It is possible that the Court could use this case to carve out an even broader exception to Federal habeas corpus review.

From my perspective as Chief Justice, I regard the problem of delay and confusion in Federal habeas corpus review of state capital sentences as an urgent one, and hope that Congress will see fit to address the matter this fall.

In past cases, Justices O'Connor and Kennedy had appeared particularly eager to limit the scope of Federal habeas corpus review.

The Supreme Court of the United States again denied a petition for certiorari in 1999, after which Abu-Jamal pursued federal habeas corpus review.

It was stayed while Abu-Jamal sought habeas corpus review.

The majority of the Court concluded that, because he had procedurally defaulted it, Breard could not raise his Vienna Convention claim on federal habeas corpus review.

Freedam's statistics looks at the percentage of all death penalty cases reversed, while the others look only at cases not reversed prior to habeas corpus review.

His case raised two questions: whether habeas corpus review was available despite language in the law suggesting that it was not, and whether the mandatory-detention provision violated the constitutional guarantee of due process.

If habeas corpus review truly is to provide state courts with an incentive to apply the Constitution fully and fairly, we should not retreat from applying the principles of constitutional law retroactively.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. said the majority's "new rule" principle would preclude Federal habeas corpus review "for all but the most indefensible state-court rejections of constitutional challenges."