338
Rehnquist, C. J., concurring in judgment
vacated a stay of execution issued on behalf of Robert Alton Harris, a California prisoner, pending consideration of a 42 U. S. C. § 1983 action alleging that his method of execution violated the Eighth Amendment. See 503 U. S., at 653. Because Harris had not raised the Eighth Amendment claim in any of the four federal habeas corpus petitions he had filed over 10 years, the Court considered the § 1983 claim "an obvious attempt to avoid the application of McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467 (1991), to bar this successive claim for relief." Ibid. We could have vacated the stay on the basis of the successive-petition bar alone, but we explicitly did not:
"Even if we were to assume, however, that Harris could avoid the application of McCleskey to bar his claim, we would not consider it on the merits. Whether his claim is framed as a habeas petition or as a § 1983 action, Harris seeks an equitable remedy. Equity must take into consideration the State's strong interest in proceeding with its judgment and Harris' obvious attempt at manipulation. This claim could have been brought more than a decade ago. There is no good reason for this abusive delay, which has been compounded by last-minute attempts to manipulate the judicial process. A court may consider the last-minute nature of an application to stay execution in deciding whether to grant equitable relief." Id., at 653-654 (citations omitted).
Our order confirms that "abusive delay"—waiting until the last minute to submit a claim that could have been submitted earlier—and "obvious attempt[s] at manipulation"—in that case, asking the court to exercise its equitable powers in defiance of a clearly applicable legal rule precluding relief on the merits—constitute equities to be considered in ruling on the prayer for relief. More important, because we explained that this misconduct constituted sufficient grounds to deny Harris' stay application, "[e]ven if" McCleskey did not bar
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