Page:Jones v. Hendrix.pdf/22

Rh Court of Common Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus, and obtained discharge in an opinion by Chief Justice Vaughn. Jones points to one part of Vaughn’s opinion, which criticized the return of the writ for not specifying that the jurors “kn[e]w and believe[d] th[e] evidence to be full and manifest against the indicted persons,” without which the jurors’ verdict was “no cause of fine or imprisonment.” Id., at 142, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1009. Jones asks us to read this passage as reflecting a supposed common-law rule that habeas relief was available whenever a convicting court had not found the necessary mens rea of a crime. That reading, however, entirely misses the actual basis of Vaughn’s opinion, which was the judge’s absolute want of power to question the jury’s determination of the facts. See id., at 149, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1013 (“It is absurd a jury should be fined by the Judge for going against their evidence, when he who fineth knows not what it is…. [I]f it be demanded, what is the fact? the Judge cannot answer it”); see also Stephen 375 (“[T]he judges who heard the argument … decided that the discretion of the jury to believe the evidence or not could not be questioned”). Thus, Bushell’s Case no more undermines Watkins than do the justice-of-the-peace cases.

The principles of Watkins guided this Court’s understanding of the habeas writ throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th. See Brown, 596 U. S., at ___, n. 1 (slip op., at 9, n. 1) (collecting cases); see also Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 465–466 (1938). Even in Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 (1880), which held that the constitutionality of a prisoner’s statute of conviction could be reviewed on habeas (as going to jurisdiction), the Court