The U. S. Supreme Court heard oral argument today in Philip Morris v. Williams. This is the third time this case has been to the high court. Lyle Denniston has this argument preview at SCOTUSblog. Debra Cassens Weiss has this story at ABA Journal Law News Now. CJLF's brief supporting neither party is here. Our interest in the case is in asking the Court to clean up its jurisprudence on the question of what is an "adequate" state ground for refusing to consider a federal question. The confusion in this area allows state prisoners to smuggle questions into federal habeas that they failed to raise in their state court appeals.

Mark Sherman of AP has this brief postargument story, and Lyle has this post suggesting that the Court might reconsider its earlier decision not to take up the underlying question of the merits of the case.  Of course, before they could get to the merits, they would have to resolve the state-grounds procedural question. On direct review of a state-court decision in the Supreme Court, unlike habeas, an adequate and independent state ground of decision is a jurisdictional bar. They can't just make an exception.