Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 528

529US2

Unit: $U48

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

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

453

Opinion of the Court

ground doctrine ensures that the States’ interest in correct-
ing their own mistakes is respected in all federal habeas
cases.”
501 U. S., at 732. We again considered the inter-
play between exhaustion and procedural default last Term in
O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U. S. 838 (1999), concluding that
the latter doctrine was necessary to “ ‘protect the integrity’
of the federal exhaustion rule.”
Id., at 848 (quoting id., at
853 (Stevens, J., dissenting)). The purposes of the exhaus-
tion requirement, we said, would be utterly defeated if the
prisoner were able to obtain federal habeas review simply
by “ ‘letting the time run’ ” so that state remedies were no
longer available.
Id., at 848. Those purposes would be no
less frustrated were we to allow federal review to a prisoner
who had presented his claim to the state court, but in such a
manner that the state court could not, consistent with its
own procedural rules, have entertained it.
In such circum-
stances, though the prisoner would have “concededly ex-
hausted his state remedies,” it could hardly be said that, as
comity and federalism require, the State had been given a
“fair ‘opportunity to pass upon [his claims].’ ”
Id., at 854
(Stevens, J., dissenting) (emphasis added) (quoting Darr v.
Burford, 339 U. S. 200, 204 (1950)).

To hold, as we do, that an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel
claim asserted as cause for the procedural default of an-
other claim can itself be procedurally defaulted is not to say
that that procedural default may not itself be excused if
the prisoner can satisfy the cause-and-prejudice standard
Indeed, the Sixth Circuit may
with respect to that claim.
well conclude on remand that respondent can meet that
standard in this case (although we should note that respond-
ent has not argued that he can, preferring instead to argue
that he does not have to). Or it may conclude, as did the
District Court, that Ohio Rule of Appellate Procedure 26(B)
does not constitute an adequate procedural ground to bar
federal habeas review of the ineffective-assistance claim.
We express no view as to these issues, or on the question