Cone v. Bell

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether federal courts can consider issues that state courts dismissed on state procedural grounds.

The case concerns Gary Cone, who has argued that he was high on drugs when he murdered an elderly Tennessee couple in their home in 1980.

At trial, the prosecution denied that there was any evidence Cone had used drugs. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death.

It was shown later that the district attorney’s files contained evidence confirming Cone’s extensive drug problem, and Cone maintains that such evidence should have been released to the defense in the discovery phase. The FBI also had files showing evidence of Cone’s drug use.

However, when Cone requested a new trial and tried to present this new evidence to the Tennessee courts on appeal, the courts ruled that he had made the claim of withheld evidence earlier and lost. Hence, his present claim was dismissed as duplicative, rather than being reviewed on the basis of the new evidence he was presenting.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied Cone’s habeas petition on the grounds that the matter had been resolved under state procedural law.

The Sixth Circuit denied a rehearing of the case en banc but seven judges dissented.

On June 23, the Supreme Court accepted the case for review.

This will be the third time that the justices review aspects of Cone’s case. In its two earlier decisions, the court reversed Sixth Circuit rulings, which had favored Cone.

Question presented: Whether a federal habeas claim is “procedurally defaulted” because it has been presented twice to the state courts, and whether a federal habeas court is powerless to recognize that a state court erred in holding that state law precludes reviewing a claim.