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Page Number: 82.0

32 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

dates careful scrutiny in the review of any colorable claim 
of  error”);  Kyles  v.  Whitley,  514  U. S.  419,  422  (1995) 
(“[O]ur duty to search  for constitutional error with  pains­
taking  care  is  never  more  exacting  than  it  is  in  a  capital 
case” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Thompson, 556 
U. S., at 1116 (statement of Stevens, J.) (“Judicial process
takes  time,  but  the  error  rate  in  capital  cases  illustrates
its necessity”). 

Moreover,  review  by  courts  at  every  level  helps  to  en­
sure reliability; if this Court had not ordered that Anthony 
Ray  Hinton  receive  further  hearings  in  state  court,  see 
Hinton v. Alabama, 571 U. S. ___, he may well have been
executed  rather  than  exonerated.    In  my  own  view,  our 
legal  system’s  complexity,  our  federal  system  with  its
separate state and federal courts, our constitutional guar­
antees, our commitment to fair procedure, and, above all,
a special need for reliability and fairness in capital cases, 
combine  to  make  significant  procedural  “reform”  unlikely 
in practice to reduce delays to an acceptable level.

And  that  fact  creates  a  dilemma:  A  death  penalty  sys­
tem  that  seeks  procedural  fairness  and  reliability  brings
with it delays that severely aggravate the cruelty of capi­
tal punishment and significantly undermine the rationale 
for  imposing  a  sentence  of  death  in  the  first  place.  See 
Knight,  528  U. S.,  at  998  (BREYER,  J.,  dissenting  from 
denial of certiorari) (one of the primary causes of the delay 
is  the  States’  “failure  to  apply  constitutionally  sufficient
procedures  at  the  time  of  initial  [conviction  or]  sentenc­
ing”).  But  a  death  penalty  system  that  minimizes  delays
would undermine the legal system’s efforts to secure relia­
bility and procedural fairness.

In  this  world,  or  at  least  in  this  Nation,  we  can  have  a 
death  penalty  that  at  least  arguably  serves  legitimate
penological  purposes  or  we  can  have  a  procedural  system
that at least arguably seeks reliability and fairness in the
death  penalty’s  application.  We  cannot  have  both.  And