Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 16 (1997)

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Cite as: 521 U. S. 320 (1997)

Opinion of the Court

supportive of the negative implication apparent in § 107(c). There would have been no need to provide expressly that subsections (d) and (e) would apply with the same temporal reach as the entirely new provisions of chapter 154 if all the new provisions in both chapters 153 and 154 were potentially applicable to cases pending when the Act took effect, as well as to those filed later. If the special provision for applying §§ 2254(d) and (e) in cases under chapter 154 has any utility, then, it must be because subsections (d) and (e) might not apply to all chapter 154 cases; since chapter 154 and the new sections of chapter 153 unquestionably apply alike to cases filed after the Act took effect, the cases to which subsections (d) and (e) from chapter 153 would not apply without express provision must be those cases already pending when the Act took effect. The utility of § 2264(b), therefore, is in providing that when a pending case is also an expedited capital case subject to chapter 154, the new provisions of §§ 2254(d) and (e) will apply to that case. The provision thus confirms that Congress assumed that in the absence of such a provision, §§ 2254(d) and (e) (as new parts of chapter 153) would not apply to pending federal habeas cases.

This analysis is itself consistent, in turn, with Congress's failure in § 2264(b) to make any express provision for applying §§ 2254(f), (g), (h), or (i). Subsections (f) and (g) deal with producing state-court evidentiary records and their admissibility as evidence. Congress would obviously have wanted these provisions to apply in chapter 154 pending cases, but because they were old provisions, which had already attached to "pending" capital habeas cases (only their letter designations had been amended), Congress had no need to make any special provision for their application to pending capital habeas cases that might immediately or later turn out to be covered by chapter 154. Subsections (h) and (i), however, are new; if Congress wanted them to apply to chapter 154 cases from the start it would on our hypotheses have had to make the same special provision that § 2264(b)

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