Cite as: 520 U. S. 899 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
specificity or good cause to justify further discovery." Id., at 991.
The Court of Appeals affirmed by a divided vote. The court conceded the "appearance of impropriety" in petitioner's case but reasoned that this appearance did not require a new trial because it "provide[d] only a weak basis for supposing the original trial an unreliable test of the issues presented for decision in it." 81 F. 3d, at 688-689. Next, the court agreed that petitioner's theory—that Maloney's corruption "permeate[d] his judicial conduct"—was "plausible," id., at 689, but found it not "sufficiently compelling [an] empirical proposition" to justify presuming actual judicial bias in petitioner's case, id., at 690. Finally, the court held that petitioner had not shown "good cause" for discovery to prove his claim, as required by 28 U. S. C. § 2254 Rule 6(a). 81 F. 3d, at 690. This was because, in the court's view, even if petitioner were to uncover evidence that Maloney sometimes came down hard on defendants who did not bribe him, "it would not show that he followed the practice in this case." Id., at 691 (emphasis added). In any event, the court added, because petitioner had failed to uncover any evidence of actual bias without discovery, "the probability is slight that a program of depositions aimed at crooks and their accomplices . . . will yield such evidence." Ibid.4 We granted certiorari to address whether, on the basis of the showing made in this particular case, petitioner should have been granted discovery under Habeas Corpus Rule 6(a) to support his judicial-bias claim. 519 U. S. 1074 (1997). We now reverse.
4 The dissenting judge insisted that petitioner had shown "good cause" for discovery to support his judicial-bias claim, 81 F. 3d, at 696-699 (opinion of Rovner, J.), and went on to state that, in her view, petitioner was entitled to relief whether or not he could prove that Maloney's corruption had any impact on his trial, id., at 699-703. The latter conclusion, of course, would render irrelevant the discovery-related question presented in this case.
903
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