Cite as: 505 U. S. 333 (1992)
Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment
Amendment right to counsel, see Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964), and excused his failure to present the claim in his first federal habeas petition because the State had withheld documents and information establishing that claim, see 499 U. S., at 475-476, the Court concluded that McCleskey lacked cause for failing to raise the claim earlier, id., at 502. More important for our purposes, the Court concluded that the "narrow exception" by which federal courts may "exercise [their] equitable discretion to correct a miscarriage of justice" was of "no avail" to McCleskey: The "Massiah violation, if it be one, resulted in the admission at trial of truthful inculpatory evidence which did not affect the reliability of the guilt determination." Ibid. The Court refused to address Warren McCleskey's claim of constitutional error, and he was executed on September 24, 1991.
The Court today takes for granted that the foregoing decisions correctly limited the concept of a "fundamental miscarriage of justice" to "actual innocence," even as it struggles, by ignoring the "natural usage of those words" and resorting to "analog[s]," see ante, at 341, to make sense of "actual innocence" in the capital context. I continue to believe, however, that the Court's "exaltation of accuracy as the only characteristic of 'fundamental fairness' is deeply flawed." Smith, 477 U. S., at 545 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
As an initial matter, the Court's focus on factual innocence is inconsistent with Congress' grant of habeas corpus jurisdiction, pursuant to which federal courts are instructed to entertain petitions from state prisoners who allege that they are held "in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States." 28 U. S. C. § 2254(a). The jurisdictional grant contains no support for the Court's decision to narrow the reviewing authority and obligation of the federal courts to claims of factual innocence. See also 28 U. S. C. § 2243 ("The court shall . . . dispose of the matter as law and justice require"). In addition, the actual innocence standard requires a reviewing federal court, unnaturally, to
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