In the case of Sawyer v. Smith, Interim Warden (1989), the United States Supreme Court ruled on a habeas corpus petition from an individual sentenced to death in Louisiana. The petitioner argued that his counsel had been ineffective for failing to object when the prosecutor commented during closing arguments about his decision not to testify at trial. This, he claimed, violated his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and warranted a new sentencing hearing. The court held that even if there was constitutional error due to prosecutorial misconduct or ineffective assistance of counsel, it did not automatically entitle him to relief unless he could demonstrate "actual prejudice." To show actual prejudice under these circumstances meant proving that but for this error affecting the proceedings' outcome, he would have received a different sentence. The majority opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist concluded that no such showing had been made here because other evidence overwhelmingly pointed towards guilt and thus any potential impact from this alleged violation was minimal at best. Therefore, they rejected Sawyer's claim and upheld his death sentence.

In the dissenting opinion for Sawyer v. Smith, Justice Marshall argued that the majority's decision was a departure from established precedent and an unnecessary restriction on habeas corpus rights. He disagreed with their interpretation of "actual innocence" as requiring proof of factual innocence rather than legal error leading to wrongful conviction. According to him, this narrow definition would exclude many cases where serious constitutional violations occurred during trial but did not directly relate to factual guilt or innocence. Furthermore, he criticized the majority's requirement that petitioners show they were probably innocent in order to qualify for relief under habeas corpus law as overly burdensome and unjustified by previous case law or legislative history. In his view, these new rules undermined fundamental fairness in criminal proceedings and threatened public confidence in judicial system integrity.