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529US2

Unit: $U47

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WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of the Court

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Michael Wayne Williams received a capital sen-
tence for the murders of Morris Keller, Jr., and Keller’s wife,
Mary Elizabeth. Petitioner later sought a writ of habeas
corpus in federal court. Accompanying his petition was a
request for an evidentiary hearing on constitutional claims
which, he alleged, he had been unable to develop in state-
court proceedings. The question in this case is whether 28
U. S. C. § 2254(e)(2) (1994 ed., Supp. III), as amended by the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214, bars the evidentiary hearing peti-
tioner seeks.
If petitioner “has failed to develop the factual
basis of [his] claim[s] in State court proceedings,” his case is
subject to § 2254(e)(2), and he may not receive a hearing be-
cause he concedes his inability to satisfy the statute’s further
stringent conditions for excusing the deﬁciency.

I

On the evening of February 27, 1993, Verena Lozano James
dropped off petitioner and his friend Jeffrey Alan Cruse near
a local store in a rural area of Cumberland County, Virginia.
The pair planned to rob the store’s employees and customers
using a .357 revolver petitioner had stolen in the course of
a quadruple murder and robbery he had committed two
months earlier. Finding the store closed, petitioner and
Cruse walked to the Kellers’ home. Petitioner was familiar
with the couple, having grown up down the road from where
they lived. He told Cruse they would have “a couple thou-
sand dollars.” App. 78. Cruse, who had been holding the
.357, handed the gun to petitioner and knocked on the door.
When Mr. Keller opened the door, petitioner pointed the gun
at him as the two intruders forced their way inside. Peti-
tioner and Cruse forced Mr. Keller to the kitchen, where

John Cornyn of Texas, Jan Graham of Utah, and Christine O. Gregoire
of Washington.