JUSTICES BACK LIMITS ON FEDERAL APPEALS BY STATE PRISONERS.

Byline: Linda Greenhouse The New York Times

Ruling unanimously and with unusual speed, the Supreme Court upheld on Friday a new law's strict limits on federal court appeals by state prisoners, on the understanding that the Supreme Court itself retains jurisdiction to hear these cases.

Central to the decision was the justices' view that Congress had left intact a route by which inmates can bring their appeals directly to the Supreme Court, bypassing obstacles to review in the federal district and appellate courts imposed by the new federal law.

That interpretation - which was urged on the court both by the Georgia Death Row inmate who brought the case and by the Clinton administration in defense of the new law - obviated a looming constitutional question that the law had appeared to raise: Whether Congress had the ability to strip the court of jurisdiction over a category of cases.

While reaffirming its own jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from state prisoners, the court also made clear, in an opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, that the court would use that jurisdiction very sparingly, only in ``exceptional circumstances.''

Without defining those circumstances further, the court then said that the Georgia inmates' appeal did not fit within that category, and denied the petition.

A petition for a writ of habeas corpus is a challenge to the constitutionality of a prisoner's conviction or sentence, and these petitions are the principal means by which state inmates can obtain federal court review.

Habeas corpus petitions have been responsible for overturning a substantial proportion of state-court death sentences and for years have been the target of critics, both within the Supreme Court and in Congress, on the ground that they result in unduly prolonging Death Row appeals.

The decision Friday, Felker vs. Turpin, No. 95-8836, addressed one section of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which limits the ability of state prisoners who already have filed one habeas corpus petition in federal court to file subsequent ones.

There are a number of other provisions relating to habeas corpus in the new law, which President Clinton signed April 24. Challenges to other sections of the law, including limits on initial petitions by Death Row inmates, are quickly making their way through the lower courts. The Supreme Court is almost certain to take these up in future cases.

So while the practical effect of Friday's ruling may be to shorten some death penalty appeals eventually, appeals are likely to be prolonged by additional litigation for some time.

The decision, a spare 13 pages long, was an anticlimactic ending to what had at one point seemed to be a great constitutional battle in the making.

To achieve its goal of curbing repetitious habeas corpus petitions, Congress provided in Section 106 of the new law that any second or subsequent petition had to meet a particularly high standard and could not be filed at all unless it passed a special ``gatekeeping'' mechanism.

Under this system, a federal appeals court must grant a motion giving the inmate permission to file the petition in U.S. District Court. Denial of the motion is not appealable to the Supreme Court.

That provision posed two constitutional questions: first, whether the new law amounted to a ``suspension'' of the writ of habeas corpus, which the Constitution forbids; and second, whether the denial of Supreme Court review was an abrogation by Congress of the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction, as defined in Article III of the Constitution.

To resolve these issues, the court on May 3 granted the first case to reach it under the new law and ordered argument to be held in a month. Four justices - John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter - objected that the court was acting in ``unseemly haste,'' but they were overruled.

As the case was briefed and argued to the court, it appeared that in its own haste to curb habeas corpus, Congress had overlooked the fact that for more than 200 years, the Supreme Court had possessed jurisdiction to accept ``original'' habeas corpus petitions from inmates who have not gone through the lower federal courts.

While the court has exercised that jurisdiction only very rarely, it in fact remained. The new law would not have the court-stripping elements that had raised the constitutional doubts.

``We conclude that although the Act does impose new conditions on our authority to grant relief, it does not deprive this court of jurisdiction to entertain original habeas petitions,'' Rehnquist said in his opinion Friday.

Noting that ``repeals by implication are not favored'' and that Congress had not even addressed the issue, he said ``there can be no plausible argument that the Act has deprived this court of appellate jurisdiction in violation of Article III.''

The court dealt only obliquely with the further question of whether, in the exercise of its original habeas corpus jurisdiction, the court itself was bound by the restrictive standards that the new law applies to eligibility to file a second habeas corpus petition.

For example, under the law the inmate must be prepared to show by ``clear and convincing evidence'' that he would have been found not guilty if not for a constitutional error in his trial.

``Whether or not we are bound by these restrictions, they certainly inform our consideration of original habeas petitions,'' the chief justice said. He noted that the court's current rules already limit these petitions to ``exceptional circumstances.'' It was clear from the opinion that the court wants to avoid having to give substantive review to every death-row habeas petition it receives.