In the case of Ricky Bell, Warden v. Gary Bradford Cone (2001), the United States Supreme Court was asked to consider whether a federal court could review a state prisoner's claim that his death sentence violated due process because it was based on false evidence and prosecutorial misconduct if he had not first presented this claim in state court. The petitioner, Gary Bradford Cone, argued that these circumstances constituted an "exceptional circumstance" under 28 U.S.C §2254(e)(2) which would allow him to bypass normal procedural requirements for habeas corpus petitions. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with Cone’s argument and held that such claims must be presented in state court before they can be reviewed by a federal court unless there is no existing State corrective process or where such process is ineffective to protect his rights.

In the dissenting opinion for Ricky Bell, Warden v. Gary Bradford Cone, Justice Scalia disagreed with the majority's decision to grant Cone a certificate of appealability (COA). He argued that the Court had misinterpreted and expanded upon its own precedent in Slack v. McDaniel by allowing a COA based on an issue not raised in district court. According to Scalia, this was contrary to both statutory law and previous Supreme Court rulings which required issues be presented at every level of judicial review before they could be considered by the Supreme Court. Furthermore, he believed that even if Cone's claim were procedurally correct, it lacked merit because there was no reasonable likelihood that his sentence would have been different without alleged prosecutorial misconduct during sentencing phase closing arguments.