Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 526

529US2

Unit: $U48

[09-26-01 10:25:49] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 446 (2000)

451

Opinion of the Court

assistance-of-counsel claim can serve as cause to excuse the
procedural default of another habeas claim only if the ha-
beas petitioner can satisfy the “cause and prejudice” stand-
ard with respect to the ineffective-assistance claim itself.
We agree.

The procedural default doctrine and its attendant “cause
and prejudice” standard are “grounded in concerns of comity
and federalism,” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 730
(1991), and apply alike whether the default in question oc-
curred at trial, on appeal, or on state collateral attack, Mur-
ray v. Carrier, 477 U. S. 478, 490–492 (1986).
“[A] habeas
petitioner who has failed to meet the State’s procedural re-
quirements for presenting his federal claims has deprived
the state courts of an opportunity to address those claims in
the ﬁrst instance.” Coleman, 501 U. S., at 732. We there-
fore require a prisoner to demonstrate cause for his state-
court default of any federal claim, and prejudice therefrom,
before the federal habeas court will consider the merits of
that claim.
Id., at 750. The one exception to that rule, not
at issue here, is the circumstance in which the habeas peti-
tioner can demonstrate a sufﬁcient probability that our fail-
ure to review his federal claim will result in a fundamental
miscarriage of justice.

Ibid.

Although we have not identiﬁed with precision exactly
what constitutes “cause” to excuse a procedural default,
we have acknowledged that in certain circumstances coun-
sel’s ineffectiveness in failing properly to preserve the claim
for review in state court will sufﬁce. Carrier, 477 U. S., at
488–489. Not just any deﬁciency in counsel’s performance
will do, however; the assistance must have been so ineffec-
tive as to violate the Federal Constitution.
In other
ineffective assistance adequate to establish cause
words,
for the procedural default of some other constitutional claim
is itself an independent constitutional claim. And we held
in Carrier that the principles of comity and federalism
that underlie our longstanding exhaustion doctrine—then as

Ibid.