High court overturns 9th Circuit's Wardlaw

U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Kim McLane Wardlaw committed an "egregious error" in incorrectly interpreting Supreme Court precedent in granting habeas corpus relief to a prisoner convicted of raping a nine-year-old girl in Nevada in 1994, the high court said in a summary reversal. It was the first time in "many decades" that the Supreme Court resolved a lower-court case after it had been fully briefed but without scheduling an oral argument, says a story in the Los Angeles Daily Journal.