Sawyer v. Whitley

The issue before the Court is the standard for determining whether a petitioner bringing a successive, abusive, or defaulted federal habeas claim has shown he is “actually innocent” of the death penalty to which he has been sentenced so that the court may reach the merits of the claim. Robert Wayne Sawyer, the petitioner in this case, filed a second *336federal habeas petition containing successive and abusive claims. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused to examine the merits of Sawyer’s claims. It held that Sawyer had not shown cause for failure to raise these claims in his earlier…