Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 299.0

138 

McDANIEL  v.  BROWN 

Thomas, J., concurring 

be decided solely on the evidence adduced at trial.  See ante, 
at 131.  Accordingly, the Court need not correct any errone­
ous impressions the Ninth Circuit  may have had concerning 
the  report’s  impact  on  the  State’s  DNA  evidence  to  resolve 
respondent’s Jackson claim.*  Because that is the only claim 
properly before us, I do not join the Court’s dicta about how 
the  Mueller  Report’s  ﬁndings  could  affect  a  constitutional 
analysis to which we have long held such post-trial evidence 
does not apply.  See Jackson, supra, at 318. 

*Correcting the Ninth Circuit’s apparent misconception of the effects of 
the Mueller Report is the only plausible reason for the Court’s decision to 
explain  that  the  report  would  not  have  undermined  the  State’s  DNA  re­
sults “even if ” the Court of Appeals could have considered it in resolving 
respondent’s  Jackson  claim.  Ante,  at  131–132.  That  discussion  cannot 
properly  be  read  to  suggest  either  that  there  are  circumstances  in  which 
post-trial evidence would “warrant” excluding DNA trial evidence from a 
Jackson  analysis,  ante,  at  132,  or  that  courts  applying  Jackson  may  con­
sider post-trial evidence for any other purpose.  Both points are squarely 
foreclosed  by  the  precedents  on  which  the  Court  relies  in  reversing  the 
Ninth  Circuit’s  judgment.  See  ante,  at  121  (citing  Jackson  v.  Virginia, 
443 U. S. 307, 324 (1979)); ante, at 131 (citing Lockhart v.  Nelson, 488 U. S. 
33, 39 (1988)), respectively.