340
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
§§ 2254(a), (d), and (e) apply to chapter 154 proceedings. That clarification makes sense in light of § 2264(a), which replaces the exhaustion requirement of §§ 2254(b) and (c) with a requirement that federal courts consider (subject to narrow exceptions) only those claims "raised and decided on the merits in the State courts." Without that clarification, doubt might exist as to whether the rest of § 2254 still applied in capital proceedings.
Petitioner protests that to read § 2264(a) as supplanting §§ 2254(b) and (c) would produce "outlandish" results, Brief for Petitioner 26, a conclusion that the Court finds plausible, ante, at 333-334, and n. 7 (although it ultimately assumes otherwise). The result would have to be "outlandish," indeed, before a court should refuse to apply the language chosen by Congress, but no such result would obtain here. Petitioner and the Court both fail to appreciate the different litigating incentives facing capital and noncapital defendants. Noncapital defendants, serving criminal sentences in prison, file habeas petitions seeking to be released, presumably as soon as possible. They have no incentive to delay. In such circumstances, §§ 2254(b) and (c) quite reasonably require that their habeas claims be filed first in state courts, so that the state judicial apparatus may have the first opportunity to address those claims. In contrast, capital defendants, facing impending execution, seek to avoid being executed. Their incentive, therefore, is to utilize every means possible to delay the carrying out of their sentence. It is, therefore, not at all "outlandish" for Congress to have concluded that in such circumstances §§ 2254(b) and (c) exhaustion would needlessly prolong capital proceedings and that § 2264(a)'s requirement that a claim have been raised and decided on the merits in state court was a sufficient protection of States' interests in exhaustion.2
2 This conclusion would also be consistent with the conclusions of the Powell Committee, which was convened to address the problems in capital habeas cases and upon whose recommendations chapter 154 was substan-
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