Court Opinion

ID: 9434778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:56:06.264455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:54.435294
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, concurring.
While I join the Court’s opinion, I do so on the understanding that its reference to “good cause” for failing to exhaust state remedies more promptly, ante, at 277, is not intended to impose the sort of strict and inflexible requirement that would “ ‘trap the unwary pro se prisoner.’ ” Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509, 520 (1982); see also Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U. S. 473, 487 (2000).
Justice Souter,
with whom Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join the Court’s opinion with one reservation, not doctrinal but practical. Instead of conditioning stay-and-abeyance on “good cause” for delay, ante, at 277, I would simply hold the order unavailable on a demonstration of “intentionally dilatory litigation tactics,” ante, at 278. The trickiness of some exhaustion determinations promises to infect issues of good cause when a court finds a failure to exhaust; pro se petitioners (as most habeas petitioners are) do. not come well trained to address such matters. I fear that threshold enquiries into good cause will give the district courts too much trouble to be worth the time; far better to wait for the alarm to sound when there is some indication that a petitioner is gaming the system.