| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | Rape and murder. |
| Posture: | Convicted and sentecned to death. Affirmed by VA SC, cert denied by SCOTUS. Petition for habeas in state circuit court. VA moves to dismiss because the appeal was filed late. VA SC dismises, SCOTUS denies cert. Now habeas in federal district court, but relief is barred by his state procedural defaults. Affirmed by 4th Cir. |
| Issue: | Should federal courts respect state procedural rules on habeas review? |
| Holding: | Yes. Affirmed. |
| Rule: | Cause and prejudice. Where a state prisoner has defaulted on his federal claims in state court pursuant to an independent and adequate state procedural rule, federal habeas review of the claims is barred unless the prisoner can demonstrate cause for the default and actual prejudice as a result of the alleged violation of federal law, or demonstrate that failure to consider the claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice. |
| Reasoning: | Regardless of whether the grounds are substantive or procedural, we
won't review a state court decision of federal law that rests
on an independant and adequate state ground. The independent
and adequate state ground is jurisdictional, in this context--
any decision based on independent federal grounds would be
advisory.
On direct review, if resolving a federal issue wouldn't affect the judgment of the state court, there's nothing to be done. In habeas, we're reviewing the legality of the custody, not the judgment. All of this (exhaustion, independent-and-adequate, etc.) is about federalism and comity. A habeas petitioner who has defaulted on his federal claims in state court has deprived the state court of the opportunity to address those claims. By default, we accept that the state court made its decisions about a federal claim the way it did because it believed that was what federal law required. (MI v. Long). That presumption can be avoided by an clear expression that the opinion is based on independent and adequate state grounds. That was about direct review, but we adopt the same approach for habeas. The presumption rests on the predicate that the decision of the prior court appears to rest on federal law-- it's not enough merely not to mention state law. Here, Coleman's motion was based solely on his failyre to meet state procedural requirements: the VA SC's decision is plainly on state grounds. The cause and prejudice standard shows respect for state courts. In order to be heard in the face of your state procedural default, that's the standard you have to meet. Coleman contends that his default is the result of constitutionally inadequate counsel, but there's no constitutional right to counsel in habeas, so that's no help. |
| Dicta: | The writ is a bulwark against convictions that violate fundamental
fairness, but it also entails significant costs. The most
significant is the cost to finality, but there's also an affront
to state sovereignty.
We respect federal procedural rules-- we ought to do the same for state ones. Blackmun (dissenting): this court is creating a byzantine arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjustifiable morass of impediments to the vindication of federal rights. Federalism isn't just blind deference to state courts: it's the protection of liberty through the diffusion of power. If there's cost to the states in retrials as a result of review, it's the product of their failure to scrupulously honor federal rights, not a consequence of unwelcome review. Finally, the question of whether people should be put to death because of incompetence in post-conviction representation is not one that should be decided on the basis of allocation of costs. |