I recognize that the Supreme Court doesn't generally offer petitioners advice on what to petition, but IMHO what they should have done was dismiss Lawrence without prejudice, with a note saying that the petitioner should appeal on the basis that enforcement of the sodomy law in the extant case may have constituted capricious enforcement insofar as the cop had no warrant or other legitimate basis for entering the dwelling uninvited. The Supreme Court could have then remanded the case to a jury, with instructions to acquit the defendants unless it found that they were responsible for the cop's having entered their dwelling. [nb: I've read suspicions that these people called the cops themselves; I have no idea whether they did or not, but if phone records had shown that they had done so and this were brought out at trial, many people would be glad of these guy's prosecution]
You operate under the superstition that the Justices would want to do justice in a narrow case... what they did was wholly political.
They wanted to change the law and culture, and they did.