336
Opinion of the Court
made for subsections (d) and (e). But there are reasons why Congress need not have made any special provisions for subsections (h) and (i) to apply to the "pending" chapter 154 cases. Subsections (h) and (i) deal, respectively, with the appointment of counsel for the indigent in the federal proceeding, and the irrelevance to habeas relief of the adequacy of counsel's performance in previous postconviction proceedings. See 110 Stat. 1219-1220. There was no need to make subsection (h) immediately available to pending cases, capital or not, because 21 U. S. C. § 848(q)(4)(B) already authorized appointment of counsel in such cases. And there was no reason to make subsection (i) immediately available for a State's benefit in expedited capital cases, for chapter 154 already dealt with the matter in § 2261(e), see 110 Stat. 1222. There is, therefore, a good fit of the § 2264(b) references with the inference that amendments to chapter 153 were meant to apply only to subsequently filed cases; where there was a good reason to apply a new chapter 153 provision in the litigation of a chapter 154 case pending when the Act took effect, § 2264(b) made it applicable, and when there was no such reason it did no such thing.
There is only one loose end. Section 2254(a) was an old provision, without peculiar relevance to chapter 154 cases, but applicable to them without any need for a special provision; as an old provision it was just like the lettered subsections (f) and (g). Why did § 2264(b) make an express provision for applying it to chapter 154 cases? No answer leaps out at us. All we can say is that in a world of silk purses and pigs' ears, the Act is not a silk purse of the art of statutory drafting.
The upshot is that our analysis accords more coherence to §§ 107(c) and 2264(b) than any rival we have examined. That is enough. We hold that the negative implication of § 107(c) is that the new provisions of chapter 153 generally apply only to cases filed after the Act became effective. Because Lindh's case is not one of these, we reverse the
Page: Index Previous 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007