Cite as: 505 U. S. 333 (1992)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
"probably . . . actually innocent." The Court held that "in an extraordinary case, where a constitutional violation has probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent, a federal habeas court may grant the writ even in the absence of a showing of cause for the procedural default." Id., at 496. Having equated the "ends of justice" with "actual innocence," the Court is now confronted with the task of giving meaning to "actual innocence" in the context of a capital sentencing proceeding—hence the phrase "innocence of death."
While the conviction of an innocent person may be the archetypal case of a manifest miscarriage of justice, it is not the only case. There is no reason why "actual innocence" must be both an animating and the limiting principle of the work of federal courts in furthering the "ends of justice." As Judge Friendly emphasized, there are contexts in which, irrespective of guilt or innocence, constitutional errors violate fundamental fairness. Friendly, Is Innocence Irrelevant? Collateral Attack on Criminal Judgments, 38 U. Chi. L. Rev. 142, 151-154 (1970). Fundamental fairness is more than accuracy at trial; justice is more than guilt or innocence.
Nowhere is this more true than in capital sentencing proceedings. Because the death penalty is qualitatively and morally different from any other penalty, "[i]t is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, the consequence of scrupulously fair procedures." Smith v. Murray, 477 U. S. 527, 545-546 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting). Accordingly, the ends of justice dictate that "[w]hen a condemned prisoner raises a substantial, colorable Eighth Amendment violation, there is a special obligation . . . to consider whether the prisoner's claim would render his sentencing proceeding fundamentally unfair." Id., at 546.
Thus the Court's first and most basic error today is that it asks the wrong question. Charged with averting manifest miscarriages of justice, the Court instead narrowly recasts
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