8
Opinion of the Court
irrational to distinguish between failing to properly assert a federal claim in state court and failing in state court to properly develop such a claim, and to apply to the latter a remnant of a decision that is no longer upheld with regard to the former.
The concerns that motivated the rejection of the deliberate bypass standard in Wainwright, Coleman, and other cases are equally applicable to this case.3 As in cases of state procedural default, application of the cause-and-prejudice standard to excuse a state prisoner's failure to develop material facts in state court will appropriately accommodate concerns of finality, comity, judicial economy, and channeling the resolution of claims into the most appropriate forum.
Applying the cause-and-prejudice standard in cases like this will obviously contribute to the finality of convictions, for requiring a federal evidentiary hearing solely on the basis of a habeas petitioner's negligent failure to develop facts in
3 Justice O'Connor puts aside our overruling of Fay v. Noia's standard in procedural default cases on the ground that in those cases the cause-and-prejudice standard is just an acceptable precondition to reaching the merits of a habeas petitioner's claim, but insists that applying that standard to cases in which the petitioner defaulted on the development of a claim is not subject to the same characterization. For the reasons stated in the text, we disagree. Moreover, Justice O'Connor's position is considerably weakened by her concession that the cause-and-prejudice standard is properly applied to a factually undeveloped claim which had been exhausted but which is first asserted federally in a second or later habeas petition.
Contrary to Justice O'Connor's view, post, at 17, we think it clear that the Townsend Court thought that the same standard used to deny a hearing in a procedural default case should be used to deny a hearing in cases described in its fifth circumstance. It is difficult to conceive any other reason for our borrowing the deliberate bypass standard of Fay v. Noia, particularly if, as the dissent seems to say, post, at 17, Townsend relied on, but did not repeat, the analysis found in Fay v. Noia. Yet the dissent insists that the rejection of Fay v. Noia's analysis in our later cases should have no impact on a case such as we have before us now.
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