The U.S. Supreme Court case David Bobby, Warden v. Michael Bies in 2008 revolved around the issue of whether a state court's determination that a defendant is mentally retarded should be considered as "a new rule" under Teague v. Lane or if it was dictated by prior law for purposes of federal habeas corpus review. The respondent, Michael Bies, had been convicted and sentenced to death for murder in Ohio but later claimed he could not be executed because he was intellectually disabled (previously referred to as 'mentally retarded'). However, the State argued that this claim constituted a new rule under Teague and therefore couldn't apply retroactively on collateral review. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the petitioner (David Bobby), stating that Double Jeopardy did not prevent Ohio from contesting Bies' intellectual disability status during his post-conviction proceedings since no court had yet made an ultimate ruling on his eligibility for execution based on mental capacity.

In the dissenting opinion for the case of David Bobby, Warden v. Michael Bies, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the majority's decision was a departure from established precedent and an unnecessary intrusion into state court proceedings. He contended that there was no double jeopardy violation because Ohio courts had not yet made a final determination on Bies' mental capacity at his initial trial. Furthermore, he believed that it would be more appropriate to allow Ohio courts to decide whether they wanted to revisit this issue in light of new Supreme Court rulings regarding intellectual disability and capital punishment rather than forcing them to do so through federal habeas corpus review. In essence, Justice Stevens felt that the majority overstepped its bounds by intervening in what should have been a matter left up to state discretion.