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Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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' 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS F I ~ .;, JJ 

United States ·rtof Appealr 

TENTH CIRCUIT '.('enth il"!uit 

ALBERT W. BROWN, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE 

OF OKLAHOMA; STEPHEN KAISER, 

Respondents-Appellees. 

DECO 3 1992 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

No. 92-6250 

(D.C. No. 92-CV-648) 

(W. D. Okla. ) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before MOORE, TACHA, and BRORBY, Circuit Judges. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34(a); 10th Cir. R. 34.1.9. The case is therefore ordered 

submitted without oral argument. 

Petitioner Albert Wesley Brown appeals an order of the United 

States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma 

dismissing without prejudice his claim for habeas relief pursuant 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 

36.3. 

Appellate Case: 92-6250 Document: 010110149232 Date Filed: 12/03/1992 Page: 1 
to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b). The district court, on the Report and 

Recommendation of a magistrate judge, found Brown's petition to be 

a mixed petition under Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509 (1982), and 

therefore dismissed, giving the petitioner the option of either 

exhausting all of his state remedies or refiling only the 

exhausted claims. We exercise jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 

and reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with 

this decision. 

I. Background 

Petitioner was convicted of Murder in the First Degree in the 

District Court of Wagoner County, Oklahoma. With the assistance 

of appointed counsel, he appealed directly to the Oklahoma Court 

of Criminal Appeals, asserting three grounds for reversal: (1) 

the lack of proper foundation for forensic hair analysis evidence; 

(2) prosecutorial misconduct; and (3) cumulative error. The 

appeals court affirmed the conviction, finding Brown's claims to 

be without merit. Brown v. State, 751 P.2d 1078 (Okla. Ct. Crim. 

App. 1988). 

Brown thereafter sought postconviction relief pursuant to the 

Oklahoma Post-Conviction Procedure Act, Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 22, 

§§ 1080-89.7 (West 1986 & Supp. 1993). Brown initially reasserted 

his claims for insufficient foundation and prosecutorial 

misconduct and added a claim for ineffective assistance of 

counsel. Brown later amended his petition to add a claim 

asserting the inadmissability of a .38 caliber revolver and a 

second claim for ineffective assistance of counsel, this one 

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Appellate Case: 92-6250 Document: 010110149232 Date Filed: 12/03/1992 Page: 2 
specifically arising from allegedly improper stipulations made by 

his trial counsel. In its order entered August 15, 1989, the 

court denied the foundation and misconduct claims as being fully 

and finally disposed of by the direct appeal and denied the first 

ineffective assistance claim as meritless. The court did not 

address the claims Brown added in his amended petition. 

Brown apparently desired to appeal this decision to the 

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, but, because of a prison 

transfer, received the decision on September 6, 1989, with only 

nine of his allotted thirty days left to appeal. On September 19, 

1989, petitioner moved the Court of Criminal Appeals for a thirtyday extension in which to appeal. On October 17, 1989, not having 

heard from the Court of Criminal Appeals, petitioner again applied 

for postconviction relief in the district court, asserting that he 

deserved a new hearing because he did not have time to appeal the 

prior postconviction decision. On January 14, 1992, the district 

court denied Brown's second application for postconviction relief 

and the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed. 

Brown then sought federal habeas relief, asserting four 

grounds for relief: (1) insufficiency of the evidence; (2) 

inadmissibility of the state's forensic expert's testimony; (3) 

prosecutorial misconduct; and (4) all of the claims for relief set 

out in his second application for postconviction relief filed with 

the Court of Criminal Appeals. His fourth claim thus contained 

five separate elements: (a) lack of foundation; (b) prosecutorial 

misconduct; (c) ineffective assistance of counsel; (d) 

inadmissability of the .38 caliber revolver; and (e) ineffective 

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Appellate Case: 92-6250 Document: 010110149232 Date Filed: 12/03/1992 Page: 3 
assistance of counsel resulting from the allegedly improper 

stipulations. The state moved to dismiss the petition as a mixed 

petition. That issue was referred to a United States magistrate 

Judge, who determined that Brown's petition was indeed mixed. The 

Magistrate conceded that claims (3), (4a), and (4b) were exhausted 

because they were raised on direct appeal. He found, however, 

that Brown never presented claims (1), (2), (4c), (4d), and (4e) 

to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. Brown countered that 

those claims were nevertheless "exhausted" because they were 

procedurally defaulted under Oklahoma law. The magistrate 

responded that Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 22, § 1086 permits the review 

of procedurally defaulted claims where the petitioner can show 

"sufficient reason" for the failure to raise the claims in his 

earlier applications and determined that Brown was required to 

submit the claims to Oklahoma courts under that provision. The 

district court adopted the magistrate's Report and Recommendation 

and dismissed Brown's petition. 

II. Analysis 

We review a district court's conclusions of law de novo. 

Hill v. Reynolds, 942 F.2d 1494, 1495 (10th Cir. 1991). 11 [A] 

district court must dismiss habeas petitions containing both 

unexhausted and exhausted claims." Rose v. Lundy. 455 U.S. 509, 

522 (1982). A claim is exhausted when it has been fairly 

presented to the highest state court which may consider it, 

Castille v. Peoples, 109 S. Ct. 1056, 1060 (1989), or when the 

claim is procedurally defaulted under applicable state law. Engle 

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v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 125-26 n.28 (1982); see also White v. 

Meacham, 838 F.2d 1137, 1138 (10th Cir. 1988). 

Oklahoma provides for the direct appeal of a criminal 

conviction and affords additional relief under the Post-Conviction 

Procedure Act. Section 1086 of the Act provides: 

All grounds for relief available to an applicant under 

this act must be raised in his original, supplemental or 

amended application. Any ground finally adjudicated or 

not so raised, or knowingly, voluntarily and 

intelligently waived in the proceeding that resulted in 

the conviction or sentence or in any other proceeding 

the applicant has taken to secure relief may not be the 

basis for a subsequent application, unless the court 

finds a ground for relief asserted which for sufficient 

reason was not asserted or was inadequately raised in 

the prior application. 

Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 22, § 1086. Under Oklahoma's scheme, then, 

direct review of the criminal conviction effectively exhausts the 

available state remedies because the defendant is "barred from 

asserting any claims which have been, or which could have been, 

raised previously in the direct appeal." Hale v. State, 807 P.2d 

264, 267 (Okla. Crim. App.), cert. denied, 112 S. Ct. 280 (1991). 

New claims will be heard only if they fall within section 1086's 

two narrow exceptions: "those situations ... in which a 

'sufficient reason' prevented the assertion of the error at trial 

or on direct appeal, such as a subsequent change in the law 

affecting the petitioner's case .... [or] when the bypass is 

occasioned solely by a procedural error of counsel." Jones v. 

State, 704 P.2d 1138, 1140 (Okla. Crim. App. 1985). 

The government concedes that issues (3), (4a), (4b), and (4c) 

were decided on direct appeal and will not be reconsidered by 

Oklahoma courts. These claims, having been fairly presented to 

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the state's highest court, are exhausted. The state argues, 

however, and the district court found, that Mr. Brown has not 

fairly presented claims (1), (2), (4d), and (4e) to the state's 

highest tribunal and that, despite the general procedural default 

rule, state review may still lie under section 1086 of the PostConviction Relief Act. We disagree. 

As to claims (4d) and (4e), the Oklahoma Court of Criminal 

Appeals, in its order entered March 18, 1992, expressly stated 

that petitioner had "failed to provide ... sufficient reasons 

concerning why these grounds for relief were not asserted or were 

insufficiently raised in prior proceedings." Accordingly, claims 

(4d) and (4e) have been exhausted. 

Claims (1) and (2), raised for the first time in his habeas 

petition, require a different analysis. In claim (2), Brown 

asserts that the state's forensic evidence expert's testimony was 

identical to testimony struck down by the Oklahoma Court of 

Criminal Appeals in a subsequent case, McCarty v. State, 765 P.2d 

1215 (Okla. Crim. App. 1988). In claim (1), Brown alleges that, 

excluding the "inadmissible" expert testimony, the state's 

evidence was insufficient to support a conviction. 

At first blush, Brown's second claim might appear to fall 

within the "new law" exception to the bypass rule, thereby 

affording state postconviction review. That exception, however, 

applies not where subsequent case law changes the results under an 

existing rule but where subsequent case law articulates a 

previously unrecognized constitutional protection. See Stewart v. 

State, 495 P.2d 834, 836 (Okla. Crim. App. 1972) (criminal 

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defendant raised constitutional right to counsel at postconviction 

review where that particular right to counsel was not recognized 

by Oklahoma courts at the time of his conviction); see also 

Coleman v. Saffle, 869 F.2d 1377, 1383 (10th Cir. 1989) 

(interpreting section 1086), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1090 (1990). 

At the time of Brown's conviction, he clearly could have 

challenged the testimony as inadmissible, but, given the state's 

prior decisions in that area, elected to forego such a challenge. 

Moreover, McCarty neither stated a new constitutional rule nor 

even changed the interpretation or application of the existing 

rule. Postconviction review of the admissibility of the expert 

testimony is thus unavailable in an Oklahoma court under the "new 

law" exception to the bypass rule. To the extent that Brown's 

insufficiency of evidence claim could be raised on postconviction 

review on the coattails of the inadmissibility claim, it fails for 

the same reason. We therefore conclude that, under Oklahoma law, 

claims (1) and (2) are procedurally defaulted and therefore 

exhausted. 

Because Mr. Brown's habeas petition is not a "mixed" 

petition, the district court must permit him to proceed. 1 Based 

on the foregoing analysis, the order of the district court 

dismissing petitioner's motion for habeas relief as a "mixed 

1 We note that our decision that Brown may proceed on habeas 

because his unpresented claims were procedurally defaulted is 

surely a pyrrhic victory. On remand, petitioner must demonstrate 

either "cause and prejudice" or that "failure to consider the 

claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice" before 

the district court can hear the procedurally defaulted claims. 

Coleman v. Thompson, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 2565 (1991). 

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petition" is REVERSED and this case is REMANDED for further 

proceedings on the merits consistent with this opinion. 

Appellant's motion to proceed in forma pauperis and application 

for Certificate of Probable Cause are GRANTED. Petitioner's 

request for appointed counsel is DENIED. 

The mandate shall issue forthwith. 

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ENTERED FOR THE COURT 

Deanell Reece Tacha 

Circuit Judge 

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