Cite as: 529 U. S. 420 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
proceedings. The prisoner had not developed the facts of his claim in state collateral proceedings, an omission caused by the negligence of his state postconviction counsel. See id., at 4, 8-9. The Court characterized this as the "prisoner's failure to develop material facts in state court." Id., at 8. We required the prisoner to demonstrate cause and prejudice excusing the default before he could receive a hearing on his claim, ibid., unless the prisoner could "show that a fundamental miscarriage of justice would result from failure to hold a federal evidentiary hearing," id., at 12.
Section 2254(e)(2)'s initial inquiry into whether "the applicant has failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings" echoes Keeney's language regarding "the state prisoner's failure to develop material facts in state court." In Keeney, the Court borrowed the cause and prejudice standard applied to procedurally defaulted claims, see Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 87-88 (1977), deciding there was no reason "to distinguish between failing to properly assert a federal claim in state court and failing in state court to properly develop such a claim." Keeney, supra, at 8. As is evident from the similarity between the Court's phrasing in Keeney and the opening clause of § 2254(e)(2), Congress intended to preserve at least one aspect of Keeney's holding: prisoners who are at fault for the deficiency in the state-court record must satisfy a heightened standard to obtain an evidentiary hearing. To be sure, in requiring that prisoners who have not been diligent satisfy § 2254(e)(2)'s provisions rather than show cause and preju-dice, and in eliminating a freestanding "miscarriage of justice" exception, Congress raised the bar Keeney imposed on prisoners who were not diligent in state-court proceedings. Contrary to the Commonwealth's position, however, there is no basis in the text of § 2254(e)(2) to believe Congress used "fail" in a different sense than the Court did in Keeney or otherwise intended the statute's further, more stringent requirements to control the availability of an evidentiary hear-
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