Whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to afford state prisoners some adequate corrective process for the hearing and determination of claims of violation of federal constitutional guarantees

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Case v. Nebraska, 381 U.S. 336 (1965), this Court granted certiorari to decide “whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the States afford state prisoners some adequate corrective process for the hearing and determination of claims of violation of federal constitutional guarantees.” Jd. at 337. The Court did not reach the question after it was rendered moot. Twenty years later, in Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445 (1985), this Court took up—but declined to reach—the open question whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires some form of state judicial review of state prisoners’ federal constitutional claims. Id. at 450; see also Young v. Ragen, 337 U.S. 235, 239 (1949) (requiring states to give its prisoners “some clearly defined method by which they may raise claims of denial of federal rights[]”). In the nearly 40 years since Hill and more than half-century since Case, the scope of states’ obligation to review the merits of federal constitutional claims brought by state prisoners on collateral review remains “shrouded in so much uncertainty[.]” Kyles v. Whitley, 498 U.S. 931, 932 (1990) (Stevens, J., concurring). In the decision below, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) refused to review Oklahoma death-row prisoner Tremane Wood’s claim that newly-discovered evidence demonstrates his Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated when he was represented at his capital trial by a lawyer who was impaired by a serious addiction to alcohol, cocaine, and prescription pills. The OCCA did so by subjecting Mr. Wood’s successor postconviction application to the onerous requirements of Oklahoma’s capital successor statute, rather than the far less stringent provisions of Oklahoma’s noncapital successor statute, and by resolving disputed issues of fact against Mr. Wood without a hearing. This petition presents the following questions: 1. When states open their postconviction forums to federal claims raised in a successor posture based on newly-discovered evidence, do they have to administer those forums evenhandedly, or may they discriminate against newly-discovered federal claims brought by death-sentenced prisoners because of their status? 2. Does the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to consider the merits of Mr. Wood’s concededly meritorious, newly-discovered federal Constitutional claim discriminate against his federal rights? i