Page:Russell Bucklew v. Anne L. Precythe, Director, Missouri Department of Corrections.pdf/60

4 The principles of federalism and finality that the majority invokes are already amply served by other constraints on our review of state judgments—most notably the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, but also statutes of limitations and other standard filters for dilatory claims. We should not impose further constraints on judicial discretion in this area based on little more than our own policy impulses. Finality and federalism need no extra thumb on the scale from this Court, least of all with a human life at stake.

The only sound approach is for courts to continue to afford each request for equitable relief a careful hearing on its own merits. That responsibility is never graver than when the litigation concerns an impending execution. See, e. g., Kyles, 514 U. S., at 422; Woodson, 428 U. S., at 303–304. Meritorious claims can and do come to light even at the eleventh hour, and the cost of cursory review in such cases would be unacceptably high. See Glossip, 576 U. S., at ___–___ (, dissenting) (slip op., at 21–22) (collecting examples of inmates who came “within hours or days of execution before later being exonerated”). A delay, moreover, may be entirely beyond a prisoner’s control. Execution methods, for example, have been moving targets subject to considerable secrecy in recent years, which means that constitutional concerns may surface only once a State settles on a procedure and communicates its choice to the prisoner. In other contexts, too, fortuity