in this way, no less than “the instrument 
by which due process could be insisted upon.” Hamdi v. 
Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507, 555 (2004) (Scalia, J., dissenting). 
At the same time, even this writ had its limits. Usually, 
a prisoner could not use it to challenge a fnal judgment of 
conviction issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. See, 
e. g., Opinion on the Writ of Habeas Corpus, Wilm. 77, 88, 
97 Eng. Rep. 29, 36 (K. B. 1758). If the point of the writ was 
to ensure due process attended an individual's confnement, 
a trial was generally considered proof he had received just 
that. See, e. g., Bushell's Case , Vaugh. 135, 142–143, 124 
Eng. Rep. 1006, 1009–1010 (C. P. 1670). 
This traditional understanding extended from England to 
this country and persisted through much of our history. 
Asked to apply the Nation's frst habeas statute to a duly 
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Opinion of the Court 
convicted prisoner, Chief Justice Marshall invoked the 
common-law rule that a judgment of conviction after trial 
was “conclusive on all the world.” Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 
193, 202–203 (1830). Acknowledging that Congress had au-
thorized the Court to “inquire into the suffciency of ” the 
cause of the petitioner's detention, Marshall asked rhetori-
cally, “is not that judgment in itself suffcient cause?” Id., 
at 202 (emphasis added); see also Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. 18, 
21–22 (1876); P. Bator, Finality in Criminal Law and Federal 
Habeas Corpus for State Prisoners, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 441, 
465–469 (1963) (Bator). 
If the answer was nearly always yes, an important excep-
tion existed in both English and American law: A habeas 
court could grant relief if the court of conviction lacked juris-
diction over the defendant or his offense. See Watkins, 3 
Pet., at 202–203; Bator 471–472. A perceived “error in the 
judgment or proceedings, under and by virtue of which the 
party is imprisoned, constitute[d] no ground for” relief. 
Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 375 (1880). Instead, a ha-
beas court could “examin[e] only the power and authority of 
the court to act, not the correctness of its conclusions.” 
Harlan v. McGourin, 218 U. S. 442, 448 (1910). To be sure, 
the line between mere errors and jurisdictional defects was 
not always a “luminous beacon” and it evolved over time. 
Bator 470; Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. –––, ––– (2021) 
(Gorsuch, J., concurring). But this Court generally sought 
to police the doctrine's boundaries in cases involving federal 
and state prisoners alike.
1 
1 See, e. g., Ex parte Reed, 100 U. S. 13, 23 (1879) (distinguishing between 
“erroneous and voidable” and “absolutely void” judgments); see also 
Knewel v. Egan, 268 U. S. 442, 445–447 (1925) (“[T]he judgment of state 
courts in criminal cases will not be reviewed on habeas corpus merely 
because some right under the Constitution . . . is alleged to have been 
denied to the person convicted”); Henry v. Henkel, 235 U. S. 219, 228– 
229 (1914); Glasgow v. Moyer, 225 U. S. 420, 427–429 (1912); Markuson v. 
Boucher, 175 U. S. 184, 187 (1899); Tinsley v. Anderson, 171 U. S. 101, 106 
(1898); In re Eckart, 166 U. S. 481, 482–483 (1897); Bergemann v. Backer, 
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130 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
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By 1953, however, federal habeas practice began to take 
on a very different shape. That year in Brown v. Allen this 
Court held that a state-court judgment “is not res judicata” 
in federal habeas proceedings with respect to a petitioner's 
federal constitutional claims. 344 U. S. 443, 458 (1953). A 
state court may reject the petitioner's claims after a fair 
hearing. No appellate court, including this one, may see ft 
to reverse that fnal judgment. Yet still, Brown suggested, 
a federal district court approaching the same case years later 
should be free to decide de novo whether the state-court pro-
ceedings “resulted in a satisfactory conclusion” and to issue 
habeas relief if that conclusion is found wanting. Id., at 463; 
see also Wright, 505 U. S., at 287–288 (plurality opinion). 
The traditional distinction between jurisdictional defects and 
mere errors in adjudication no longer restrained federal ha-
beas courts. Full-blown constitutional error correction be-
came the order of the day. 
This shift did not go unnoticed. Concurring only in the 
result, Justice Jackson contended that the Court's decision 
“trivializ[ed] . . . the writ” and was inconsistent with the 
presumption of fnality that traditionally attached to crimi-
nal convictions. Brown, 344 U. S., at 536, 543. He warned, 
too, that the Court's ruling threatened “haystack[s]” of new 
habeas petitions—and that federal courts would struggle to 
identify the meritorious “needle[s]” among them. Id., at 
537. Over the ensuing years, that prediction proved pre-
157 U. S. 655, 658–659 (1895); Andrews v. Swartz, 156 U. S. 272, 276 (1895); 
In re Jugiro , 140 U. S. 291, 297 (1891); In re Wood, 140 U. S. 278, 286–287 
(1891); Ex parte Bigelow , 113 U. S. 328, 330–331 (1885); Ex parte Crouch, 
112 U. S. 178, 180 (1884); Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. 18, 21 (1876); 1 H. Black, 
Law of Judgments §§ 170, 254 (2d ed. 1902); S. Thompson, Void Sentences, 
4 Crim. L. Mag. 797, 798–799 (1883). This Court eventually came to view 
the “limited” class of void judgments to include “(i) convictions based on 
assertedly unconstitutional statutes” and “(ii) detentions based upon an 
allegedly illegal [successive] sentence.” Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 
476, and n. 8 (1976) (citing Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 (1880); Ex parte 
Lange, 18 Wall. 163 (1874); Bator 465–474). 
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scient: Federal courts struggled with an exploding caseload 
of habeas petitions from state prisoners. See, e. g., Schneck-
loth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 274, n. 37 (1973) (Powell, 
J., concurring) (“In 1971 . . . state prisoners alone fled 7,949 
petitions for habeas in federal district courts, over 14 times 
the number fled when Mr. Justice Jackson voiced his misgiv-
ings”); B. Garrett & L. Kovarsky, Federal Habeas Corpus 
135–136 (2013) (documenting the rise of habeas flings by 
state prisoners).
2 
2 The dissent does not dispute that habeas courts refused to engage in 
full-blown constitutional error correction at the time of the founding. But 
it contends the practice became the norm by some (unspecifed) point in 
the “mid-19th century.” Post, at 147 (opinion of Kagan, J.). The dis-
sent's revisionist account contradicts this Court's understanding. See, 
e. g., Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 663 (1996) (“[I]t was not until well 
into this century that this Court interpreted [habeas statutes] to allow a 
fnal judgment of conviction in a state court to be collaterally attacked”); 
Stone, 428 U. S., at 475 (in the 19th century, “[t]he writ was extended to 
state prisoners[,] . . . [b]ut the limitation of federal habeas corpus jurisdic-
tion to consideration of the jurisdiction of the sentencing court persisted”); 
id., at 476 (Brown was a “landmark decision” that “expanded” habeas); 
Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 285 (1992) (plurality opinion) (“[B]efore 
[Brown], . . . [a]bsent an alleged jurisdictional defect, habeas corpus would 
not lie” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The dissent also claims to 
understand Brown better than its contemporaries did, ignoring Justice 
Jackson's critique as well as Professor Hart's observation that Brown 
“manifestly broke new ground.” The Supreme Court 1958 Term—Fore-
word: The Time Chart of the Justices, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 84, 106 (1959); see 
also Bator 499–501; W. Duker, A Constitutional History of Habeas Corpus 
257–259 (1980); C. Forsythe, The Historical Origins of Broad Federal Ha-
beas Review Reconsidered, 70 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1079, 1166–1168 (1999); 
1 B. Means, Postconviction Remedies §§ 4:4, 4:10 (2021). To be sure, the 
“category of claims deemed to be jurisdictional for habeas purposes” 
“[g]radually . . . expand[ed]” over time. Wright, 505 U. S., at 285 (plural-
ity opinion). But that hardly proves the dissent's ambitious thesis that 
habeas has, from the mid-19th century, functioned as plenary review for 
any “constitutional harms” that might lurk behind state-court judgments. 
Post, at 150. In fact, some of the 19th century cases the dissent cites did 
not even involve challenges to a court's fnal judgment. See, e. g., Ex 
parte Wells, 18 How. 307, 309 (1856) (challenge to custody under a Presi-

132 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
B 
Eventually, this Court responded to the post-Brown ha-
beas boom by devising new rules aimed at separating the 
meritorious needles from the growing haystack. The ha-
beas statutes themselves provided the starting place for 
these efforts. Recall that Congress invested federal courts 
with discretion when it comes to supplying habeas relief— 
providing that they “may” (not must) grant writs of habeas 
corpus, and that they should do so only as “law and justice 
require.” 28 U. S. C. §§ 2241, 2243. This language, the 
Court recognized, serves as “authorization to adjust the 
scope of the writ in accordance with equitable and prudential 
considerations.” Danforth v. Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264, 278 
(2008); see also Withrow v. Williams, 507 U. S. 680, 716 
(1993) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 
Foremost among those considerations is the States' “power-
ful and legitimate interest in punishing the guilty.” Calde-
ron v. Thompson, 523 U. S. 538, 556 (1998) (internal quo-
tation marks omitted). Granting habeas relief to a state 
prisoner “intrudes on state sovereignty to a degree matched 
by few exercises of federal judicial authority.” Harrington 
v. Richter, 562 U. S. 86, 103 (2011) (internal quotation 
marks omitted). 
Exercising its equitable discretion, and informed by these 
concerns, the Court began to develop doctrines “aimed at 
returning the Great Writ closer to its historic offce.” Ed-
dential pardon that supplanted a court's sentence); Ex parte Royall, 117 
U. S. 241, 252–253 (1886) (challenge to pretrial custody). Other cases, in-
volving convictions under unconstitutional statutes and successive sen-
tences, treated the judgments at issue as void. See, e. g., n. 1, supra; In 
re Medley, 134 U. S. 160, 173 (1890); In re Nielsen, 131 U. S. 176, 183–185 
(1889). And, as we have seen, 19th-century decisions routinely sought to 
police the jurisdictional line. Supra, at 129–130, and n. 1. In any event, 
what we have said remains true: By 1953, habeas had slipped its tradi-
tional moorings. 
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wards, 593 U. S., at ––– (Gorsuch, J., concurring). The 
Court established procedural-default standards to prevent 
petitioners from evading independent and adequate state-
law grounds sustaining their convictions. Wainwright v. 
Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 86–87 (1977). The Court held that some 
claims are not cognizable in federal habeas if state courts 
provide a mechanism for review. Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 
465, 494–495 (1976). The Court also applied new rules to 
prevent cycles of repetitive flings. McCleskey v. Zant, 499 
U. S. 467, 486–493 (1991). 
Brecht was part of this effort. In Chapman, this Court 
held that, when a defendant demonstrates on direct appeal 
that a constitutional error occurred at his trial, his conviction 
cannot stand unless the government proves the error's harm-
lessness “beyond a reasonable doubt.” 386 U. S., at 24. In 
Brecht, the Court resolved that this same standard was inap-
propriate for use in federal habeas review of fnal state-court 
judgments. 507 U. S., at 633–634. Instead, the Court rea-
soned, a state prisoner should not receive federal “habeas 
relief based on trial error unless” he can show the error had a 
“substantial and injurious effect or infuence” on the verdict. 
Id., at 637 (internal quotation marks omitted). In reaching 
its judgment, the Court stressed that undoing a fnal state-
court judgment is an “extraordinary remedy,” reserved for 
only “ `extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice sys-
tem' ” and different in kind from providing relief on direct 
appeal. Id., at 633–634. To allow a federal habeas court to 
set aside a conviction based on nothing more than “specula-
tion that the defendant was prejudiced by trial error” would 
be to give short shrift to the State's “sovereign interest” 
in its fnal judgment. Calderon v. Coleman, 525 U. S. 141, 
146 (1998) (per curiam ). Much as the Court had “flled the 
gaps of the habeas statute with respect to other matters,” it 
found it “necessary to do so” again, in a by-now familiar exer-
cise of its equitable discretion. Brecht, 507 U. S., at 633. 
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C 
Three years after Brecht, and apparently fnding the 
Court's equitable doctrines insuffcient, Congress introduced 
its own reforms in AEDPA. 
In many ways, the statute represented a sea change in 
federal habeas law. As we have seen, Congress instructed 
that, if a state court has adjudicated the petitioner's claim 
on the merits, a federal court “shall not” grant habeas relief 
“unless” certain conditions are satisfed. § 2254(d). Some 
of these conditions were new to the law at the time of their 
adoption; all are demanding. See Richter, 562 U. S., at 102. 
Still, Congress did not wash away everything that came 
before. While AEDPA announced certain new conditions to 
relief, it did not guarantee relief upon their satisfaction. In-
stead, Congress left intact the equitable discretion tradition-
ally invested in federal courts by preexisting habeas stat-
utes. So even a petitioner who prevails under AEDPA must 
still today persuade a federal habeas court that “law and 
justice require” relief. § 2243. See Fry, 551 U. S., at 119; 
Horn v. Banks, 536 U. S. 266, 272 (2002) (per curiam ). And 
whatever else those inquiries involve, they continue to re-
quire federal habeas courts to apply this Court's precedents 
governing the appropriate exercise of equitable discretion— 
including Brecht. See Banks, 536 U. S., at 272; Johnson v. 
Acevedo, 572 F. 3d 398, 404 (CA7 2009); see also Edwards, 
593 U. S., at –––, n. 5 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). 
Today, then, a federal court must deny relief to a state 
habeas petitioner who fails to satisfy either this Court's equi-
table precedents or AEDPA. But to grant relief, a court 
must fnd that the petitioner has cleared both tests. The 
Sixth Circuit erred when it held Mr. Davenport to just one 
of these burdens. It granted relief after fnding for him on 
Brecht. But it failed to ask the further question whether he 
satisfed AEDPA. In doing so, the court disregarded Con-
gress's instruction that habeas relief “shall not be granted” 
unless AEDPA's terms are satisfed. § 2254(d). 
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III 
Mr. Davenport advances two arguments—one logical, one 
doctrinal—in defense of the Sixth Circuit's decision. We 
consider them in turn. 
A 
Mr. Davenport frst suggests the Sixth Circuit's failure to 
discuss AEDPA amounted to no more than a forgivable pec-
cadillo. On his account, the AEDPA inquiry represents a 
logical subset of the Brecht test. So even though the Sixth 
Circuit did not formally fnd that he satisfed AEDPA, it im-
plicitly did so when it found his case cleared Brecht. 
This theory is mistaken. Proof of prejudice under Brecht 
does not equate to a successful showing under AEDPA. In-
stead, the inquiries are “entirely different in kind.” J. 
Greabe, The Riddle of Harmless Error Revisited, 54 Houston 
L. Rev. 59, 113, n. 297 (2016) (emphasis deleted). They pose 
courts with different questions to resolve and require courts 
to answer those questions based on different legal materials. 
Take the questions the two tests pose. When a state 
court has applied Chapman, § 2254(d)(1) requires a habeas 
petitioner to prove that the state court's decision was unrea-
sonable. Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. 170, 181 (2011); Fry, 
551 U. S., at 119. To accomplish that, a petitioner must per-
suade a federal court that no “fairminded juris[t]” could 
reach the state court's conclusion under this Court's prece-
dents. Ayala, 576 U. S., at 269 (internal quotation marks 
omitted). Similarly, if a petitioner alleges the state court's 
decision “was based on an unreasonable determination of the 
facts” under § 2254(d)(2), it is not enough to show that “rea-
sonable minds reviewing the record might disagree about the 
fnding in question.” Brumfeld v. Cain, 576 U. S. 305, 314 
(2015) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). 
By contrast, under Brecht a petitioner may prevail by per-
suading a federal court that it alone should harbor “grave 
doubt”—not absolute certainty—about whether the trial 
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136 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
error affected the verdict's outcome. O'Neal v. McAninch, 
513 U. S. 432, 435 (1995). In sum, where AEDPA asks 
whether every fairminded jurist would agree that an error 
was prejudicial, Brecht asks only whether a federal habeas 
court itself harbors grave doubt about the petitioner's 
verdict. 
Next, consider the legal materials a court may consult 
when applying the two tests. Section 2254(d)(1) limits ha-
beas relief to cases where a state-court decision contravenes 
or unreasonably applies “clearly established Federal law, as 
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” It 
is not enough that the state-court decision offends lower fed-
eral court precedents. See, e. g., Glebe v. Frost, 574 U. S. 21, 
24 (2014) (per curiam ). This Court's dicta cannot supply a 
ground for relief. See, e. g., White v. Woodall, 572 U. S. 415, 
419 (2014). Nor can holdings that speak only at a high level 
of generality. See, e. g., Lopez v. Smith, 574 U. S. 1, 6 (2014) 
(per curiam ); Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U. S. 652, 664 
(2004). Under AEDPA too, “[s]tate-court decisions are 
measured against this Court's precedents as of `the time the 
state court renders its decision' ” and cannot be held unrea-
sonable only in light of later decided cases. Pinholster, 563 
U. S., at 182 (quoting Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U. S. 63, 71– 
72 (2003)). None of these restrictions applies under Brecht. 
There, a federal habeas court may consult and draw on the 
whole body of law. So, for example, a petitioner might be 
able to prevail under Brecht thanks to favorable circuit case 
law but still lose under AEDPA because no comparable hold-
ing exists in this Court's precedents. 
Today's case illustrates how these differences matter. 
The Sixth Circuit granted relief to Mr. Davenport after con-
cluding that it harbored grave doubts about the jury's ver-
dict. It did not claim that every reasonable jurist would 
share its doubts. Nor did it purport to hold that the Michi-
gan state courts had acted contrary to or unreasonably ap-
plied a decision of this Court. Instead, the Sixth Circuit 
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said only that the state-court decisions in this case could not 
be reconciled with a roughly analogous precedent from the 
Ninth Circuit. 964 F. 3d, at 467. Even assuming the Sixth 
Circuit's analysis was enough to permit relief under Brecht, 
none of its reasoning was enough to warrant relief under 
AEDPA. Nor can any of this come as a surprise. As we 
have seen, if AEDPA makes winning habeas relief more dif-
fcult, it is because Congress adopted the law to do just that.
3 
B 
Failing in his frst argument, Mr. Davenport offers an al-
ternative. Even if all we have said is true as a matter of 
logic, he suggests, we should rule for him anyway as a mat-
ter of precedent thanks to Fry v. Pliler, 551 U. S. 112, and 
Davis v. Ayala, 576 U. S. 257. 
Here, too, we cannot agree. Start with Fry. Because no 
state court had ruled on the merits of the petitioner's Chap-
man claim, everyone in Fry agreed that AEDPA did not 
apply to his federal habeas petition. Seeking to leverage 
3 The dissent attempts to paper over the differences between Brecht and 
AEDPA in two strokes. First, it suggests that asking Brecht's question 
whether one jurist harbors grave doubt about the prejudicial effect of a 
trial error is effectively the same thing as asking AEDPA's question 
whether any fairminded jurist could reach the Chapman decision a state 
court did. Post, at 156–157. Second, to work its way around the fact 
that Brecht and AEDPA require courts to consult different bodies of law, 
the dissent argues for the creation of a new version of Brecht in which 
habeas courts must “confn[e themselves] to using AEDPA-approved mate-
rials.” Post, at 153. Call it Brecht 2.0. Neither move succeeds. Brecht 
and AEDPA ask analytically distinct questions—and AEDPA's test alone 
is statutorily mandated. Until today, too, Brecht has permitted courts to 
consult the full body of law. Besides, if the dissent really believes Brecht 
and AEDPA always lead to the same result, it is unclear why it objects so 
strongly to our judgment today. The dissent does not quibble with how 
we apply AEDPA to Mr. Davenport's case. See Part IV , infra. And, 
manifestly, the Court of Appeals did not confne itself to consulting 
“AEDPA-approved materials,” but relied in part on circuit case law to 
overturn Mr. Davenport's conviction. See supra, at 136 and this page. 
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Opinion of the Court 
that fact to his further advantage, the petitioner argued that 
Congress implicitly swept away this Court's equitable ha-
beas precedents when it adopted AEDPA. 551 U. S., at 119. 
The upshot? On the petitioner's view, this meant a federal 
habeas court had to apply Chapman (not Brecht or AEDPA) 
to his case. Ultimately, the Court rejected this argument, 
confrming instead that our equitable precedents remain ap-
plicable “whether or not” AEDPA applies. 551 U. S., at 121. 
None of this answers the question we face today. Where 
the petitioner in Fry sought to suggest that AEDPA ren-
dered Brecht a dead letter, the petitioner here argues nearly 
the opposite. And the Court's ruling in Fry is, if anything, 
affrmatively unhelpful to Mr. Davenport. Not only did Fry 
hold that this Court's equitable precedents like Brecht coex-
ist side-by-side with AEDPA, it expressly recognized that 
AEDPA “sets forth a precondition to the grant of habeas 
relief . . . not an entitlement to it.” 551 U. S., at 119– 
120. Rather than suggest Brecht duplicates AEDPA or vice 
versa, Fry thus stands as a reminder that the two tests im-
pose analytically distinct preconditions to relief. 
Mr. Davenport offers no persuasive reply. Instead, he in-
vites us to overlook all of this and train our attention to a 
brief passage at the end of Fry's relevant analysis. There, 
he notes, the Court said this: “[I]t certainly makes no sense 
to require formal application of both tests (AEDPA/Chap-
man and Brecht) when the latter obviously subsumes the 
former.” 551 U. S., at 120. On Mr. Davenport's telling, 
whatever else Fry did or said, this language means it 
adopted his theory that a court applying Brecht necessarily 
applies AEDPA along the way. 
We do not see how we might read so much into so little. 
Doubtless, there are some cases “when” Brecht does “sub-
sum[e]” AEDPA, just as Fry says. 551 U. S., at 120. As 
we have seen, and as was the case in Fry, if a state court 
has not adjudicated the petitioner's claim on the merits, 
AEDPA falls away. Likewise, if a federal court determines

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that a habeas petition fails because of Brecht, there is 
no need to prolong the matter by “formal[ly] appl[ying]” 
AEDPA as well. 551 U. S., at 120. But none of this means, 
and Fry never said, that a Brecht inquiry always subsumes 
an AEDPA inquiry. Nor did Fry even have reason to con-
sider the relationship between Brecht and AEDPA in cases 
like ours—where a state court has issued a decision on the 
merits of the petitioner's claim and AEDPA does apply. To 
the extent Fry had anything to say about that scenario, all 
it said was consistent with what we say today: In such cases, 
the Court recognized, relief “may not be granted unless 
the state court's adjudication” was “unreasonable” under 
AEDPA. 551 U. S., at 119.
4 
That leaves Davis v. Ayala, where a similar story unfolds. 
There, the California Supreme Court did rule on the merits 
of the petitioner's claim: It determined that any federal con-
stitutional errors in his trial-court proceedings were harm-
less under Chapman. Ayala, 576 U. S., at 263–264. In 
later federal habeas proceedings, the Ninth Circuit applied 
Brecht, found prejudice, and granted relief without pausing 
to consider AEDPA directly. Ayala v. Wong, 756 F. 3d 656, 
674 (CA9 2014). Instead, it asserted, much as Mr. Daven-
port does, that a favorable fnding for a petitioner under 
4 As it must, the dissent concedes that Fry addressed arguments “differ-
[ent] from [Mr.] Davenport's.” Post, at 154. Even so, the dissent latches 
onto Fry's passing description of AEDPA as “ `more liberal' ” than Brecht 
and its statement that the latter “ `subsumes' ” the former. Post, at 146, 
154, 155, 156. For reasons we have discussed, however, this dicta does 
not transform Fry into a ruling that habeas courts must grant relief upon 
satisfaction of Brecht without evaluating the state court's judgment under 
AEDPA. But there is still another problem with the dissent's attempt to 
invoke Fry as support for its position. Remember, the dissent's claim 
that Brecht duplicates AEDPA depends on a premise wholly alien to the 
Fry Court—a new rule (Brecht 2.0) requiring courts applying Brecht to 
consult only “AEDPA-approved materials.” See n. 3, supra. The dis-
sent's argument thus boils down to an assertion that we should today 
rewrite one precedent (Brecht) and then attribute clairvoyance about our 
revisions to another past Court (Fry). 
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Brecht necessarily answers AEDPA's distinct inquiry. 756 
F. 3d, at 674, n. 13. In the end, however, this Court re-
versed. We held that the Ninth Circuit misapplied Brecht 
and that a proper Brecht analysis precluded relief. Along 
the way, we indicated that the petitioner could not prove 
eligibility for relief under AEDPA's demanding standard 
either. 
With nothing in this holding to help him, Mr. Davenport 
again asks us to focus on a carefully curated snippet. Bor-
rowing language from Fry, Ayala observed that “a prisoner 
who seeks federal habeas corpus relief must satisfy Brecht, 
and if the state court adjudicated his claim on the merits, the 
Brecht test subsumes the limitations imposed by AEDPA.” 
Ayala, 576 U. S., at 270 (citing Fry, 551 U. S., at 119–120). 
Again, though, it is hard to see how this much might carry 
the day. When a federal court determines, as we did in 
Ayala, that a petitioner has failed to carry his burden under 
Brecht, that conclusion subsumes (or perhaps more precisely, 
obviates the need for) a separate AEDPA inquiry; relief 
must be denied. But none of this resolves the distinct ques-
tion we face today—whether a petitioner who can satisfy 
Brecht also necessarily secures a victory under AEDPA. 
The Ayala Court had no occasion to address that question. 
And to the extent it spoke to it, it spoke much as Fry had, 
taking pains to reject any suggestion “that Brecht some-
how abrogates the limitation on federal habeas relief that 
§ 2254(d) plainly sets out.” Ayala, 576 U. S., at 268.
5 
5 If Fry doesn't seal a win for Mr. Davenport, the dissent argues, Ayala 
does the job on its own. Post, at 154–156. But Ayala does no more than 
Fry to compel the dissent's Brecht 2.0 approach. To the contrary, the 
Ayala Court reversed a lower court that had overturned a conviction 
under Brecht “ `without regard for the state court's harmlessness determi-
nation.' ” Ayala, 756 F. 3d, at 674. It issued a stern reminder that “the 
highly deferential AEDPA standard applies.” Ayala, 576 U. S., at 269. 
And its harmless-error analysis deferred repeatedly to the state court's 
fndings. Id., at 271–285. These are not the actions of a Court that saw 
Brecht as a stand-alone gateway to habeas relief. 
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In the end, Mr. Davenport's appeals to Fry and Ayala 
(echoed by the dissent) rest on a misunderstanding of stare 
decisis. At its best, that doctrine is a call for judicial humil-
ity. It is a reminder to afford careful consideration to the 
work of our forbearers, their experience, and their wisdom. 
But respect for past judgments also means respecting their 
limits. This Court has long stressed that “the language of 
an opinion is not always to be parsed as though we were 
dealing with [the] language of a statute.” Reiter v. Sono-
tone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 341 (1979). Yet that is exactly 
what Mr. Davenport and the dissent ask of us. They would 
have us override a lawful congressional command—that no 
federal habeas relief should issue “unless” AEDPA's applica-
ble conditions are satisfed. § 2254(d). And they would 
have us do so on the basis of a handful of sentences extracted 
from decisions that had no reason to pass on the argument 
Mr. Davenport presents today. We neither expect nor hope 
that our successors will comb these pages for stray com-
ments and stretch them beyond their context—all to justify 
an outcome inconsistent with this Court's reasoning and 
judgments and with Congress's instructions. Such an ex-
alted view of this Court's every passing remark would turn 
stare decisis from a tool of judicial humility into one of judi-
cial hubris. 
IV 
Having concluded that the Sixth Circuit erred by failing 
to apply AEDPA before granting habeas relief, one question 
remains: Assuming Mr. Davenport can satisfy Brecht as the 
Sixth Circuit held, can he satisfy AEDPA? The answer 
helps illustrate how the two inquiries are distinct and why a 
federal court must answer both before overturning a state-
court conviction. 
Under the statute's terms, we assess the reasonableness 
of the “last state-court adjudication on the merits of” the 
petitioner's claim. Greene v. Fisher, 565 U. S. 34, 40 (2011). 
In this case, that is the decision of the Michigan Court of

142 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
Appeals. To be sure, after that intermediate court ruled 
against Mr. Davenport he sought discretionary review in the 
Michigan Supreme Court, which denied his request. See 
494 Mich., at 875, 832 N. W. 2d, at 390. But a discretionary 
denial of leave to appeal does not typically entail an “adjudi-
cation” of the underlying claim's “merits” under AEDPA's 
terms. Instead, it usually represents “a decision by the 
state supreme court not to hear the appeal—that is, not to 
decide at all.” Greene, 565 U. S., at 40; cf. Ylst v. Nunne-
maker, 501 U. S. 797, 805–806 (1991) (“[T]he discretionary 
denial of review on direct appeal by the California Supreme 
Court is not even a `judgment' ”). 
In this respect, the Michigan Supreme Court follows a fa-
miliar practice. “The denial of a writ of certiorari” in this 
Court “imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of 
the case.” United States v. Carver, 260 U. S. 482, 490 (1923). 
And the Michigan Supreme Court has long described its de-
nials of applications for leave to appeal in the same terms. 
See, e. g., Malooly v. York Heating & Ventilating Corp., 270 
Mich. 240, 246–247, 258 N. W. 622, 624 (1935); see also Mich. 
Ct. Rules 7.303(B)(1), 7.305(B)(1)–(3) (2021). In the past, 
too, this Court has treated lower Michigan court decisions 
as the relevant AEDPA adjudication despite discretionary 
denials of review by the State Supreme Court. Woods v. 
Donald, 575 U. S. 312, 314–315, 317 (2015) (per curiam ); Burt 
v. Titlow, 571 U. S. 12, 20 (2013); Lafer v. Cooper, 566 U. S. 
156, 161, 173 (2012). 
Turning to the decision of the Michigan Court of Appeals, 
Mr. Davenport principally argues that it was contrary to or 
an unreasonable application of this Court's decision in Hol-
brook v. Flynn, 475 U. S. 560 (1986). But it is hard to see 
how that could be the case. For one thing, Holbrook was a 
decision about whether a constitutional trial error occurred 
at all, not whether the alleged error was prejudicial. For 
another, Holbrook rejected the defendant's claim that he 
“was denied his constitutional right to a fair trial when . . . 
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the customary courtroom security force was supplemented 
by four uniformed state troopers sitting in the frst row of 
the spectator's section.” Id., at 562. Nothing in that analy-
sis is inconsistent with the Michigan Court of Appeals' dispo-
sition of Mr. Davenport's shackling claim. 
Unable to make use of Holbrook's holding, Mr. Davenport 
once more asks us to turn our attention elsewhere. In par-
ticular, he notes that the trial court in Holbrook asked poten-
tial jurors at the outset of trial whether the presence of state 
troopers would affect their ability to consider fairly the de-
fendant's case; they said no. This Court indicated that such 
questions and answers cannot alone “dispositive[ly]” resolve 
the question whether security measures prejudice a defend-
ant's right to a fair trial. Id., at 570. Instead, the Court 
reasoned that “jurors will not necessarily be fully conscious 
of the effect [such measures] will have on their attitude to-
ward the accused. This will be especially true when jurors 
are questioned at the very beginning of the proceedings; at 
that point, they can only speculate on how they will feel after 
being exposed to a practice daily over the course of a long 
trial.” Ibid. Mr. Davenport highlights that the Court in 
Deck favorably quoted some of these passages too. 544 
U. S., at 635. 
Even bearing all this in mind, however, we cannot see how 
the Michigan Court of Appeals acted contrary to or unrea-
sonably applied clearly established federal law. The Michi-
gan court found the shackling in Mr. Davenport's case harm-
less for two reasons—both because of the “overwhelmin[g]” 
evidence against him, and because jurors testifed that his 
shackling did not affect their verdict. 2012 WL 6217134, at 
*1–*2, and n. 2. Holbrook does not compel a different ruling 
on the frst score. It addressed a different evidentiary rec-
ord and affrmed the defendant's conviction. 
Nor does the decision compel a different ruling on the sec-
ond score. Holbrook cast doubt only on attempts to assess 
prejudice based on testimony from prospective jurors specu-

144 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Opinion of the Court 
lating about how the security measures might affect their 
perceptions over the course of an upcoming trial. Nothing 
in the decision purported to forbid courts from considering 
post-trial testimony about how trial security measures actu-
ally affected juror deliberations. Nor may this or any 
federal court use an AEDPA case as an opportunity to pass 
on the wisdom of extending old precedents in new ways. 
AEDPA permits relief only when a state court acts contrary 
to or unreasonably applies this Court's preexisting and 
clearly established rules. See, e. g., Marshall v. Rodgers, 
569 U. S. 58, 64 (2013) (per curiam ); Woodall, 572 U. S., at 
424–426; Lopez, 574 U. S., at 6. 
As a backup, Mr. Davenport suggests that the Michigan 
Court of Appeals committed an independent error by unrea-
sonably applying Chapman. But Chapman merely an-
nounced the default burden of proof for evaluating constitu-
tional errors on direct appeal: The prosecution must prove 
harmlessness beyond a reasonable doubt. 386 U. S., at 24. 
And this Court has repeatedly explained that, when it comes 
to AEDPA, “the more general the [federal] rule[,] . . . the 
more leeway [state] courts have in reaching outcomes in 
case-by-case determinations” before their decisions can be 
fairly labeled unreasonable. Renico v. Lett, 559 U. S. 766, 
776 (2010) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). 
The case before us does not come close to exceeding that 
leeway. The Michigan Court of Appeals properly identifed 
the controlling standard. 2012 WL 6217134, at *1. It then 
proceeded to fnd that the prosecution had established 
Mr. Davenport's shackling was harmless beyond a reasonable 
doubt in light of the jurors' testimony and the “overwhelm-
in[g]” evidence that “established defendant's guilt and belied 
his contention that he killed the 103 pound victim in self-
defense, a theory that was explicitly disputed by expert med-
ical testimony.” Id., at *1–*2, and n. 2. Even if some fair-
minded jurist applying Chapman could reach a different 
conclusion, we cannot say that every fairminded jurist must. 
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Kagan, J., dissenting 
Finally, in a variation on his Chapman argument, Mr. Dav-
enport faults the Michigan Court of Appeals for unreason-
ably focusing on a “false choice between frst-degree murder 
and self-defense.” Brief for Respondent 45. In his view, 
the state court improperly ignored the possibility that 
Mr. Davenport's shackling might have infuenced the jury 
toward a conviction for frst-degree murder rather than 
second-degree murder. But Mr. Davenport never presented 
this theory to the Michigan Court of Appeals. See Brief 
for Appellant in People v. Davenport, No. 306868, pp. 22–24 
(arguing only that Mr. Davenport's shackling infuenced ju-
rors' receptiveness to his self-defense theory). Nor does it 
directly respond to what the state court called the “over-
whelmin[g]” record evidence he committed murder in the 
frst degree. In these circumstances we cannot say that 
every fairminded court would have both identifed and 
adopted Mr. Davenport's forfeited theory. 
* 
Even assuming Mr. Davenport met his burden under 
Brecht, he cannot do so under AEDPA. And a federal court 
cannot grant habeas relief unless a state prisoner like 
Mr. Davenport satisfes both this Court's equitable prece-
dents and Congress's statute. The judgment of the Court 
of Appeals is 
Reversed. 
Justice Kagan, with whom Justice Breyer and Jus-
tice Sotomayor join, dissenting. 
Twice in recent years, this Court has addressed how a fed-
eral habeas court is to evaluate whether a state trial error 
was harmless. See Fry v. Pliler, 551 U. S. 112, 119–120 
(2007); Davis v. Ayala, 576 U. S. 257, 267–270 (2015). And 
twice, we have made clear that the habeas court need apply 
only the standard prescribed in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 
U. S. 619 (1993); it need not also run through the test set out 
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146 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 
(AEDPA). That is because, we have both times explained, 
the Brecht standard “obviously subsumes” the “more liberal” 
AEDPA one: If a defendant meets the former, he will “neces-
sarily” meet the latter too. Fry, 551 U. S., at 120; Ayala, 
576 U. S., at 270. 
Today, the Court discards those crystal-clear statements, 
subscribed to on each occasion by every Justice. The major-
ity reverses the Court of Appeals for following our prior 
guidance, allowing the use of the Brecht test alone. And 
in declaring Brecht insuffcient, the majority consigns future 
habeas courts to a regimen of make-work. Now those 
courts will have to jump through AEDPA's hoops as well, 
even though that extra analysis will never lead to a different 
result. I respectfully dissent from that pointless demand. 
I 
Because the majority begins with some law-chambers his-
tory, see ante, at 127–131, I do too—though fair warning: My 
discussion is no more relevant than the majority's to the 
issue before us. Not surprisingly, neither of the parties to 
this small and legally mundane case thought it a suitable 
occasion for a from-Blackstone-onward theory of habeas 
practice. Yet the majority, unprompted, embarks on that 
project, perhaps hoping that the seeds it sows now will yield 
more succulent fruit in cases to come. In the majority's 
story, post-conviction habeas relief was all but unavailable 
until the mid-20th century—when in an instant the Court in 
Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443 (1953), upended the rules. 
That account repeats the views expressed in a recent concur-
rence, authored by the same Justice as today delivers the 
majority opinion. See Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. 
–––, ––– – ––– (2021) (Gorsuch, J., concurring); id., at ––– 
(Habeas historically “provided no recourse for a prisoner 
confned pursuant to a fnal judgment of conviction”). But 
the theory, in its fundamentals, is wrong. Federal courts 
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Kagan, J., dissenting 
long before Brown extended habeas relief to prisoners held 
in violation of the Constitution—even after a fnal conviction. 
This Court started reviewing post-conviction constitu-
tional claims under Congress's frst grant of habeas author-
ity, included in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That provision, 
applying only to federal prisoners, did not specifcally pro-
vide for collateral review of constitutional claims. See Act 
of Sept. 24, 1789, § 14, 1 Stat. 81–82 (enabling federal courts 
to grant habeas writs to “inquir[e] into the cause of [a federal 
prisoner's] commitment”). But even without explicit per-
mission, the Court in the mid-19th century invoked the ha-
beas law to adjudicate those claims—including some from 
petitioners already convicted and sentenced. See 1 R. 
Hertz & J. Liebman, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and 
Procedure § 2.4[d][i], p. 51 (7th ed. 2020). In Ex parte Wells, 
18 How. 307 (1856), for example, only the dissent thought 
that the fact of a conviction and sentence precluded granting 
habeas relief (as today's opinion says was the frm rule). 
See id., at 330 (Curtis, J., dissenting) (asserting that habeas 
could not aid a person “imprisoned under a [circuit court's] 
criminal sentence”). The majority, ignoring that objection, 
scrutinized the merits of the claim in detail before deciding 
that no constitutional violation had occurred and the appli-
cant should remain in prison. Id., at 315; see id., at 309– 
315. And in Ex parte Lange , 18 Wall. 163 (1874), the Court 
(again acting under the original habeas law) went further: It 
granted relief to a convicted prisoner after fnding a violation 
of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Court explained that it 
was carrying out a “sacred duty” in declaring that the pris-
oner was being held “without authority, and [that] he should 
therefore be discharged.” Id., at 178. 
When Congress amended the Judiciary Act after the Civil 
War, the scope of federal habeas review—including over 
post-conviction claims—grew far larger. The text of the 
amendment (similar to current law) gave federal courts ex-
pansive power: “to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases

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148 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty” in 
violation of the Federal Constitution. Act of Feb. 5, 1867, 
14 Stat. 385; see 28 U. S. C. §§ 2241(a), (c)(3). And “any per-
son” in “all cases” meant just that: State prisoners, not just 
federal ones, could now apply for habeas relief. Those state 
cases of course involved separate sovereigns, acting under 
their own laws. But even in that sphere, the Court soon 
decided that the federal judiciary's authority extended to 
hearing constitutional challenges to final convictions. 
Under the new statute, the Court explained, “a single [fed-
eral] judge on habeas corpus” could free “a prisoner, after 
conviction in a State court,” upon fnding him unconstitution-
ally restrained. Ex parte Royall, 117 U. S. 241, 253 (1886). 
Or as held in another decision, a “party [was] entitled to a 
[writ of] habeas corpus,” even after his case “had gone to 
conviction and sentence,” when the state court “ha[d] no con-
stitutional authority or power to condemn” him. In re Niel-
sen, 131 U. S. 176, 184 (1889). A leading treatise of the time 
summarized the state of the law: A federal court “may, on 
habeas corpus, release one who is restrained of his liberty in 
violation of the constitution of the United States, though held 
under the criminal process of a state court, and either before 
or after judgment.” W. Church, Writ of Habeas Corpus 
§ 84, p. 117 (2d ed. 1893). 
In line with that view, this Court granted habeas relief, on 
an assortment of constitutional grounds, to both federal and 
state prisoners challenging their convictions or sentences. 
The Court granted post-conviction relief to protect habeas 
applicants' rights to a grand jury indictment, to a jury trial, 
to assistance of counsel, and against self-incrimination. See, 
e. g., Ex parte Wilson, 114 U. S. 417, 425–426, 429 (1885); Cal-
lan v. Wilson, 127 U. S. 540, 547–548, 556–557 (1888); Coun-
selman v. Hitchcock, 142 U. S. 547, 552, 585–586 (1892); John-
son v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 467–469 (1938). The Court 
granted post-conviction relief for violations of the Equal Pro-
tection Clause, the Double Jeopardy Clause, and the Ex Post

Cite as: 596 U. S. 118 (2022) 149 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
Facto Clause. See, e. g., Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 
373–374 (1886); Nielsen, 131 U. S., at 190–191; In re Medley , 
134 U. S. 160, 170–173 (1890). And as due process rights 
expanded in the frst half of the 20th century, the Court held 
post-conviction habeas relief proper for those claims too. 
See, e. g., Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U. S. 86, 90–92 (1923); 
Waley v. Johnston, 316 U. S. 101, 104–105 (1942) (per cu-
riam); Wade v. Mayo, 334 U. S. 672, 683–684 (1948). 
The modern Court has repeatedly acknowledged that his-
tory. “[O]ver the years,” the Court explained (referencing 
most of the cases cited above), “the writ of habeas corpus 
evolved as a remedy available to effect discharge from any 
confnement contrary to the Constitution or fundamental 
law.” Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 485 (1973). Or 
again: Citing Wells and Lange (among others), the Court de-
scribed how “judicial decisions [had] expand[ed] the avail-
ability of habeas relief ” to include challenges to fnal convic-
tions. Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 79 (1977). Or 
once more: The Court cited a string of 19th- and early 20th-
century cases to illustrate how habeas had expanded to rem-
edy “convictions obtained under an unconstitutional statute” 
or “without adequate procedural protections for the defend-
ant.” McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 478 (1991); see also 
Schlup v. Delo, 513 U. S. 298, 317–318 (1995) (citing Mc-
Cleskey and Wainwright and noting the “broadening of the 
scope of the writ” to “encompass review of constitutional 
error” in criminal proceedings). 
The majority tries to cram the many habeas decisions bely-
ing its position into a narrow jurisdictional “exception,” ante, 
at 129—but its effort does no more than reveal the peril of 
looking at history through a 21st-century lens. In the ma-
jority's view, a habeas court could grant relief only “if the 
court of conviction lacked jurisdiction,” not if it committed 
“errors in adjudication.” Ante, at 129, 130. But some of the 
decisions the majority must contend with made no mention 
at all of the convicting (or sentencing) court's jurisdiction. 
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150 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
See, e. g., Wells, 18 How., at 308–315; Yick Wo , 118 U. S., 
at 365–374. And those that did so often used the word to 
mean something different from what it does today. The con-
cept of “jurisdictional defects” ( ante, at 129) could at that 
time include—rather than contrast with—constitutional er-
rors of the kind described above.
1 As one legal historian 
puts the point: The jurisdictional inquiry was then (though 
of course not now) often “merits based.” A. Woolhandler, 
Demodeling Habeas, 45 Stan. L. Rev. 575, 630 (1993). That 
is why this Court could say in the late 19th century that 
a court of conviction has jurisdiction only “when, in taking 
custody of the accused, and in its modes of procedure to 
the determination of the question of his guilt or innocence, 
and in rendering judgment, the court keeps within the limi-
tations prescribed by the law.” In re Bonner , 151 U. S. 242, 
257 (1894). Or why a roughly contemporaneous habeas trea-
tise could state: “[N]o court has jurisdiction to imprison a 
person or detain him in custody in violation of the Constitu-
tion.” 1 W. Bailey, Law of Habeas Corpus and Special Rem-
edies § 25, p. 67 (1913). So the majority's supposedly narrow 
jurisdictional exception in fact allowed expansive relief: 
From the mid-1800s on, federal courts granted habeas writs 
to prisoners, federal and state alike, who on the way to con-
viction or sentence had suffered serious constitutional 
harms.
2 
1 See, e. g., Ex parte Wilson, 114 U. S. 417, 429 (1885) (the lack of a grand 
jury indictment meant that the court had “exceeded its jurisdiction”); Cal-
lan v. Wilson, 127 U. S. 540, 547, 557 (1888) (a denial of the jury trial right 
rendered a conviction “void” and “without jurisdiction”); In re Nielsen, 
131 U. S. 176, 185 (1889) (a sentence violating the Double Jeopardy Clause 
was “beyond the jurisdiction of the court,” because “an express provision 
of the Constitution[ ] bounds and limits all jurisdiction”); Johnson v. 
Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 468 (1938) (the denial of the right to counsel is a 
“jurisdictional bar to a valid conviction”). 
2 A forthcoming article makes much the same point in addressing the 
concurrence that anticipated today's historical musings. See supra, at 
146–147; Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2021) (Gorsuch, J., 
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Kagan, J., dissenting 
Contrary to the majority, then, our decision in Brown built 
on decades and decades of history. No doubt, Brown was 
signifcant—a landmark of a kind—because it “made ex-
plicit,” and delineated in precise style, the broad scope of 
federal habeas. Wainwright, 433 U. S., at 79. But the deci-
sion, as the leading modern treatise on habeas explains, 
“worked no revolution.” 1 Hertz & Liebman § 2.4[d][viii], at 
73. Rather, the principles that Brown “nicely catalogue[d]” 
were already “long established, to anyone with the patience 
to search them out from among the literally hundreds of indi-
vidually unimportant cases in which they lay dispersed.” 1 
Hertz & Liebman, at 73–75.
3 
concurring). Professor Jonathan Siegel writes that the concurrence “re-
lies on quotations” invoking a court's jurisdiction “without fully acknowl-
edging the meaning that they had in their original context. [It] incor-
rectly ascribes to these quotations the meaning they might have if a court 
wrote them today. One must, however, always remember that `the past 
is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' Historical state-
ments must be understood in their historical context.” Habeas, History, 
and Hermeneutics, 64 Ariz. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (draft, at 4), https:// 
ssrn.com/abstract/3899955 (footnote omitted). 
3 A mountain of other scholarship confrms the treatise's account. See, 
e. g., J. Siegel, 64 Ariz. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (draft, at 26) (“[T]he 
distance between nineteenth century habeas practices and those approved 
in Brown v. Allen is much smaller than Justice Gorsuch is prepared to 
acknowledge”); J. Wert, Habeas Corpus in America: The Politics of Individ-
ual Rights 142 (2011) (Brown “merely formaliz[ed] earlier rules”); E. 
Freedman, Habeas Corpus: Rethinking the Great Writ of Liberty 139 
(2001) (“[O]ne can characterize Brown as a watershed only by shutting 
one's eyes” to developments “under way long before the case was de-
cided”); A. Clarke, Habeas Corpus: The Historical Debate, 14 N. Y . L. S. 
J. Human Rights 375, 433 (1998) (“Far from constituting a sea change, 
[Brown] merely modernized the language of the law”); S. Saltzburg, Ha-
beas Corpus: The Supreme Court and the Congress, 44 Ohio St. L. J. 367, 
382 (1983) (“Was [Brown] a departure from prior holdings? The only fair 
answer is `no' ”); G. Peller, In Defense of Federal Habeas Corpus Relitiga-
tion, 16 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 579, 644 (1982) (Brown “did not 
break any new ground” respecting “the scope of federal habeas review of 
state court determinations of federal law”).

152 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
So the majority should not be so sure that it really wishes 
judicially developed habeas doctrines to “return[ ] the Great 
Writ closer to its historic offce,” ante, at 132—at least if that 
offce refers to the longstanding practice of the federal courts 
under a statute broadly authorizing habeas writs. The ma-
jority might then fnd itself bound to grant habeas relief, 
with more regularity and less compunction than it would 
prefer, to address violations of convicted prisoners' constitu-
tional rights. 
But let's be frank: My view of the history, just like the 
majority's, has precious little—no, has nothing—to do with 
resolving this case. Although it is more entertaining to play 
amateur historian, it is past time to put in some work on the 
technical issue before us: what standard(s) a habeas court 
should use to decide whether a state trial court's constitu-
tional error was harmless. 
II 
Except that little work is in truth necessary—because we 
have already, and unanimously, resolved that question twice 
before. 
To see how (and why) we have done so, frst consider the 
two possible answers. As the majority frames it, the choice 
is between (1) applying the Brecht standard alone (as Ervine 
Davenport wants) and (2) applying both Brecht and AEDPA 
(as the State desires). See ante, at 122, 134. (Trust me: I 
will in a moment set out what those standards are.) That 
formulation of the choice is appropriate as shorthand; indeed, 
I will use it myself. But it remains an oversimplifcation. 
For in arguing that the Brecht test suffces, Davenport does 
not contend that a federal habeas court may simply ignore 
AEDPA. Although the majority veils the point, Davenport 
readily acknowledges that a court must always comply with 
AEDPA's limitation on “the legal materials a court may con-
sult” and “draw on” to justify habeas relief. Ante, at 136; 
see Brief for Respondent 16–17 (explaining that a court's 
Brecht analysis is suffcient only if it relies exclusively “on 
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Kagan, J., dissenting 
the legal and factual materials allowed” under AEDPA). 
All Davenport claims is that if the habeas court confnes it-
self to using AEDPA-approved materials, then it need only 
fnd the Brecht standard met to grant relief. 4 That means 
(here, fnally, is the Brecht standard) the court has to fnd 
“actual prejudice”—more specifcally, that there is “grave 
doubt” about whether an error had a “substantial and injuri-
ous effect or infuence” on a verdict. Brecht, 507 U. S., at 
637; O'Neal v. McAninch, 513 U. S. 432, 436 (1995). But no 
more is required: The court need not, Davenport says, sepa-
rately apply the AEDPA test. Which means it does not 
have to analyze (here is the AEDPA test) whether the state 
appellate court acted “unreasonabl[y],” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d), 
when it decided, under Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 
(1967), that an error was harmless beyond a reasonable 
doubt. Is Davenport right? 
This Court (frst) made clear in Fry v. Pliler that he is. 
The question there was whether a federal habeas court 
should assess harmless error under Brecht (rather than 
Chapman) even when the state court had failed to make the 
harmlessness fnding Chapman requires on direct review. 
Justice Scalia, speaking for a unanimous Court, explained 
why the habeas court should still apply Brecht: Use of the 
defendant-friendly Chapman test on habeas would “under-
min[e] the States' interest in [the] fnality” of convictions. 
551 U. S., at 117 (quoting Brecht, 507 U. S., at 637). But 
Fry raised an objection. In recently enacting AEDPA, he 
claimed, Congress had abolished the Brecht test—replacing 
4 That view does not, as the majority recurrently claims, require “rewrit-
[ing]” Brecht to make it “Brecht 2.0.” Ante, at 139, n. 4; see ante, at 137, 
n. 3, 140, n. 5. The question of what materials a court may consider is of 
course different from the question of what standard the court must apply 
in deciding to grant habeas relief. Brecht addresses the legal standard 
alone. So Brecht could not possibly affect AEDPA's materials require-
ment—and Davenport properly recognizes as much. But Brecht could 
obviate the need to apply AEDPA's standard—and as I'll describe, this 
Court has not once but twice made clear that it does. 
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154 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
it with a new AEDPA /Chapman standard of review. That 
argument, of course, differs from Davenport's. See ante, at 
138. But the Court's reply, in describing the relationship 
between Brecht and AEDPA, answers today's question: 
“Given our frequent recognition that AEDPA limited 
rather than expanded the availability of habeas relief, it 
is implausible that, without saying so, AEDPA replaced 
the Brecht standard of actual prejudice with the more 
liberal AEDPA/Chapman standard which requires only 
that the state court's harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-
doubt determination be unreasonable. That said, it cer-
tainly makes no sense to require formal application of 
both tests (AEDPA/Chapman and Brecht) when the lat-
ter obviously subsumes the former.” 551 U. S., at 119– 
120 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). 
That passage is clear on its face, as Justice Scalia's opinions 
typically are. But because the majority pretends it does not 
say what it says, see ante, at 138–139, it is worth going over. 
The key points are two. First, the Brecht standard is 
harder for a prisoner to meet—i. e., less “liberal”—than the 
AEDPA/Chapman standard. And second, because that is 
so—because Brecht so “obviously subsumes” AEDPA/Chap-
man—it “makes no sense” to require a court to formally 
apply both. Just apply Brecht and be done with it. Not in 
“some cases,” and not in select “scenario[s],” as today's ma-
jority imagines. Ante, at 138–139. But as a rule. Because 
if a prisoner can satisfy Brecht, he can “obviously” satisfy 
AEDPA/Chapman, and courts should not have to do need-
less work. 
But we need not take Fry's word for the point, because 
the Court in Davis v. Ayala reaffrmed everything Justice 
Scalia said. In Ayala, a federal court held on habeas that a 
state trial error caused actual prejudice under Brecht. This 
Court disagreed and reversed, but it made clear that the 
Brecht test governed. See 576 U. S., at 267 (“In a collateral 
proceeding, the test is” Brecht's “actual prejudice” standard). 
After describing that standard (with stress on its strictness), 
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Kagan, J., dissenting 
the Court addressed its relation to AEDPA. Brecht in no 
way “abrogates” AEDPA, the Court noted. 576 U. S., at 
268. But the Court explained—several times over—that 
Brecht makes AEDPA functionally immaterial on matters 
relating to harmlessness. “In Fry,” the Ayala Court began, 
“we held that the Brecht standard `subsumes' the require-
ments that [AEDPA] imposes when a federal habeas peti-
tioner contests a state court's determination that a constitu-
tional error was harmless under Chapman.” 576 U. S., at 
268. Because that is so, Ayala continued (again quoting 
Fry), “a federal habeas court need not `formal[ly]' apply both 
Brecht and `AEDPA/Chapman.' ” 576 U. S., at 268 (alter-
ation in original). And if that were not clear enough, the 
Court reprised: “In sum, a prisoner who seeks federal habeas 
corpus relief must satisfy Brecht, and if the state court adju-
dicated his claim on the merits, the Brecht test subsumes the 
limitations imposed by AEDPA.” Id., at 270. But still, the 
Court was not done. In turning to whether the error at 
issue had caused Ayala harm, the Court noted that he “nec-
essarily” would not satisfy Brecht if he had failed to satisfy 
AEDPA/Chapman—which is the fipside of saying he neces-
sarily would satisfy AEDPA/Chapman if he had satisfed 
Brecht. 576 U. S., at 270. Both are a function, once again, 
of Brecht “obviously subsum[ing]” AEDPA/Chapman.
5 
Today's majority contorts Ayala, too, beyond recognition. 
The majority insists that only a “carefully curated snippet” 
of that decision—one sentence, in fact—cuts against today's 
holding. Ante, at 140. But see all the quotations above. 
Ayala repeats the key point favoring Davenport—that a 
court applying Brecht need not separately apply AEDPA— 
multiple times over a span of more than three pages (with 
the rest of that section providing supportive analysis). See 
5 Only the Ayala Court's application of Brecht provoked a dissenting 
opinion. The dissent explained that its disagreement did “not stem from 
[the Court's] discussion of the applicable standard of review”—i. e., the 
Brecht standard alone—“which simply restates the holding of Fry.” 576 
U. S., at 291 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).

156 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
576 U. S., at 267–270. Similarly, the majority asserts that 
the word “subsumes,” as introduced in Fry and echoed 
in Ayala, does not really mean subsumes—which is to say, 
fully “encompass[es] as” a “component element.” Merriam-
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 1246 (11th ed. 2005). 
Rather, when the greatest wordsmith in modern Supreme 
Court history used the term to describe the relationship be-
tween two legal tests, he really meant (“more precisely” 
meant (!), ante, at 140) that they merely overlapped—so that 
sometimes a person meeting one test necessarily meets the 
other, but then again, sometimes not. If all this shows “re-
spect for past judgments,” as the majority declares, ibid., 
then that phrase too has an unconventional meaning. What 
Ayala held, adhering to Fry, was that anytime a habeas peti-
tioner satisfes Brecht, he of necessity satisfes AEDPA/ 
Chapman. And because that is so, a habeas court need not 
apply both. I hate to assign homework to readers of Su-
preme Court opinions, but if you don't know what to make 
of the majority's and my contrasting descriptions of Fry and 
Ayala: well, just go read them. 
The majority departs from those two decisions because it 
disagrees with what they said. The straightforward basis 
of Fry and Ayala, as just described, is that the AEDPA/ 
Chapman test is “more liberal” than the Brecht test—i. e., 
easier for the habeas petitioner to meet. Fry, 551 U. S., at 
120. (That is why, Fry explained, the Congress enacting 
AEDPA—intent as it was on limiting habeas—could not 
have meant to replace Brecht.) The majority here asserts 
that this view of the two tests is just not true. Its theory 
goes: Whereas AEDPA asks whether “every fairminded ju-
rist” would fnd the requisite prejudice, Brecht asks only 
whether “a federal habeas court itself ” would do so. Ante, 
at 136 (emphasis in original). 
But that description tells only part of the story—and not 
the most important part. Consider a fuller description of 
what a habeas court addressing the prejudicial effect of an 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Cite as: 596 U. S. 118 (2022) 157 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
error asks under each standard. See supra, at 152–153. 
Applying AEDPA, the court asks whether the state court 
acted “unreasonabl[y]” in fnding (under Chapman) that the 
error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt—meaning 
that there is no “reasonable possibility” it “might have con-
tributed to the conviction.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d); Chapman, 
386 U. S., at 23–24. Applying Brecht, the court instead asks 
whether the error was “actual[ly] prejudic[ial]”—meaning 
that there is, at a minimum, “grave doubt” about whether an 
error had a “substantial and injurious effect or infuence” on 
a verdict. Brecht, 507 U. S., at 637; O'Neal, 513 U. S., at 
435–436. The majority is quite right to note that AEDPA's 
language of reasonableness directs a court to think about 
how all fairminded jurists would approach a question, while 
Brecht tells a court to decide a question for itself. Cf. ante, 
at 137, n. 3 (somehow still asserting that I “paper over th[is] 
difference[ ]”). But what the majority obscures is that those 
two questions are starkly different. A court doing AEDPA 
puts a reasonableness overlay on the Chapman question; a 
court doing Brecht of course asks the Brecht question. And 
the Chapman question—see just above—is far easier for a 
defendant to prevail on. Accord, ante, at 133. (That is why 
the Brecht test was created—to better protect the fnality of 
convictions on habeas. See Brecht, 507 U. S., at 637–638.) 
So much easier, indeed, that Fry thought it self-evident (“ob-
vious”) that even with the AEDPA overlay, the Chapman 
inquiry would require the release of more prisoners. Fry, 
551 U. S., at 120. 
The relationship between Brecht and AEDPA/Chapman 
means that today's holding will make no difference to habeas 
outcomes. Consider a court that has found the Brecht test 
satisfed: It has, at the least, “grave doubt” about the error 
affecting the verdict. Will that same court say that a rea-
sonable jurist could fnd no such effect beyond a reasonable 
doubt—that the jurist could deny there was even a “reason-
able possibility” of the error mattering? The answer is no. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Page Proof Pending Publication
158 BROWN v. DAVENPORT 
Kagan, J., dissenting 
And that is not just what our precedents say. It is also what 
the real world shows. Several Circuits formerly followed 
the rule the majority announces today: Habeas courts there 
could not grant relief before separately applying Brecht and 
AEDPA/Chapman. Yet neither the majority nor the State 
has come up with a single case (nor have I) in which a court 
held that a petitioner satisfed Brecht but not AEDPA/ 
Chapman. Which for all the reasons Fry, Ayala, and I 
have given is no wonder. Apply Brecht alone or apply both 
Brecht and AEDPA: The same people will, and will not, re-
ceive habeas relief.
6 
All today's holding does going forward is compel habeas 
courts, and the parties before them, to spin their wheels. 
All it does is what Fry observed “certainly makes no sense”: 
require “formal application of [two] tests” when only one— 
Brecht—matters. 551 U. S., at 120. Of course, it is not the 
worst thing in the world to have to do unnecessary work of 
this kind; parties and courts alike will fnd ways to limit the 
ineffciencies involved. But really, why should they have to? 
Our prior decisions got the question here right. The courts 
that have followed their instructions did everything needed. 
Better, by far, to have left it at that. 
6 The decision here does not show otherwise, contra the majority's claim 
that it “illustrates” how today's apply-both-tests directive “matter[s].” 
Ante, at 136. The only way that claim could be true is if the majority 
believed Davenport's claim passes the Brecht test (and yet fails AEDPA/ 
Chapman, as it holds). But the majority believes nothing of the sort. 
The majority merely indulges the “assum[ption]” that the Sixth Circuit 
could have found Brecht satisfed. Ante, at 137, 145. And the majority's 
analysis shows how far-fetched it thinks that assumption is. Though 
under the banner of AEDPA, the majority disagrees at every turn with 
the Sixth Circuit's reasons for granting relief under Brecht—both the 
Sixth Circuit's assessment of the record and its reading of this Court's 
precedent. See ante, at 141–145. No one could read today's opinion and 
think the majority harbors “grave doubt” that the trial error here affected 
the verdict.

Page Proof Pending Publication
Reporter’s Note 
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 
punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 
None

Retrieval chunks

• #1

  PRELIMINARY PRINT Volume 596 U. S. Part 1 Pages 118–158 OFFICIAL REPORTS OF THE SUPREME COURT April 21, 2022 REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions Page Proof Pending Publication NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users are requested to not…

• #2

  effect or infuence' ” on the trial's outcome, id., at 637. Persuaded that Mr. Davenport could satisfy Brecht, the Sixth Circuit granted federal habeas relief and ordered Michigan either to retry or release Mr. Daven- port. This Court granted certiorari to resolve a circuit confict about the proper interaction betw…

• #3

  ploding caseload of habeas petitions from state prisoners. Eventually, this Court responded by devising new rules aimed at sep- arating the meritorious needles from the growing haystack of habeas petitions. The Court's decision in Brecht—which reasoned that Chap- man's harmless-error rule for direct appeals was in…

• #4

  Pliler, 551 U. S. 112, and Davis v. Ayala, 576 U. S. 257, require a ruling in his favor. But the holding in neither case helps Mr. Davenport, and neither case resolved the question now before the Court. Instead, Mr. Davenport focuses on a brief passage from Fry, repeated in Ayala— “it certainly makes no sense to r…

• #5

  C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Kagan, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer and Sotomayor, JJ., joined, post, p. 145. Fadwa A. Hammoud, Solicitor General of Michigan, ar- gued the cause for petitioner. With her on the briefs were Dana Nessel, Attorney General of Michigan, …

• #6

  the test this Court outlined in Brecht and the one Congress prescribed in AEDPA. I A One evening in 2007, Annette White attended a gathering with Ervine Davenport. On the drive home, Mr. Davenport killed Ms. White. At trial, the only questions concerned why and how. Mr. Davenport claimed self-defense and testi-…

• #7

  arm across Ms. White's neck to keep her from cutting him, the forensic pathologist offered his view that this account was not plausible. Ms. White's injuries, found on both sides of her neck, were consistent with strangulation—but incon- sistent with the application of broad force across the front of her neck. A…

• #8

  appellate courts declined to disturb the judgment. For its part, the Michigan Court of Appeals held that “the prosecu- tion proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the shackling error did not affect the verdict.” People v. Davenport, 2012 WL 6217134, *3 (Dec. 13, 2012) (per curiam ). In doing so, the court relied o…

• #9

  Page Proof Pending Publication 126 BROWN v. DAVENPORT Opinion of the Court Unlike the District Court, the Sixth Circuit declined to analyze the case under AEDPA. Instead, it held, only this Court's decision in Brecht v. Abrahamson governed its re- view. Handed down before Congress adopted AEDPA, Brecht sought t…

• #10

  decision, federal courts must follow it. In AEDPA, Con- gress announced such a rule. It instructed that a federal court “shall not . . . gran[t]” relief with respect to a claim that has been adjudicated on the merits in state court “un- less” the state court's decision was (1) “contrary to” or an “unreasonable ap…

• #11

  W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 129– 131 (1768). But the most notable among these writs was that of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, often called the “Great Writ.” Id., at 131. When English monarchs jailed their subjects summarily and indefinitely, common-law courts employed the writ as a way to …

• #12

  party is imprisoned, constitute[d] no ground for” relief. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 375 (1880). Instead, a ha- beas court could “examin[e] only the power and authority of the court to act, not the correctness of its conclusions.” Harlan v. McGourin, 218 U. S. 442, 448 (1910). To be sure, the line between m…

• #13

  result, Justice Jackson contended that the Court's decision “trivializ[ed] . . . the writ” and was inconsistent with the presumption of fnality that traditionally attached to crimi- nal convictions. Brown, 344 U. S., at 536, 543. He warned, too, that the Court's ruling threatened “haystack[s]” of new habeas petit…

• #14

  fnal judgment of conviction in a state court to be collaterally attacked”); Stone, 428 U. S., at 475 (in the 19th century, “[t]he writ was extended to state prisoners[,] . . . [b]ut the limitation of federal habeas corpus jurisdic- tion to consideration of the jurisdiction of the sentencing court persisted”); id.,…

• #15

  considerations.” Danforth v. Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264, 278 (2008); see also Withrow v. Williams, 507 U. S. 680, 716 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Foremost among those considerations is the States' “power- ful and legitimate interest in punishing the guilty.” Calde- ron v. Thompso…

• #16

  judgments. 507 U. S., at 633–634. Instead, the Court rea- soned, a state prisoner should not receive federal “habeas relief based on trial error unless” he can show the error had a “substantial and injurious effect or infuence” on the verdict. Id., at 637 (internal quotation marks omitted). In reaching its judgme…

• #17

  including Brecht. See Banks, 536 U. S., at 272; Johnson v. Acevedo, 572 F. 3d 398, 404 (CA7 2009); see also Edwards, 593 U. S., at –––, n. 5 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). Today, then, a federal court must deny relief to a state habeas petitioner who fails to satisfy either this Court's equi- table precedents or AEDP…

• #18

  sonable minds reviewing the record might disagree about the fnding in question.” Brumfeld v. Cain, 576 U. S. 305, 314 (2015) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). By contrast, under Brecht a petitioner may prevail by per- suading a federal court that it alone should harbor “grave doubt”—not absolute …

• #19

  plied a decision of this Court. Instead, the Sixth Circuit Page Proof Pending Publication Cite as: 596 U. S. 118 (2022) 137 Opinion of the Court said only that the state-court decisions in this case could not be reconciled with a roughly analogous precedent from the Ninth Circuit. 964 F. 3d, at 467. Even assumin…

• #20

  overturn Mr. Davenport's conviction. See supra, at 136 and this page. Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication 138 BROWN v. DAVENPORT Opinion of the Court that fact to his further advantage, the petitioner argued that Congress implicitly swept away this Court's equitable ha- beas precedents…

• #21

  AEDPA as well. 551 U. S., at 120. But none of this means, and Fry never said, that a Brecht inquiry always subsumes an AEDPA inquiry. Nor did Fry even have reason to con- sider the relationship between Brecht and AEDPA in cases like ours—where a state court has issued a decision on the merits of the petitioner's …

• #22

  versed. We held that the Ninth Circuit misapplied Brecht and that a proper Brecht analysis precluded relief. Along the way, we indicated that the petitioner could not prove eligibility for relief under AEDPA's demanding standard either. With nothing in this holding to help him, Mr. Davenport again asks us to foc…

• #23

  ity. It is a reminder to afford careful consideration to the work of our forbearers, their experience, and their wisdom. But respect for past judgments also means respecting their limits. This Court has long stressed that “the language of an opinion is not always to be parsed as though we were dealing with [the] …

• #24

  denial of review on direct appeal by the California Supreme Court is not even a `judgment' ”). In this respect, the Michigan Supreme Court follows a fa- miliar practice. “The denial of a writ of certiorari” in this Court “imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case.” United States v. Carver, 260 …

• #25

  reasoned that “jurors will not necessarily be fully conscious of the effect [such measures] will have on their attitude to- ward the accused. This will be especially true when jurors are questioned at the very beginning of the proceedings; at that point, they can only speculate on how they will feel after being e…

• #26

  more leeway [state] courts have in reaching outcomes in case-by-case determinations” before their decisions can be fairly labeled unreasonable. Renico v. Lett, 559 U. S. 766, 776 (2010) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). The case before us does not come close to exceeding that leeway. The Michigan…

• #27

  eral habeas court is to evaluate whether a state trial error was harmless. See Fry v. Pliler, 551 U. S. 112, 119–120 (2007); Davis v. Ayala, 576 U. S. 257, 267–270 (2015). And twice, we have made clear that the habeas court need apply only the standard prescribed in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619 (1993); it …

• #28

  Cite as: 596 U. S. 118 (2022) 147 Kagan, J., dissenting long before Brown extended habeas relief to prisoners held in violation of the Constitution—even after a fnal conviction. This Court started reviewing post-conviction constitu- tional claims under Congress's frst grant of habeas author- ity, included in the…

• #29

  son” in “all cases” meant just that: State prisoners, not just federal ones, could now apply for habeas relief. Those state cases of course involved separate sovereigns, acting under their own laws. But even in that sphere, the Court soon decided that the federal judiciary's authority extended to hearing constitu…

• #30

  riam); Wade v. Mayo, 334 U. S. 672, 683–684 (1948). The modern Court has repeatedly acknowledged that his- tory. “[O]ver the years,” the Court explained (referencing most of the cases cited above), “the writ of habeas corpus evolved as a remedy available to effect discharge from any confnement contrary to the Con…

• #31

  custody of the accused, and in its modes of procedure to the determination of the question of his guilt or innocence, and in rendering judgment, the court keeps within the limi- tations prescribed by the law.” In re Bonner , 151 U. S. 242, 257 (1894). Or why a roughly contemporaneous habeas trea- tise could state…

• #32

  concurring). Professor Jonathan Siegel writes that the concurrence “re- lies on quotations” invoking a court's jurisdiction “without fully acknowl- edging the meaning that they had in their original context. [It] incor- rectly ascribes to these quotations the meaning they might have if a court wrote them today. On…

• #33

  But let's be frank: My view of the history, just like the majority's, has precious little—no, has nothing—to do with resolving this case. Although it is more entertaining to play amateur historian, it is past time to put in some work on the technical issue before us: what standard(s) a habeas court should use to …

• #34

  This Court (frst) made clear in Fry v. Pliler that he is. The question there was whether a federal habeas court should assess harmless error under Brecht (rather than Chapman) even when the state court had failed to make the harmlessness fnding Chapman requires on direct review. Justice Scalia, speaking for a una…

• #35

  harder for a prisoner to meet—i. e., less “liberal”—than the AEDPA/Chapman standard. And second, because that is so—because Brecht so “obviously subsumes” AEDPA/Chap- man—it “makes no sense” to require a court to formally apply both. Just apply Brecht and be done with it. Not in “some cases,” and not in select “s…

• #36

  Brecht. 576 U. S., at 270. Both are a function, once again, of Brecht “obviously subsum[ing]” AEDPA/Chapman. 5 Today's majority contorts Ayala, too, beyond recognition. The majority insists that only a “carefully curated snippet” of that decision—one sentence, in fact—cuts against today's holding. Ante, at 140. …

• #37

  AEDPA—intent as it was on limiting habeas—could not have meant to replace Brecht.) The majority here asserts that this view of the two tests is just not true. Its theory goes: Whereas AEDPA asks whether “every fairminded ju- rist” would fnd the requisite prejudice, Brecht asks only whether “a federal habeas court…

• #38

  satisfed: It has, at the least, “grave doubt” about the error affecting the verdict. Will that same court say that a rea- sonable jurist could fnd no such effect beyond a reasonable doubt—that the jurist could deny there was even a “reason- able possibility” of the error mattering? The answer is no. Page Proof Pe…

• #39

  precedent. See ante, at 141–145. No one could read today's opinion and think the majority harbors “grave doubt” that the trial error here affected the verdict. Page Proof Pending Publication Reporter’s Note The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication and citation style of the United Sta…