In the case of Christopher Artuz v. Tony Bruce Bennett, 2000, the United States Supreme Court ruled on a matter regarding habeas corpus petitions from state prisoners. The petitioner was Tony Bruce Bennett, an inmate at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York who had been denied parole and filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus claiming that his constitutional rights were violated by this denial. The respondent was Christopher Artuz, superintendent of the facility where Bennett was incarcerated. At issue was whether federal courts could review such petitions if they involved claims that were procedurally defaulted (i.e., not properly presented to state courts). In a unanimous decision delivered by Justice David Souter, the court held that failure to comply with state procedural requirements does not bar federal courts from hearing these types of cases under certain circumstances - specifically when it is clear there has been no "adequate and independent" state ground barring consideration.

In the dissenting opinion for Artuz v. Bennett, Justice Scalia disagreed with the majority's interpretation of "time-barred" claims as not being procedurally defaulted. He argued that a claim is procedurally barred if it cannot be brought in state court due to procedural default rules, regardless of whether this is because it was previously presented and rejected or because it is time-barred under state law. In his view, federal courts should respect these state procedural rules and not hear habeas corpus petitions based on such claims unless there are exceptional circumstances justifying their review. This would prevent federal courts from becoming a forum for prisoners to bring stale claims that they failed to timely present in state court proceedings.