322
Opinion of the Court
century ago that "the one thing almost never suggested on collateral attack is that the prisoner was innocent of the crime" remains largely true today.37 Explicitly tying the miscarriage of justice exception to innocence thus accommodates both the systemic interests in finality, comity, and conservation of judicial resources, and the overriding individual interest in doing justice in the "extraordinary case," Carrier, 477 U. S., at 496.
In addition to linking miscarriages of justice to innocence, Carrier and Kuhlmann also expressed the standard of proof that should govern consideration of those claims. In Carrier, for example, the Court stated that the petitioner must show that the constitutional error "probably" resulted in the conviction of one who was actually innocent. The Kuhl-mann plurality, though using the term "colorable claim of factual innocence," elaborated that the petitioner would be required to establish, by a " 'fair probability,' " that " 'the trier of the facts would have entertained a reasonable doubt of his guilt.' " 477 U. S., at 454, 455, n. 17.
In the years following Kuhlmann and Carrier, we did not expound further on the actual innocence exception. In those few cases that mentioned the standard, the Court continued to rely on the formulations set forth in Kuhlmann and Carrier. In McCleskey, for example, while establishing that cause and prejudice would generally define the situations in which a federal court might entertain an abusive petition, the Court recognized an exception for cases in which the constitutional violation "probably has caused the conviction of one innocent of the crime." 499 U. S., at 494, citing Carrier, 477 U. S., at 485.
891 F. 2d 1335, 1342 (CA8 1987) (relying on Carrier's actual innocence exception as an alternative ground of decision), independent research confirms that such decisions are rare.
37 Friendly, Is Innocence Irrelevant? Collateral Attack on Criminal Judgments, 38 U. Chi. L. Rev. 142, 145 (1970).
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