Cite as: 513 U. S. 298 (1995)
Syllabus
and prejudice. However, since habeas corpus is, at its core, an equitable remedy, a court must adjudicate even successive claims when required to do so by the ends of justice. Thus, in a trio of cases, this Court firmly established an exception for fundamental miscarriages of justice. Carrier, 477 U. S., at 495; Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U. S. 436; Smith v. Murray, 477 U. S. 527. To ensure that the fundamental miscarriage of justice exception would remain "rare" and be applied only in the "extraordinary case," while at the same time ensuring that relief would be extended to those who are truly deserving, the Court has explicitly tied the exception to the petitioner's innocence. Carrier and Kuhlmann also expressed the standard of proof that should govern consideration of such claims: The petitioner must show that the constitutional error "probably" resulted in the conviction of one who was actually innocent. The Sawyer Court made no attempt to reconcile its more exacting standard of proof with Carrier's use of "probably." Pp. 317-323. (c) Carrier, rather than Sawyer, properly strikes the balance between the societal interests and the individual interest in justice, when the claimed injustice is that constitutional error has resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent. Though challenges to the propriety of imposing a death sentence are routinely asserted in capital cases, a substantial claim that constitutional error has caused the conviction of an innocent person is extremely rare and must be supported by new reliable evidence that was not presented at trial, evidence obviously unavailable in the vast majority of cases. Thus, the threat to judicial resources, finality, and comity posed by actual innocence claims is significantly less than that posed by sentencing claims. More importantly, the individual interest in avoiding injustice is most compelling in the context of actual innocence, since the quintessential miscarriage of justice is the execution of an innocent person. The less exacting Carrier standard of proof reflects the relative importance attached to the ultimate decision. Application of the stricter Sawyer standard would give insufficient weight to the correspondingly greater injustice that is implicated by an actual innocence claim. Pp. 323-327. (d) To satisfy Carrier's "actual innocence" standard, a petitioner must show that, in light of the new evidence, it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The focus on actual innocence means that a district court is not bound by the admissibility rules that would govern at trial, but may consider the probative force of relevant evidence that was either wrongly excluded or unavailable at trial. The district court must make a probabilistic determination about what reasonable, properly instructed jurors would do, and it is presumed that a reasonable juror
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