Today, in Nasby v. McDaniel, --- F.3d ---, No. 14-17313 (9th Cir. 2017), the Court gives us a nice dose of commonsense. It concluded district courts must actually review the state court record before deciding (denying) a habeas petition, rather than merely relying on the state court's summary of the record.
In true twilight zone fashion, the state argued AEDPA prevents a
federal habeas court from reviewing the record and obliges it
to accept the state court’s description of facts on faith. The Ninth, held, "[t]his is clearly wrong. Far from requiring
that a federal court accept the state court’s description of the
facts without conducting an independent examination of the
record, AEDPA demands the opposite."
