Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 495

529US2

Unit: $U47

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OCTOBER TERM, 1999

Syllabus

WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR, WARDEN

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the fourth circuit

No. 99–6615. Argued February 28, 2000—Decided April 18, 2000

After petitioner was convicted of two capital murders and other crimes,
he was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Virginia afﬁrmed
on direct appeal and later dismissed petitioner’s state habeas corpus
petition. He then sought federal habeas relief, requesting, among other
things, an evidentiary hearing on three constitutional claims, which he
had been unable to develop in the state-court proceedings. Those
claims were that (1) the prosecution had violated Brady v. Maryland,
373 U. S. 83, in failing to disclose a report of a pretrial psychiatric exami-
nation of Jeffrey Cruse, petitioner’s accomplice and the Commonwealth’s
main witness against petitioner; (2) the trial was rendered unfair by the
seating of a juror who at voir dire had not revealed possible sources of
bias; and (3) a prosecutor committed misconduct in failing to reveal his
knowledge of the juror’s possible bias. The District Court granted an
evidentiary hearing on, inter alia, the latter two claims, but denied a
hearing on the Brady claim. Before any hearing could be held, how-
ever, the Fourth Circuit granted the Commonwealth’s requests for an
emergency stay and for a writ of mandamus and prohibition, which were
based on the argument that an evidentiary hearing was prohibited by
28 U. S. C. § 2254(e)(2), as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). On remand, the District Court
vacated its order granting an evidentiary hearing and dismissed the
petition, having determined petitioner could not satisfy § 2254(e)(2)’s re-
quirements.
In afﬁrming, the Fourth Circuit agreed with petitioner’s
argument that the statute would not apply if he had exercised diligence
in state court, but held, among other things, that he had not been dili-
gent and so had “failed to develop the factual basis of [his three] claim[s]
in State court,” § 2254(e)(2). The court concluded that petitioner could
not satisfy the statute’s conditions for excusing his failure to develop
the facts and held him barred from receiving an evidentiary hearing.

Held: Under § 2254(e)(2), as amended by AEDPA, a “fail[ure] to develop”
a claim’s factual basis in state-court proceedings is not established un-
less there is lack of diligence, or some greater fault, attributable to the
prisoner or his counsel. The statute does not bar the evidentiary hear-
ing petitioner seeks on his juror bias and prosecutorial misconduct
claims, but bars a hearing on his Brady claim because he “failed to