Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-04329/USCOURTS-ca8-05-04329-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
James R. Niederstadt
Appellee
Jeremiah W. Nixon
Appellant
Jim Purkett
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-4329

___________

James R. Niederstadt, *

*

Petitioner - Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Eastern District of Missouri.

Jeremiah W. Nixon, Attorney General *

for the State of Missouri; Jim Purkett, *

*

Respondents - Appellants. *

___________

Submitted: April 11, 2007

Filed: October 17, 2007

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, WOLLMAN, ARNOLD, MURPHY, BYE, RILEY,

MELLOY, SMITH, COLLOTON, GRUENDER, and SHEPHERD, Circuit

Judges, en banc.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge, with whom MURPHY, RILEY, MELLOY, SMITH and

SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges, join.

A Missouri trial court convicted James Niederstadt of sodomy of a sleeping

teenager and sentenced him to twenty-five years in prison. The Missouri Court of

Appeals reversed, concluding that, because the victim was sleeping, there was

insufficient evidence he used “forcible compulsion,” as the sodomy statute requires.

Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.060(1). The Missouri Supreme Court reinstated the conviction,

State v. Niederstadt, 66 S.W.3d 12 (Mo. banc 2002), and denied Niederstadt’s motion

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for rehearing. Niederstadt then petitioned for a federal writ of habeas corpus. The

district court granted the writ, concluding that Niederstadt’s Fourteenth Amendment

right to due process was violated by the Missouri Supreme Court’s construction of the

sodomy statute that was “unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which

had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.” Niederstadt v. Purkett, No.

4:02CV00847, slip op. at 11 (E.D. Mo. Sept. 27, 2005), quoting Bouie v. City of

Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354 (1964). The State appealed, and a divided panel of this

court affirmed. Niederstadt v. Nixon, 465 F.3d 843 (8th Cir. 2006). We granted the

State's petition for rehearing en banc and now reverse.

I.

We quote the Supreme Court of Missouri's undisputed recitation of the

background facts, 66 S.W.2d at 14:

The victim, S.C., was a sixteen-year-old female at the time of the

alleged sodomy in 1992. She was the daughter of American missionaries

serving in Gambia, West Africa. In 1991, S.C. was sent by her parents

to Malden, Missouri, to attend high school and to live with defendant and

his family. Prior to coming to defendant's home, she had no sexual

experience. In July and August of 1991, defendant began engaging in

inappropriate kissing on the lips and fondling of the girl's breasts and

touching her between her legs. 

At the religious school she attended, she began getting into

trouble. The school administered detention as punishment. Defendant's

punishment was to administer whippings to the girl's buttocks, back, and

legs. He contended the girl was "rebellious and needed it." The beatings

were so severe that S.C. suffered bruising, making it painful for her to

walk and difficult for her to participate in physical education classes.

The beatings occurred about once per month during her stay in the

Niederstadt home. Sometimes on the morning after a beating, the

defendant would come into S.C.'s room, take off her clothes and

underwear, and count her bruises out loud. Following one such beating,

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defendant attempted to strangle S.C., squeezing her neck and repeatedly

saying, "I could kill you right now." He eventually released her.

Because of the beatings and threats, on one occasion S.C. attempted to

run away from the defendant's home but returned the same day. S.C.

stated that she was afraid to report the sexual misconduct to authorities.

Like the beatings, the fondling incidents continued throughout the

school year, usually occurring in the early morning. Defendant would

come into the girl's room and place his hand under her clothes and

underwear. While he touched her, he would masturbate. 

The information alleged that the [sodomy] occurred in March of

1992. The victim testified to several such incidents but only gave details

as to one in March of 1992. S.C. testified that she had been feeling sick

and went to sleep in her room. She was awakened by a sharp pain which

she discovered was caused by defendant's finger in her vagina. When

she awoke, defendant told S.C. he was "checking [her] temperature."

Defendant admitted to that incident. S.C. testified that later in March

there were other occasions when defendant penetrated her vagina with

his finger. 

Niederstadt was charged with sodomy in violation of § 566.060(1). The statute

prohibited “deviate sexual intercourse with another person without that person’s

consent by the use of forcible compulsion.” It is conceded that Niederstadt's digital

penetration constituted “deviate sexual intercourse” as defined in § 566.010(1). As

relevant here, "forcible compulsion" was defined as “[p]hysical force that overcomes

reasonable resistance.” § 556.061(12)(a). 

After a bench trial, the trial court denied Niederstadt's motion for judgment of

acquittal and found him guilty of sodomy. The Missouri Court of Appeals reversed,

concluding that, because Niederstadt “initiated the sexual act while [the victim] slept”

and stopped when she awakened, there was no evidence he used forcible compulsion.

The fact that he used forcible compulsion on other occasions, the Court reasoned, did

not supply the requisite proof that it was used in committing the charged offense.

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State v. Niederstadt, No. 23612, 2001 WL 995937 (Mo. App. July 23, 2001). A

concurring opinion criticized “the State's failure to analyze its evidence and file a

charge the evidence will support.” 

The Supreme Court of Missouri granted discretionary review, concluded that

Niederstadt's conduct constituted sodomy under Missouri law, and reinstated the

conviction and sentence. The Court first noted there can be “no question but that

defendant used physical force to insert his finger in the girl’s vagina.” Niederstadt,

66 S.W.3d at 15. The Court then discussed the “critical question” of “whether the acts

of deviate sexual intercourse were done by use of physical force that overcomes

reasonable resistance.” Id. (quotation omitted). The Court looked to the coercive

beatings, threats, and sexual indecencies the forty-year-old Niederstadt had previously

inflicted on a sixteen-year-old girl who was living in his home. The Court concluded

that Niederstadt’s conduct and his “complete control and dominance over every aspect

of the girl’s life” provided sufficient evidence for the court to find that he used

physical force that overcame “[t]he reasonable resistance expected of an unconscious

or sleeping person.” Id. at 16. Niederstadt moved for rehearing, raising as a due

process issue that the Court had “unforeseeably expanded the scope of conduct that

might be prosecuted under § 566.060.” The Supreme Court of Missouri summarily

denied that motion. Niederstadt then timely filed this petition for federal habeas relief.

II.

The State first argues that Niederstadt’s due process claim is procedurally

barred. Federal habeas relief may not be granted on a claim that the state appellate

court declined to address because the petitioner failed to meet a state procedural

requirement constituting an “independent and adequate state ground.” Coleman v.

Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 730 (1991). An “independent and adequate” ground is one

that is “firmly established and regularly followed” by the time it is applied. Ford v.

Georgia, 498 U.S. 411, 424 (1991). “When a state court decides an issue on the merits

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despite a possible procedural default, no independent and adequate state ground bars

consideration of that claim by a [federal] habeas court.” Sweet v. Delo, 125 F.3d

1144, 1150 (8th Cir. 1997), cert. denied sub nom. Sweet v. Bowersox, 523 U.S. 1010

(1998). 

Under Missouri law, “to preserve a constitutional issue for appellate review, it

must be raised at the earliest time consistent with good pleading and orderly

procedure.” State v. Wickizer, 583 S.W.2d 519, 523 (Mo.banc 1979). The State

argues that Niederstadt defaulted his due process claim because it was first raised in

his motion for rehearing to the Supreme Court of Missouri. The State explains that,

because its brief to that Court urged the interpretation of the sodomy statute the Court

ultimately adopted, Niederstadt had both notice and opportunity to raise a due process

objection in his responsive brief, before the Court ruled. 

After careful review of the record, we conclude this issue was not properly

preserved and presented by the State. The record on appeal does not reveal whether

the State argued procedural default to the Supreme Court of Missouri in opposing

Niederstadt's motion for rehearing. The Court's summary denial of rehearing is

customary and gives no indication that the Court was invoking a procedural bar,

particularly if the State did not argue that the due process issue was defaulted. In

these circumstances, we infer the state court denied this issue on the merits, not on an

independent and adequate procedural ground. See Muth v. Frank, 412 F.3d 808, 815-

16 (7th Cir.) (collecting cases), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 988 (2005). Moreover, the State

cites only the readily distinguishable Wickizer case, which does not begin to establish

that the state court would have been applying a “firmly established and regularly

followed” principle if it had ruled the due process claim procedurally defaulted on the

unusual procedural facts of this case.

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III.

Turning to the merits of Niederstadt's due process claim, in Bouie the state

supreme court construed a statute, which on its face limited criminal trespass to

wrongful entries, as including the refusal by peaceful civil rights demonstrators to

obey a proprietor's order to leave a racially segregated restaurant otherwise open to

the public. The Court held that this retroactive judicial expansion of the statute's

criminal prohibition violated the defendants' due process rights. As later clarified,

Bouie's due process restriction on judicial interpretation of criminal statutes is limited

to those “that are 'unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been

expressed prior to the conduct in issue.'” Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451, 461

(2001), quoting Bouie, 378 U.S. at 354. Unlike judicial review of retroactive

legislation under the broader Ex Post Facto Clause, review of a court's application of

a criminal statute to a particular defendant, which by its nature is retroactive, “rest[s]

on core due process concepts of notice, foreseeability, and, in particular, the right to

fair warning as those concepts bear on the constitutionality of attaching criminal

penalties to what previously had been innocent conduct.” Rogers, 532 U.S. at 459.

Niederstadt argues the Missouri Supreme Court’s determination that he used

forcible compulsion sufficient to violate the sodomy statute violated his right to due

process because, contrary to prior reported decisions, the Court ruled that the forcible

coercion element is satisfied by the force inherent in a sex offense committed on a

sleeping victim, who cannot resist. This ruling was “unexpected and indefensible,”

he argues, because it rendered the forcible coercion element surplusage, eliminated the

statutory requirement that the defendant “use” forcible coercion, and impermissibly

equated sodomy with lesser uncharged sex crimes that did not require proof of forcible

coercion. The Supreme Court of Missouri concluded that its interpretation of the

sodomy statute did not conflict with the narrow due process restriction of Bouie and

Rogers. The task of a federal habeas court is to determine whether that conclusion

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1

We disagree with Niederstadt's assertion that the Supreme Court of Missouri’s

decision collapsed the distinct offenses of sodomy and deviate sexual assault, defined

in § 566.070(1) as deviate sexual intercourse without the victim's consent. By

distinguishing Daleske as involving only de minimis force and threats, the Court

preserved a distinction between the offenses. 66 S.W.3d at 16. Moreover, as there is

no Double Jeopardy Clause concern, we fail to see why such a collapse would violate

due process so long as it was not an “unexpected and indefensible” interpretation of

state law. As we shall explain, this interpretation was neither.

-7-

was an “unreasonable application of . . . clearly established Federal law, as determined

by the Supreme Court.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 

1. At the time Niederstadt committed the offense, the Supreme Court of

Missouri had not construed the term “forcible compulsion” in § 566.010, nor the

term's statutory definition in § 556.061(12)(a), “[p]hysical force that overcomes

reasonable resistance.” The Missouri Court of Appeals had construed these statutes

in a number of cases. In only one prior case had that Court reversed a Missouri

sodomy conviction because the evidence failed to establish use of forcible

compulsion. State v. Daleske, 866 S.W.2d 476 (Mo. App. 1993). In reinstating

Niederstadt's conviction, the Supreme Court of Missouri carefully considered the

Court of Appeals decision in Daleske and found it “readily distinguishable” because

the defendant in Daleske employed only de minimis force and threats, whereas here

the victim “was awakened by a sharp pain which she discovered was caused by

defendant’s finger in her vagina” and suffered other “beatings, physical threats [and]

sexual assaults.” Niederstadt, 66 S.W.3d at 16, 14.1

 

In Rogers, a divided Court refused to extend Bouie to a state court decision

overruling a common law rule that would have barred petitioner’s conviction. Like

Bouie, this case involves a state court decision construing a criminal statute. Thus,

it is instructive to consider how the dissenting Justices in Rogers -- those who would

have extended Bouie -- would apply Bouie in this type of case:

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Many criminal cases present some factual nuance that arguably

distinguishes them from cases that have come before; a court applying

the penal statute to the new fact pattern does not purport to change the

law. That, however, is not the action before us here, but rather, a square,

head-on overruling of prior law . . . .

532 U.S. at 471 (Scalia, J., dissenting). In this case, the Supreme Court of Missouri

did not overrule prior law, it applied the governing statute to a new fact pattern,

engaging in the type of fact-based analysis described in Justice Scalia’s dissent.

Indeed, as the Supreme Court of Missouri had not previously considered the statute,

there was no prior governing law to overrule. As we said in Hagan v. Caspari, 50 F.3d

542, 547 (8th Cir. 1995), "until the state's highest court has spoken on a particular

point of state law, the law of the state necessarily must be regarded as unsettled." A

ruling on an unsettled issue of state law will rarely if ever be unexpected and

indefensible.

2. Niederstadt argues that the Supreme Court of Missouri's construction of “use

of forcible compulsion” reconfigured the sodomy statute in a totally unexpected way

by eliminating the State's need to prove the defendant used force over and above the

sex act itself to overcome the victim's reasonable resistance. But this argument

ignores over one hundred years of Missouri criminal statutes and judicial decisions.

In State v. Welch, 89 S.W. 945 (Mo. 1905), the Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed

the rape conviction of a man who penetrated a sleeping victim and continued the

assault when she awakened. The penal code then defined rape as “forcibly ravishing

any woman” who had reached the age of fourteen. The Court explained: 

To ravish a woman is to have carnal connection with her forcibly, and

without her consent . . . . The general, if not universal, rule is that, if a

man have connection with a woman while she is asleep, he is guilty of

rape, because the act is without her consent.

* * * * *

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[The victim] knew nothing about the assault . . . until she awoke . . . at

which time the penetration had already been made and the offense

completed. After that no submission or consent of the prosecutrix could

avail the defendant.

* * * * *

[T]he crime is not mitigated by the fact that it was committed while the

prosecutrix was asleep.

89 S.W. at 947-48. In other words, the court equated unconsented penetration of a

sleeping woman with forcible rape. 

The Supreme Court of Missouri expanded the rule of Welch in State v. Atkins,

292 S.W. 422 (Mo. 1926), affirming the rape conviction of a physician who while

examining a patient penetrated her by surprise and stopped when she protested. The

Court explained:

It is plain that, if appellant did penetrate prosecutrix sexually . . . no more

physical force was employed by him than is necessarily incident to such

an act when done with the consent of the woman. . . . One phase of the

contention concerning the insufficiency of the evidence is that . . . the

alleged act of ravishment was not forcible within the meaning of [the

statute]. . . . But the law has been otherwise declared in this state.

* * * * *

If it is rape under our statutes for a man to have illicit sexual connection

with a woman while she is asleep, and incapable of consenting . . . we

are unable to see why it is not also rape for a man to have improper

sexual connection with a woman by accomplishing penetration through

surprise . . . . In all cases of that sort the physical force merely to effect

penetration without the employment of further force to overcome

resistance, together with the want of consent, should, and, under the rule

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In language since repealed, the 1979 version of § 566.070.1 made “deviate

sexual intercourse with another person . . . who is incapacitated” a class C felony

punishable less severely than sodomy. A definitional provision, § 566.020.1, clarified

that “incapacity” in this context did not include sleeping. Moreover, if unclear, the

Supreme Court of Missouri's resolution of that question would not violate Bouie. 

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announced in the Welch Case, does, constitute force within the meaning

of our statute defining and punishing rape.

292 S.W. at 425-26 (emphasis added). 

Welch and Atkins were rape cases, not sodomy cases. In 1979, the Missouri

Legislature revised the statutes governing both rape and sodomy. The rape statute was

amended to change the “ravishing” language to “use of forcible compulsion.” Mo.

Rev. Stat. § 566.030(1). But the Comment to that subsection advised that it

“continues the common law concept of forcible rape -- intercourse by 'forcible

compulsion'.” At the same time, the sodomy statute, which had previously defined the

crime without regard to force or lack of consent, was amended in § 566.060(1) to

include the same “use of forcible compulsion” language adopted to define rape. The

Comment to this statute advised, “The provisions of this section correspond with the

rape provisions of § 566.030.” 

This historical review makes crystal clear what common sense teaches -- it was

neither unexpected nor indefensible for the Supreme Court of Missouri to construe the

Missouri rape and sodomy statutes in effect when Niederstadt committed his offense

as applying to the unconsented penetration of a sleeping woman, just as the Court had

applied prior rape statutes for a century, consistent with “[t]he general, if not

universal, rule.” Nor is there reason to infer that 1979 legislative amendments

described as continuing the historic concept of forcible rape, and applying that

concept to the crime of sodomy, were intended to overrule this longstanding judicial

interpretation.2

 Thus, Niederstadt had the fair notice due process requires that his

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despicable sexual abuse of a sleeping teenage victim would be punished in this

fashion. As Bouie requires no more, the Supreme Court of Missouri's denial of

Niederstadt's due process claim was not an unreasonable application of clearly

established federal law and must be upheld under our deferential standard of review.

The judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded with

instructions to deny the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. 

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge, with whom GRUENDER, Circuit Judge, joins,

concurring in the judgment.

I conclude that James Niederstadt’s due process claim was procedurally

defaulted in the Missouri courts, and that he is barred from pursuing it in this federal

habeas corpus proceeding. I therefore concur in the judgment reversing the decision

of the district court.

Under Missouri law, a constitutional claim must be raised at the earliest

opportunity, State v. Galazin, 58 S.W.3d 500, 505 (Mo. 2001), and a state prisoner

who fails to present his claim in accordance with state procedure is barred from

raising the claim in a federal habeas corpus proceeding. Sweet v. Delo, 125 F.3d

1144, 1149-50 (8th Cir. 1997). Whether or not Niederstadt was required to raise his

due process claim in the trial court, he had an adequate opportunity to present the

claim to the Supreme Court of Missouri after that court accepted transfer of the case

from the Missouri Court of Appeals. The trial court had entered a judgment that

Niederstadt violated § 566.060(1) of the Missouri Revised Statutes. Two alternative

arguments were available to Niederstadt on appeal: (1) as a matter of Missouri law,

the trial court erred in concluding that the statute encompassed his conduct, and (2)

if the trial court’s conclusion that the statute did reach his conduct was correct as a

matter of state law, then the result was so unexpected and indefensible as to violate

the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Rogers v. Tennessee, 532

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U.S. 451, 457 (2001). As the State points out, this is the very course followed by the

defendant in Rogers, see State v. Rogers, 992 S.W.2d 393, 401-02 (Tenn. 1999), and

an opportunity to raise the constitutional claim likewise was readily available to

Niederstadt.

The state supreme court’s summary denial of Niederstadt’s motion for

rehearing, in which he raised a federal due process claim for the first time, should not

be construed as opening up the merits of a previously defaulted federal issue. The

purpose of a motion for rehearing under Missouri law is “to call attention to material

matters of law or fact overlooked or misinterpreted by the court, as shown by its

opinion or order of dismissal.” Mo. Sup. Ct. R. 84.17 (2002); Diamond v. Wyrick,

757 F.2d 192, 193 (8th Cir. 1985) (per curiam). The Supreme Court of Missouri has

firmly established and regularly followed a rule in appeals that it will not consider

new issues raised for the first time in a motion for rehearing. Allen v. GlobeDemocrat Publishing Co., 368 S.W.2d 460, 467 (Mo. 1963) (per curiam); see Graf

v. Wire Rope Corp. of America, 861 S.W.2d 588, 592 (Mo. App. 1993). 

There is no cause to conclude that the State failed to preserve or present the

issue of procedural default in the state court proceedings. The State was forbidden by

the rules of court to file a response to Niederstadt’s motion for rehearing unless the

state supreme court requested one, Mo. Sup. Ct. R. 84.17 (2002); Beach v. State, 220

S.W.3d 360, 366 n.1 (Mo. App. 2007) (per curiam), and the docket reflects that the

court denied Niederstadt’s motion for rehearing without seeking a response.

(Appellee’s App. 16). Niederstadt cites no appeal in which the Supreme Court of

Missouri has considered the merits of a claim raised for the first time in a motion for

rehearing. Nothing in the court’s summary denial of Niederstadt’s motion suggests

that the decision “rest[ed] primarily on federal law” or was “interwoven with the

federal law.” See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 733 (1991). The natural

inference from the summary order – particularly given that it was entered without

seeking an opposing brief on Niederstadt’s new constitutional claim – is that the court

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The court’s alternative suggestion, ante, at 5, that the State has failed to show

that the Supreme Court of Missouri relied on a procedural rule that is “firmly

established and regularly followed” presumably is dictum, for resolution of the default

question on that basis would be inconsistent with the court’s conclusion that

Niederstadt’s constitutional claim should be reviewed under the deferential standard

of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). If the state court purported to rely on a procedural ground in

rejecting the federal constitutional claim, but that ground is later deemed inadequate

to bar federal habeas review, then the federal claim was not adjudicated on the merits

by the state court, see Brown v. Luebbers, 371 F.3d 458, 461 (8th Cir. 2004) (en

banc), and the pre-AEDPA standard of review likely would apply. See Silverman v.

Edwards, 69 F. App’x 489, 491 (2d Cir. 2003); cf. Clemons v. Luebbers, 381 F.3d

744, 755 (8th Cir. 2004).

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did not depart from its longstanding refusal to consider new issues on rehearing. See

Byrd v. Delo, 942 F.2d 1226, 1231-32 (8th Cir. 1991). Consistent with this view, our

precedent holds that raising a claim for the first time in a motion for rehearing before

the Supreme Court of Missouri does not avoid a procedural bar. Tokar v. Bowersox,

198 F.3d 1039, 1046 n.7 (8th Cir. 1999).3

For these reasons, Niederstadt defaulted his due process claim in state court

pursuant to an independent and adequate procedural rule in Missouri. Therefore,

review of the federal claim is barred in this proceeding unless Niederstadt shows cause

for the default and actual prejudice as a result of the alleged constitutional violation,

or demonstrates that failure to consider the claim will result in a fundamental

miscarriage of justice. Coleman, 501 U.S. at 750. Niederstadt does not argue “cause”

and “prejudice,” but the district court thought the claim should be considered, even

assuming a procedural default, under the miscarriage of justice or “actual innocence”

exception to procedural default. Rejecting the recommendation of a magistrate judge

that the claim was procedurally barred, the district court reasoned that Niederstadt has

produced “clear and convincing evidence that, absent the supreme court’s unlawful

broadening of the forcible sodomy statute, no reasonable court would have found

[him] guilty of the crime under existing facts.” Niederstadt v. Purkett, No.

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4:02CV00847, slip op. at 7 n.7 (E.D. Mo. Sept. 27, 2005) (citing Sawyer v. Whitley,

505 U.S. 333, 336 (1992)).

 I disagree with Niederstadt’s contention that he may avoid the procedural

default by showing a “miscarriage of justice” under the circumstances of this case.

This exception to default “is concerned with actual as compared to legal innocence,”

Sawyer, 505 U.S. at 339, and the term “actual innocence” means “factual innocence.”

Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 623 (1998); McNeal v. United States, 249 F.3d

747, 749 (8th Cir. 2001). Niederstadt presents no new evidence of factual innocence,

cf. Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 324 (1995), and he does not deny any of the factual

allegations advanced during his prosecution. There is no dispute that he was factually

guilty of violating § 566.060(1) as the statute was interpreted by the Supreme Court

of Missouri. Niederstadt’s argument that federal law prohibited the Missouri courts

from interpreting the state statute to encompass his conduct is purely legal.

Niederstadt’s reliance on the “miscarriage of justice” exception, moreover,

implies that a defendant never could default a due process claim based on Rogers or

Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354 (1964), for if the claim had merit, then

the defendant would always be “actually innocent.” And because the defaulted due

process claim would not be adjudicated on the merits by the state courts, see 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d), a habeas corpus applicant would always be entitled to de novo review of

his constitutional claim raised for the first time in federal court, while applicants who

present the due process claim in state court must proceed under the deferential review

standards of AEDPA. This is an unlikely construct, and it finds no support in federal

decisions enforcing state procedural bars with respect to similar constitutional claims

based on Rogers or Bouie. See Chambers v. McCaughtry, 264 F.3d 732, 739 (7th Cir.

2001); Coley v. Belleque, No. 03-569, 2006 WL 1007248, at *1 (D. Or. 2006).

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For these reasons, I conclude that Niederstadt is not entitled to relief. I

therefore concur in the judgment reversing the decision of the district court and

remanding with instructions to deny the petition for writ of habeas corpus.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge, with whom WOLLMAN and BYE, Circuit Judges, join,

dissenting.

I respectfully dissent from the judgment of the court because the court applies

an incorrect standard in reviewing Mr. Niederstadt's claim and reaches the wrong

conclusion on its merits.

I.

The court does not acknowledge that there is an issue with respect to whether

the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) standard of review, see

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), applies to Mr. Niederstadt's claim: It passes over the matter

entirely. After deciding that the state of Missouri had not properly preserved the issue

of procedural default in state court, the court simply states that "[t]he task of a federal

habeas court is to determine whether [a state court's] conclusion was an 'unreasonable

application of ... clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme

Court.' " But that standard applies only if Mr. Niederstadt's claim was "adjudicated

on the merits in state court." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

The court, in discussing the question of procedural default, relies on Muth v.

Frank, 412 F.3d 808 (7th Cir. 2005), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 988 (2005), for the

proposition that if a state court denies a claim summarily we should presume that it

decided it on the merits. But the motion for rehearing that Mr. Niederstadt filed in the

Missouri Supreme Court contains claims asserting that the court's interpretation and

application of Missouri statutes was wrong both under Missouri law and the due

process clause. The Missouri Supreme Court's response was a one-line order stating

simply that Mr. Niederstadt's "motion for rehearing is overruled." The order did not

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discuss or even acknowledge Mr. Niederstadt's constitutional claim or any other claim

that he raised.

Although in James v. Bowersox, 187 F.3d 866, 869 (8th Cir. 1999), cert.

denied, 528 U.S. 1143 (2000), we stated that "the summary nature of a state court's

ruling does not affect the § 2254(d)(1) standard of review," the state court in James

had reviewed the federal claim and "label[ed]" it " 'without merit.' " Likewise, Weeks

v. Angelone, 528 U.S. 225, 231, 237 (2000), is distinguishable: In that case, the state

court had specifically referred to the claim at issue (issue "44"), along with several

others, "considered" them, and found that they had "no merit." Weeks v. Virginia,

248 Va. 460, 465, 450 S.W.2d 379, 383 (1994).

Since our decision in James, moreover, we have remarked that determining

when a state court has decided an issue on the merits is "not so easy" and indicated

that there are no hard-and-fast rules. Brown v. Luebbers, 371 F.3d 458, 460-61 (8th

Cir. 2004) (en banc), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 1189 (2005). Indeed, in that case, both

the court's and the dissenting opinion discussed at length the question of whether the

state court had reached petitioner's federal claim or had decided only the state claim

that was based on the same factual predicate. Because of all the labor devoted to that

question, it is plain that both opinions in Brown proceeded on the assumption that if

the state court exhibited no apparent awareness of the federal claim or gave no hint

that it had considered it, we could not conclude that it had been adjudicated on the

merits. And more recently we conducted a detailed examination of a state court

opinion before determining that it resolved a particular claim on the merits. Weaver

v. Bowersox, 438 F.3d 832, 838-39 (8th Cir. 2006).

Thus, the premise of all of our previous relevant cases seems to be that when

a state court has said nothing with respect to a federal claim, we can have no basis for

concluding that it had adjudicated it. It therefore comes as a surprise to learn that we

now have a binary approach to such matters: If a claim was dismissed for something

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other than a procedural default, it must necessarily have been adjudicated on the

merits. Perhaps there is some justification for this rule, but the court offers none, and

in the process overrules sub silentio a number of our cases that are inconsistent with

any such principle. Or maybe our previous cases can be distinguished on the ground

that in them the state court did discuss some claims and thus it might reasonably be

inferred that the state court simply overlooked some claim or claims that went

unmentioned. But the court here does not make that distinction, and I would not be

inclined to make it either, for reasons that I allude to later.

It might also be argued that we ought not to presume that a state court has not

considered a claim just because it did not mention it. After all, it often happens that

appellate courts fail to discuss assignments of error without mentioning them directly,

but the court's judgment presumably concludes them nevertheless. But this kind of

reasoning probably makes less sense when, as here, the state and federal claims are

based on the same factual predicate, and the court does not advance this argument in

defense of its ruling.

I think, moreover, that the principle apparently adhered to in our previous cases

has a better claim to recognition than the one that the court adopts. First of all, one

apparent purpose of AEDPA is to promote comity and to provide a certain amount of

deference to the place of state courts in our overall federal system. The statute was

intended to increase respect for state court judgments: It is therefore the states'

interests that are at stake here, and they should be alert to their vindication. I see no

reason to encourage state courts to be laconic. Nor do I believe that it burdens a state

court significantly to require it to devise an order that will allow a federal court to

discern whether the state court has adjudicated a federal claim. The statute, moreover,

does not by its own terms apply unless the federal claim has been adjudicated; and if

the relevant state court order is opaque with respect to whether it decides a matter, the

condition in the statute is not satisfied. To put it another way, if a state wants to claim

the shelter that the statute provides, it has the burden to show that it is entitled to it.

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It is important to appreciate that in passing AEDPA Congress meant only to

limit a state prisoner's right to an unrestricted review of a habeas claim, not to

eliminate it. By requiring that a claim be adjudicated on the merits in state court

before the review by a federal court would be restricted, I believe that Congress made

clear that a habeas petitioner must receive an unrestricted, i.e., de novo, review of his

or her constitutional claims by either a state or federal court. We therefore correctly

conducted an intensive review in our previous cases to determine whether the state

court in fact had decided the federal claim at issue. When forced to choose between

possibly depriving a habeas petitioner of unrestricted review by any court and

requiring a state court simply to say that it conducted such a review, I think that

Congress's intent compels us to choose the latter.

I would therefore review Mr. Niederstadt's claim de novo.

II.

Even assuming for the sake of argument that the due process claim here was

adjudicated on the merits and AEDPA therefore applies, I believe that Mr. Niederstadt

would be entitled to habeas relief. In those cases in which the state court decides an

issue but provides no explanation, we "conduct an independent review of the record

and applicable law to determine whether state court decision is contrary to federal law

[or] unreasonably applies clearly established law." Harris v. Stovall, 212 F.3d 940,

943 (6th Cir. 2000). For the reasons that follow, I believe that the state court's denial

of Mr. Niederstadt's due process claim is an unreasonable application of clearly

established Supreme Court due-process precedent.

Over forty years ago, the Supreme Court said that "[t]he basic principle that a

criminal statute must give fair warning of the conduct that it makes a crime has often

been recognized by this Court." Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 350-51

(1964). While the due process clause does not incorporate the specific prohibitions

of the ex post facto clause, Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451, 458 (2001), the

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"concepts of notice [and] foreseeability" are at its core, id. at 459. Thus the due

process clause is violated when a court gives retroactive effect to "a judicial

construction of a criminal statute [that] is 'unexpected and indefensible by reference

to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.' " Bouie, 378 U.S.

at 354 (quoting Jerome Hall, General Principles of Criminal Law 61 (2d ed. 1960));

see also Rogers, 532 U.S. at 461.

The Missouri sodomy statute, at the time of Mr. Niederstadt's conduct,

prohibited "deviate sexual intercourse with another person without that person's

consent by the use of forcible compulsion." Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.060.1 (Supp. 1991).

Deviate sexual intercourse included "any sexual act involving the genitals of one

person and the mouth, tongue, hand, or anus of another person." Mo. Rev. Stat.

§ 566.010(1) (Supp. 1991). Forcible compulsion was defined as "physical force that

overcomes reasonable resistance" or "a threat, express or implied, that places a person

in reasonable fear of death, serious physical injury, or kidnapping of himself or

another person." Mo. Rev. Stat. § 556.061(12) (Supp. 1991).

Mr. Niederstadt admits that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict

him of deviate sexual assault in the first degree, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.070(1) (1986),

which applied when the victim was an incapacitated person, or deviate sexual assault

in the second degree, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.080(1) (1986), which applied to an assault

of a sixteen-year-old victim by a person seventeen years or older. Neither of these

crimes included the element of forcible compulsion. Mr. Niederstadt argues that he

did not use forcible compulsion to accomplish the act, and that the Missouri Supreme

Court's construction of § 556.061(12)(a) to include his conduct diverged so widely

from the law as it existed at the time of his offense as to violate his due process rights.

The Missouri Supreme Court held that Mr. Niederstadt used physical force

against S.C., a minor dependent on him for care, in such a manner that her reasonable

resistance to his sexual assaults was greatly reduced and then sodomized her while she

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slept. The act of penetrating S.C.'s vagina itself required force to be applied to her

body, the court noted, and it held that that satisfied the physical force element of the

statute. Niederstadt II, 66 S.W.3d at 14-16.

Under Bouie, we must determine what law "had been expressed prior to the

conduct in issue." We first examine the statutory language: The statute, after all, is

the primary expression of the law applicable to this case. Section 566.060 required

that the "deviate sexual intercourse" be accomplished "by the use of forcible

compulsion" (emphasis added); it does not give notice that the intercourse itself can

be the force used to accomplish the intercourse or that a sleeping or unconscious

victim can be "compelled." Under § 556.061(12), "forcible compulsion" is defined

as "physical force that overcomes reasonable resistance," but this definition does

nothing to bring Mr. Niederstadt's conduct within the scope of § 566.060: It provides

no notice that "physical force" can be the intercourse itself or that the victim (whose

"reasonable resistance" is overcome) may be asleep. Therefore we do not believe that

the statutory language provided "fair warning" that Mr. Niederstadt's conduct came

within the terms of the crime with which he was charged.

Case law also plainly failed to provide the notice that due process requires. No

Missouri case before Mr. Niederstadt's holds or implies that the force necessary for

forcible compulsion is equivalent to the performance of the sexual act which the

statute states the forcible compulsion is used to accomplish. Nor had any case held

or implied that a defendant could be convicted under § 566.060 when the victim was

asleep and unaware of the acts alleged to be "forcible compulsion." For example, in

State v. R_ D_ G_, 733 S.W.2d 824, 827 (Mo. Ct. App. 1987), the court's discussion

of force focused on the defendant's grabbing and holding the victim's arms and

dragging her into a bedroom. Here S.C. testified that she was not even aware that

Mr. Niederstadt was in the room until she awoke and, according to the Missouri

Supreme Court, the deviate sexual intercourse had already been accomplished "by the

use of forcible compulsion," Mo. Rev. Stat. 566.060.

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In holding that the force used to penetrate S.C.'s vagina could fulfill the element

of forcible compulsion, the Missouri Supreme Court reconfigured the sodomy statutes

in an unexpected way. Under this construction, the element of "forcible compulsion"

collapses into the element of "deviate sexual intercourse," Mo. Rev. Stat. § 566.060.1

(Supp. 1991), and sodomy, when committed against a victim from whom virtually no

reasonable resistance is expected, such as the sleeping victim here, becomes

indistinguishable from the offense of deviate sexual intercourse in the second degree,

which did not require proof of forcible compulsion. At the time of Mr. Niederstadt's

conduct, neither the plain language of the sodomy statute nor the case law supported

such a construction. Where, as here, a court construes a criminal statute in a new way

that removes an entire element from it, it violates the principle of fair warning that

underlies the constitutional right to due process if, in the same case, the court uses that

new statutory interpretation to uphold the defendant's conviction.

As often happens, the state makes arguments and relies on authorities in its

presentation to the en banc court that it never made to the district court or to the panel

of our court that heard the case originally. The fact that this tack is late-blooming is

evidence enough that the state did not originally regard these authorities as relevant,

and rightly so. The court nevertheless adopts the state's new arguments when it holds,

ante at 8-10, that some old cases dealing with rape are helpful here. See State v.

Welch, 89 S.W. 945 (Mo. 1905); State v. Atkins, 292 S.W. 422 (Mo. 1926). But those

cases are inapposite because they do not deal with a calibrated statutory scheme that

deliberately distinguishes forcible sexual acts from acts that are committed on the

incapacitated, including, presumably, the insensate.

The court also maintains, ante at 7 n.1, that the Missouri Supreme Court

preserved the distinction between the two offenses at issue here, but in fact the state

court's attempt to distinguish State v. Daleske, 866 S.W.2d 476 (Mo. App. 1993), was

at best startling and at worst entirely fanciful. The court also remarks, ante at 7 n.1,

that collapsing the two offenses would not be unconstitutional unless it was

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unexpected and indefensible. But surely the court does not mean to say that it expects

state courts to collapse statutes or that it would defend state courts that did so.

I would therefore conclude that the Missouri Supreme Court's decision was an

unreasonable interpretation of United States Supreme Court due-process jurisprudence

in Bouie and other cases because I believe that it is quite obvious that neither the plain

language of the statute nor state case law at the time of Mr. Niederstadt's conduct

defined "forcible compulsion" as encompassing his conduct. I agree with the Missouri

Court of Appeals, which stated in its opinion reversing Mr. Niederstadt's conviction

that "there are no facts in this case of persuasion or force. Defendant appeared while

S.C. was sleeping. He initiated the sexual act while she slept. Defendant's actions

caused her to awaken. There was no evidence of forcible compulsion, as §

556.061(12) defines that term, before or after S.C. awoke." Niederstadt I, 2001 WL

995937, at *3. Significantly, one member of the panel, after concurring in the state

court of appeals's unanimous opinion, wrote separately to express his "chagrin" that

the reversal resulted from the prosecutor's decision to pursue this charge: "Why the

prosecutor chose to undertake the burden of proving forcible compulsion – an

impossible task on the evidence here – defies explanation." Id. at *4 (Shrum, J.,

concurring).

I recognize that the method of the common law will cause legal principles to

migrate and expand somewhat as words and principles encounter new facts. But in

the present case the Missouri Supreme Court's application of the sodomy statute

represented not the gradual evolution of a principle but a quantum leap that essentially

redefined a statutory crime.

I recognize, too, that it is the sole province of the Missouri courts to construe

their own statutes and that such constructions as those courts may give them are

authoritative and binding on federal courts. We have no appellate jurisdiction over

state courts and would not presume to venture an opinion that the interpretation that

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the Missouri Supreme Court gave the statute relevant to this case was incorrect as a

matter of Missouri law: Indeed, it was correct by definition. The Missouri Supreme

Court's interpretation of the statute would remain intact, unaffected by a ruling in

favor of the Mr. Niederstadt, and the courts of Missouri would be free to apply that

interpretation to any conduct that occurs after the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling in

Mr. Niederstadt's appeal. I would hold only that in applying its construction to

Mr. Niederstadt, the Missouri Supreme Court violated his right to due process. 

Mr. Niederstadt's crime was grievous. Perhaps in some abstract moral sense he

got what he deserved. But we are here to do law, not enforce morals, and

Mr. Niederstadt's sentence was at least eighteen years longer than it would otherwise

have been because of the construction that the Missouri Supreme Court gave to the

phrase "forcible compulsion." In any event, Mr. Niederstadt did not get part of what

he deserved, namely the due process of law that the Constitution secures for persons

accused of crime. The maxim nulla poena sine lege, no punishment without a statute,

is not a modern innovation intended to maximize the number of miscreants who go

unpunished. It is a cherished principle of Anglo-American law, and ought not to be

lightly shoved aside.

I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

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