Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, habeas corpus petitions must be submitted no more than a year after a conviction becomes final or, as the courts later determined, no more than a year from the act’s implementation if the conviction became final before that. Mr. Deskovic was convicted in 1990. He had until April 24, 1997, to turn in his request. It arrived four days after that.

In court papers, the lawyer who drafted the petition said that a clerk had provided the wrong deadline. Ms. Sotomayor and her colleague, Judge Rosemary S. Pooler, ruled that the “alleged reliance of Deskovic’s attorney on verbal misinformation from the court clerk” amounted essentially to neglect.

There are plenty of decisions by Judge Sotomayor that are not favorable to the defense. In many, they are not an expression of her personal views, but narrowly tailored to the law and circumstances of the particular case.

To those who believe she is an activist judge who will bend or stretch the law to fit her personal views, this case is but another sign that she won't.

The solution: Get rid of AEDPA. More on Deskovic's case in this 2007 New York Times article and reforms needed here. As TChris wrote here, former Westchester prosecutor Jeannine Pirro largely shares the blame for the Deskovic debacle.