Stephen Newman v. Timothy Wengler

In 2008, Stephen Newman was convicted by a jury of attempted rape and sentenced to a unified term of 15 years with the first 7 fixed. The Idaho Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction on direct appeal, and denied his petition for rehearing. The Idaho Supreme Court also denied his petition for review. Newman filed a federal habeas petition claiming that the Idaho trial court violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures. The State argued that Newman’s claim was barred by the Supreme Court’s holding in Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 , 96 S.Ct. 3037 , 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976). The magistrate judge agreed and denied the petition. The Court held in Stone that “where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, a state prisoner may not be granted federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial.” Id. at 494 , 96 S.Ct. 3037 (footnote omitted). Newman now appeals and argues that the Stone doctrine did not survive the passage of the Antiterrorism Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), or in the…