298
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
other federal claims, because, with rare exceptions, there were no other federal claims available at the time. During the period Justice Thomas discusses, the guarantees of the Bill of Rights were not yet understood to apply in state criminal prosecutions. The only protections the Constitution afforded to state prisoners were those for which the text of the Constitution explicitly limited the authority of the States, most notably the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And in the area of criminal procedure, the Due Process Clause was understood to guarantee no more than a full and fair hearing in the state courts. See, e. g., Ponzi v. Fessenden, 258 U. S. 254, 260 (1922) ("One accused of crime has a right to a full and fair trial according to the law of the government whose sovereignty he is alleged to have offended, but he has no more than that").
Thus, when the Court stated that a state prisoner who had been afforded a full and fair hearing could not obtain a writ of habeas corpus, the Court was propounding a rule of constitutional law, not a threshold requirement of habeas corpus. This is evident from the fact that the Court did not just apply this rule on habeas, but also in cases on direct review. See, e. g., Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 107-108 (1934) ("[T]he presence of a defendant is a condition of due process to the extent that a fair and just hearing would be thwarted by his absence, and to that extent only"); Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, 110-111 (1908) ("Due process requires that the court which assumes to determine the rights of parties shall have jurisdiction, and that there shall be notice and opportunity for hearing given the parties. Subject to these two fundamental conditions, . . . this court has up to this time sustained all state laws, statutory or judicially declared, regulating procedure, evidence and methods of trial, and held them to be consistent with due process of law") (citations omitted). As long as a state criminal prosecution was fairly conducted by a court of competent jurisdiction according to state law, no constitutional question was presented, whether
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