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Text: The relevant background circumstances include the following:
1. Fiore owned and operated a hazardous waste disposal facility in Pennsylvania. Scarpone was the facility's general manager. Pennsylvania authorities, while conceding that Fiore and Scarpone possessed a permit to operate the facility, claimed that their deliberate alteration of a monitoring pipe to hide a leakage problem went so far beyond the terms of the permit that the operation took place without a permit at all. A jury convicted them both of having "operate[d] a hazardous waste storage, treatment or disposal facility" without a "permit." Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 35, § 6018.401(a) (Purdon 1993); see Commonwealth v. Fiore, CC No. 8508740 (Ct. Common Pleas, Allegheny Cty., Pa., Jan. 19, 1988), p. 2, App. 6 (marking date of conviction as Feb. 18, 1986). The trial court upheld the conviction, despite the existence of a permit, for, in its view, the "alterations of the . . . pipe represented such a significant departure from the terms of the existing permit that the operation of the hazardous waste facility was `un-permitted' after the alterations were undertaken . . . ." Id., at 48, App. 44.

2. Fiore appealed his conviction to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. See 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 742 (1998) (granting the Superior Court jurisdiction over all appeals from a final order of a court of common pleas). That court affirmed the conviction "on the basis of the opinion of the court below." Commonwealth v. Fiore, No. 00485 PGH 1988 (May 12, 1989), pp. 2-3, App. 99-100. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Fiore leave to appeal on March 13, 1990; shortly thereafter, Fiore's conviction became final.

3. Fiore's codefendant, Scarpone, appealed his conviction to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. See 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 762(a)(2)(ii) (1998) (granting the Commonwealth Court jurisdiction over appeals in regulatory criminal cases). That court noted the existence of a "valid permit," found the Commonwealth's interpretation of the statute "strained at best," and set Scarpone's conviction aside. Scarpone v. Commonwealth, 141 Pa. Commw. 560, 567, 596 A.2d 892, 895 (1991). The court wrote:

"The alteration of the monitoring pipe was clearly a violation of the conditions of the permit. But to say that the alteration resulted in the operation of a new facility which had not been permitted is to engage in a semantic exercise which we cannot accept. . . . [W]e will not let [the provision's] language be stretched to include activities which clearly fall in some other subsection." Ibid.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the Commonwealth Court's conclusion. It wrote:

"[T]he Commonwealth did not make out the crime of operating a waste disposal facility without a permit . . . . Simply put, Mr. Scarpone did have a permit. . . . [T]o conclude that the alteration constituted the operation of a new facility without a permit is a bald fiction we cannot endorse. . . . The Commonwealth Court was right in reversing Mr. Scarpone's conviction of operating without a permit when the facility clearly had one." Com- monwealth v. Scarpone, 535 Pa., at 279, 634 A.2d, at 1112.
4. Fiore again asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to review his case, once after that court agreed to review Scarpone's case and twice more after it decided Scarpone. See Appellee's Supplemental App. in No. 97-3288 (CA3), pp. 59, 61 (including docket sheets reflecting Fiore's filings on Jan. 30, 1992, Jan. 24, 1994, and Oct. 18, 1994). The court denied those requests.

5. Fiore then sought collateral relief in the state courts. The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pa., refused to grant Fiore's petition for collateral relief_x0097_despite Scarpone _x0097_because "at the time of . . . conviction and direct appeals, the interpretation of the law was otherwise," and "[t]he petitioner is not entitled to a retroactive application of the interpretation of the law set forth in Scarpone. " Commonwealth v. Fiore, CC No. 8508740 (Aug. 18, 1994), p. 6. On appeal, the Superior Court affirmed, both because Fiore had previously litigated the claim and because Fiore's "direct appeal was no longer pending when the Supreme Court made the ruling which [Fiore] now seeks to have applied to his case." Commonwealth v. Fiore, 445 Pa. Super. 401, 416, 665 A.2d 1185, 1193 (1995).

6. Fiore sought federal habeas corpus relief. As we previously pointed out, supra, at 25, he argued that Pennsylvania had imprisoned him "for conduct which was not criminal under the statutory section charged." App. 194. The Federal District Court, acting on a Magistrate's recommendation, granted the petition. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, however, primarily because it believed that "state courts are under no constitutional obligation to apply their decisions retroactively." 149 F.3d 221, 222 (1998).

7. We subsequently granted Fiore's petition for certiorari to consider whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause requires that his conviction be set aside.