noteworthy wrote:
Joseph L. Hoffman and Nancy J. King:

The never-ending stream of futile petitions suggests that habeas corpus is a wasteful nuisance. We need a new approach.

You can see this appeal fatigue in the recent radical expansion of police search powers at the border. You usually don't get to raise a constitutional point unless you're guilty because the only consequence of illegal searches is that evidence is expunged and you can't expunge evidence from a trial that isn't happening. So judges see guilty people trying to get out of it and they come up with rationalizations for upholding those convictions that aren't carefully considered. It is enormously frustrating the see the quick and sloppy logic with which appeals courts hack away at our fundamental rights. Over time the police find themselves with the power to randomly drill holes in people's cars and read through their private emails without suspicion because the alternative is that the courts would have to let a guilty person go, and the courts are clearly being asked to do that so frequently that a kind of blindness has developed wherein they are no longer trying to recognize when it is appropriate anymore.