28 U.S.C. § 2264
Section 2264 · Scope of Federal review; district court adjudications
This is § 107 of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 92 court decisions — leading case Lindh v. Murphy (1997)
Most recently applied in 707 F. App'x 160 - Rivera v. Warden Tyger River Correctional Institution (December 2017)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) Whenever a State prisoner under capital sentence files a petition for habeas corpus relief to which this chapter applies, the district court shall only consider a claim or claims that have been raised and decided on the merits in the State courts, unless the failure to raise the claim properly is—
(1) the result of State action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States;
(2) the result of the Supreme Court's recognition of a new Federal right that is made retroactively applicable; or
(3) based on a factual predicate that could not have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence in time to present the claim for State or Federal post-conviction review.
(b) Following review subject to subsections (a), (d), and (e) of section 2254, the court shall rule on the claims properly before it.