Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 525

529US2

Unit: $U48

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450

EDWARDS v. CARPENTER

Opinion of the Court

serve as cause excusing that default. The District Court
acknowledged that the ineffective-assistance claim had been
dismissed on procedural grounds, but concluded that Rule
26(B)’s inconsistent application by the Ohio courts rendered
it inadequate to bar federal habeas review. See Ford v.
Georgia, 498 U. S. 411, 423–424 (1991) (state procedural de-
fault is not an “independent and adequate state ground”
barring subsequent federal review unless the state rule was
“ ‘ﬁrmly established and regularly followed’ ” at the time it
was applied). Proceeding to the merits of the ineffective-
assistance claim, the District Court concluded that respond-
ent’s appellate counsel was constitutionally ineffective under
the test established in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S.
668 (1984), and granted the writ of habeas corpus condi-
tioned on the state appellate court’s reopening of respond-
ent’s direct appeal of the sufﬁciency-of-the-evidence claim.
On cross-appeals, the United States Court of Appeals
for the Sixth Circuit held that respondent’s ineffective-
assistance-of-counsel claim served as “cause” to excuse the
procedural default of his sufﬁciency-of-the-evidence claim,
whether or not the ineffective-assistance claim itself had
been procedurally defaulted. Carpenter v. Mohr, 163 F. 3d
938 (CA6 1998).
In the panel’s view, it sufﬁced that re-
spondent had exhausted the ineffective-assistance claim by
presenting it to the state courts in his application to re-
open the direct appeal, even though that application might,
under Ohio law, have been time barred. Finding in addi-
tion prejudice from counsel’s failure to raise the sufﬁciency-
of-the-evidence claim on direct appeal, the Sixth Circuit di-
rected the District Court to issue the writ of habeas corpus
conditioned upon the state court’s according respondent a
new culpability hearing. We granted certiorari. 528 U. S.
985 (1999).

II

Petitioner contends that the Sixth Circuit erred in fail-
ing to recognize that a procedurally defaulted ineffective-