United States Supreme Court
STEWART, DIRECTOR, ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, ET AL . v. MARTINEZ-VILLAREAL, (1998)
No. 97-300
Argued: February 25, 1998 Decided: May 18, 1998
Respondent was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. His direct appeals and habeas petitions in the Arizona state courts were unsuccessful, and his first three federal habeas petitions were denied on the ground that he had not exhausted his state remedies. In his fourth federal habeas petition, he claimed, inter alia, that he was incompetent to be executed under Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399. The District Court dismissed that claim as premature, but granted the writ on other grounds. In reversing the granting of the writ, the Ninth Circuit explained that its ruling was not intended to affect later litigation of the Ford claim. On remand, respondent moved to reopen his petition, fearing that review of his Ford claim might be foreclosed by the newly enacted Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which establishes a "gatekeeping" mechanism for the consideration of "second or successive [federal] habeas corpus applications," Felker v. Turpin , 518 U.S. 651,

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