Opinion

Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes

  • 504 U.S. 1
  • 6 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 199
  • 92 Daily Journal DAR 5862
  • 60 U.S.L.W. 4339
  • 92 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3785
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Filed
May 4, 1992
Status
Published
Author
Kennedy
On the bench
White, Rehnquist, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, O'Connor, Blackmun, Stevens, Kennedy
Cited by
1,000 cases
Authority
More cited than 24.3%

Reported superseded by statute, as recognized in Williams v. Taylor — not on the Supreme Court's list

holding that when a state has given a petitioner a full and fair hearing on a claim and he has failed to develop material facts to sup- port it, he is not entitled to develop further facts in a federal habeas evi- dentiary hearing unless he demonstrates either cause for the failure and prejudice resulting therefrom or a fundamental miscarriage of justice

How later courts described this case

  • holding that when a state has given a petitioner a full and fair hearing on a claim and he has failed to develop material facts to sup- port it, he is not entitled to develop further facts in a federal habeas evi- dentiary hearing unless he demonstrates either cause for the failure and prejudice resulting therefrom or a fundamental miscarriage of justice
  • holding that when a state has given petitioner a full and fair hearing on a claim and he has failed to develop material facts to support it, he is not entitled to develop further facts in a federal habeas evidentiary hearing unless he demonstrates either cause for the failure and prejudice resulting therefrom or a fundamental miscarriage of justice
  • stating with regard to exhaustion of state administrative remedies that “encouraging the full factual development in state court of a claim that state courts committed constitutional error advances comity by allowing a coordinate jurisdiction to correct its own errors in the first instance”
  • holding that AEDPA’s exhaustion requirement requires more than notice, more than petitioner simply stating a federal claim in state court; it requires that the petitioner afford the state court a full and fair opportunity to address his claim

Written by the judges who cited it.

Later courts went against this

  • Reported superseded by statute, as recognized in Williams v. Taylor — not on the Supreme Court's list

    504 U.S. 1 (1992), superseded by statute as stated in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420
    Supreme Court of the United StatesApr 18, 20005 citing opinionsby statuteunconfirmed confidenceRead it

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by Brown v. Easter, 68 F.3d 1209 (1995)

    Instead, Brown argues (1) that Keeney is distinguishable because in Keeney, the prisoner had failed to develop the facts at all in state court, whereas Brown did develop those facts before his procedural default; and (2) that Keeney means merely that a hearing is not mandatory; a hearing is still discretionary, and the district court abused its discretion by not granting the hearing.
    Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitOct 25, 1995Read it
  • Distinguished by Jimmie Burden, Jr. v. Walter Zant, Warden, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, 975 F.2d 771 (1992)

    The recent case of Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1715, 118 L.Ed.2d 318 (1992), is inapposite.
    Court of Appeals for the Eleventh CircuitOct 5, 1992Read it

The opinion

*24 Justice Kennedy,

dissenting.

By definition, the cases within the ambit of the Court’s holding are confined to those in which the factual record developed in the state-court proceedings is inadequate to resolve the legal question. I should think those cases will be few in number. Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293, 318 (1963), has been the law for almost 30 years and there is no clear evidence that this particular classification of habeas proceedings has burdened the dockets of the federal courts. And in my view, the concept of factual inadequacy comprehends only those petitions with respect to which there is a realistic possibility that an evidentiary hearing will make a difference in the outcome. This serves to narrow the number of cases in a further respect and to ensure that they are the ones, as Justice O’Connor points out, in which we have valid concerns with constitutional error.

Our recent decisions in Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722 (1991), McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467 (1991), and Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), serve to protect the integrity of the writ, curbing its abuse and ensuring that the legal questions presented are ones which, if resolved against the State, can invalidate a final judgment. So we consider today only those habeas actions which present questions federal courts are bound to decide in order to protect constitutional rights. We ought not to take steps which diminish the likelihood that those courts will base their legal decision on an accurate assessment of the facts. For these reasons and all those set forth by Justice O’Connor, I dissent from the opinion and judgment of the Court.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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