Cite as: 506 U. S. 390 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
freestanding claims of actual innocence. Therefore, the exception is inapplicable here.
Petitioner asserts that this case is different because he has been sentenced to death. But we have "refused to hold that the fact that a death sentence has been imposed requires a different standard of review on federal habeas corpus." Murray v. Giarratano, 492 U. S. 1, 9 (1989) (plurality opinion). We have, of course, held that the Eighth Amendment requires increased reliability of the process by which capital punishment may be imposed. See, e. g., McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433 (1990) (unanimity requirement impermissibly limits jurors' consideration of mitigating evidence); Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982) ( jury must be allowed to consider all of a capital defendant's mitigating character evidence); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 604 (1978) (plurality opinion) (same). But petitioner's claim does not fit well into the doctrine of these cases, since, as we have pointed out, it is far from clear that a second trial 10 years after the first trial would produce a more reliable result.
Perhaps mindful of this, petitioner urges not that he necessarily receive a new trial, but that his death sentence simply be vacated if a federal habeas court deems that a satisfactory showing of "actual innocence" has been made. Tr. of Oral Arg. 19-20. But such a result is scarcely logical; petitioner's claim is not that some error was made in imposing a capital sentence upon him, but that a fundamental error was made in finding him guilty of the underlying murder in the first place. It would be a rather strange jurisprudence, in these circumstances, which held that under our Constitution he could not be executed, but that he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Petitioner argues that our decision in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 (1986), supports his position. The plurality in Ford held that, because the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of insane persons, certain procedural protections inhere in the sanity determination. "[I]f the Constitution
405
Page: Index Previous 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007