Lee v. Kemna

The Court’s decision commits us to a new and, in my view, unwise course. Its contextual approach places unnecessary and unwarranted new responsibilities on state trial judges, injects troubling instability into the criminal justice system, and reaches the wrong result even under its own premises. These considerations prompt my respectful dissent.

I

The rule that an adequate state procedural ground can bar federal review of a constitutional claim has always been “about federalism,” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 726 (1991), for it respects state rules of procedure while ensuring that they…