Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 531

529US2

Unit: $U48

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

456

EDWARDS v. CARPENTER

Breyer, J., concurring in judgment

If I could stop here, the rules would be complicated, but
still comprehensible. The federal habeas judge would look
to state law and state practice to determine the facts and
circumstances surrounding a state procedural rule that the
State claims is an “adequate and independent state ground.”
However, the federal judge would determine the adequacy
of that “state ground” as a matter of federal law.

Unfortunately, the rules have become even more com-
In Carrier, the Court considered a prisoner’s conten-
plex.
tion that he had “cause” for failing to follow a state proce-
dural rule—a rule that would have barred his federal claim.
The “cause,” in the prisoner’s view, was that his lawyer (who
had failed to follow the state procedural rule) had performed
inadequately. This Court determined, as a matter of federal
law, that only a performance so inadequate that it violated
the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assist-
ance of counsel could amount to “cause” sufﬁcient to over-
come a “procedural default.”
Id., at 488–489. That being
so, the Court reasoned, the prisoner should have to exhaust
the ineffectiveness claim in state court. The Court wrote:

“[I]f a petitioner could raise his ineffective assistance
claim for the ﬁrst time on federal habeas in order to
show cause for a procedural default, the federal habeas
court would ﬁnd itself in the anomalous position of adju-
dicating an unexhausted constitutional claim for which
Id., at 489.
state court review might still be available.”

And today the Court holds not only that the prisoner must
exhaust this claim by presenting it to the state courts, but
also that his failure to do so properly, i. e., a failure to comply
with the State’s rules for doing so, bars that prisoner from
ever asserting that claim as a “cause” for not having com-
plied with state procedural rules.

The opinion in Carrier raises a special kind of “exhaus-
tion” problem. The Court considered a type of “cause” (“in-