Cite as: 537 U. S. 88 (2002)
Stevens, J., dissenting
scape," Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203, 215 (1997), effected by Tennessee's new rule demonstrated that the District Court's procedural bar ruling rested on a mistaken premise. In petitioner's view, that mistake constituted a "reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment" within the meaning of Rule 60(b)(6). Whether one ultimately agrees or disagrees with that submission, it had sufficient arguable merit to persuade at least four Members of this Court to grant his certiorari petition.
III
In the District Court petitioner filed a comprehensive memorandum supporting his submission that his Rule 60(b) motion should be granted. App. 171-267. He has argued that the evidence already presented to the court proves that the prosecutor was guilty of serious misconduct; that affidavits executed by eight members of the jury that sentenced him to death establish that they would have not voted in favor of the death penalty if they had known the facts that the prosecutor improperly withheld or concealed from them; and that it is inequitable to allow an erroneous procedural ruling to deprive him of a ruling on the merits. In this Court, a brief filed by former prosecutors as amici curiae urges us to address the misconduct claim, stressing the importance of condemning the conduct disclosed by the record.12 Arguably it would be appropriate for us to do so in order to answer the second question presented in the certiorari petition. In my opinion, however, correct procedure requires that the merits of the Rule 60(b) motion be addressed in the first instance by the District Court.
The District Court has already heard the extensive evidence relevant to the prosecutorial misconduct claim, as well as the evidence that persuaded both the Tennessee appellate court and two federal courts that petitioner's trial counsel
12 See Brief for James F. Neal et al. as Amici Curiae 24.
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