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Opinion of the Court
dence that was either excluded or unavailable at trial. Indeed, with respect to this aspect of the Carrier standard, we believe that Judge Friendly's description of the inquiry is appropriate: The habeas court must make its determination concerning the petitioner's innocence "in light of all the evidence, including that alleged to have been illegally admitted (but with due regard to any unreliability of it) and evidence tenably claimed to have been wrongly excluded or to have become available only after the trial." 46
The consideration in federal habeas proceedings of a broader array of evidence does not modify the essential meaning of "innocence." The Carrier standard reflects the proposition, firmly established in our legal system, that the line between innocence and guilt is drawn with reference to a reasonable doubt. See In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970). Indeed, even in Sawyer, with its emphasis on eligibility for the death penalty, the Court did not stray from the understanding that the eligibility determination must be made with reference to reasonable doubt. Thus, whether a court is assessing eligibility for the death penalty under Sawyer, or is deciding whether a petitioner has made the requisite showing of innocence under Carrier, the analysis must incorporate the understanding that proof beyond a reasonable doubt marks the legal boundary between guilt and innocence.47
46 38 U. Chi. L. Rev., at 160.
47 Actual innocence, of course, does not require innocence in the broad sense of having led an entirely blameless life. Indeed, Schlup's situation provides a good illustration. At the time of the crime at issue in this case, Schlup was incarcerated for an earlier offense, the sordid details of which he acknowledged in his testimony at the punishment phase of his trial. Such earlier criminal activity has no bearing on whether Schlup is actually innocent of Dade's murder.
As we have explained, supra, at 313-317, Schlup's claim of innocence is fundamentally different from the claim advanced in Herrera. The standard that we apply today, therefore, will not foreclose the application of factual innocence to the analysis of such claims.
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