Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 917

1070 

OCTOBER TERM, 2009 

Thomas, J., concurring 

558 U. S. 

Although  the  Court  of  Appeals’ treatment  of  Johnson’s  claim  as 
a  habeas  challenge  is  a  close  question,  its  decision  to  apply 
§ 2244(b)(2)’s  successive  habeas  bar  is  not.  The  Sixth  Circuit’s 
decision  has  the  curious  effect  of  forcing  Johnson  to  bring  a 
Lackey  claim  prematurely,  possibly  at  a  time  before  it  is  ripe.3 
Moreover,  construing  this  claim  as  the  functional  equivalent  of  a 
habeas  action  also  has  the  unfortunate  effect  of  inviting  further 
delay:  A  petitioner  would  be  compelled  to  return  to  state  court 
to  exhaust  his  Lackey  claim  in  the  ﬁrst  instance  under  28  U. S. C. 
§ 2254(b)(1).  For  these  reasons,  I  am  persuaded  that  a  Lackey 
claim,  like  a  claim  that  one  is  mentally  incompetent  to  be  exe­
cuted, should, at the very least, not accrue until an execution date 
is set.  See Ceja v.  Stewart, 134 F. 3d 1368, 1371–1372 (CA9 1998) 
(Fletcher, J., dissenting); cf. Panetti v.  Quarterman, 551 U. S. 930, 
945  (2007). 

When  I  ﬁrst  expressed  my  views  in  Lackey,  I  did  not  envision 
such  procedural  obstacles  to  the  consideration  of  a  claim  that 
nearly  three  decades  of  delay  on  death  row,  much  of  it  caused  by 
the  State,  has  deprived  a  person  of  his  Eighth  Amendment  right 
to  avoid  cruel  and  unusual  punishment.  One  does  not  need  to 
accept  the  proposition  “that  the  imposition  of  the  death  penalty 
represents  ‘the  pointless  and  needless  extinction  of  life  with  only 
marginal  contributions  to  any  discernible  social  or  public  pur­
poses,’ ” Baze v.  Rees, 553 U. S. 35, 86 (2008) (Stevens, J., concur­
ring  in  judgment)  (quoting  Furman,  408  U. S.,  at  312  (White,  J., 
concurring)),  in  order  to  agree  that  the  imposition  of  the  death 
penalty  on  these  extreme  facts  is  without  constitutional  justiﬁca­
tion.  Most regrettably, a majority of this Court continues to ﬁnd 
these  issues  not  of  sufﬁcient  weight  to  merit  our  attention. 

Justice  Thomas,  concurring. 
In 1981, the petitioner in this case was convicted and sentenced 
to  death  for  three  brutal  murders  he  committed  in  the  course  of 

3 The  State  argues,  and  the  courts  below  agreed,  that  Johnson  should  have 
brought  his  Eighth  Amendment  claim  in  the  federal  habeas  proceeding  he 
commenced  in  1999.  At  that  point  in  time,  Johnson  had  been  on  death  row 
for  18  years.  This  was  one  year  longer  than  the  petitioner  in  Lackey.  Of 
course,  by  1999,  the  Court  had  denied  certiorari  in  Lackey  and  in  Knight  v. 
Florida,  528  U. S.  990  (1999),  which  involved  a  19-year  delay.  Therefore, 
when  Johnson  ﬁled  his  federal  habeas  action,  he  had  reason  to  believe  that 
an  18-year  delay  was  not  long  enough  to  trigger  Eighth  Amendment  con­
cerns  and  that  any  Lackey-based  claim  was  premature.