Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 527.0

529US2

Unit: $U48

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452

EDWARDS v. CARPENTER

Opinion of the Court

now codiﬁed in the federal habeas statute, see 28 U. S. C.
§§ 2254(b), (c)—require that constitutional claim, like others,
to be ﬁrst raised in state court.
“[A] claim of ineffective
assistance,” we said, generally must “be presented to the
state courts as an independent claim before it may be used
to establish cause for a procedural default.” Carrier, supra,
at 489.

The question raised by the present case is whether Car-
rier’s exhaustion requirement for claims of ineffective as-
sistance asserted as cause is uniquely immune from the
procedural-default rule that accompanies the exhaustion re-
quirement in all other contexts—whether, in other words, it
sufﬁces that the ineffective-assistance claim was “presented”
to the state courts, even though it was not presented in the
manner that state law requires. That is not a hard question.
An afﬁrmative answer would render Carrier’s exhaustion
requirement illusory.3

We recognized the inseparability of the exhaustion rule
and the procedural-default doctrine in Coleman: “In the
absence of the independent and adequate state ground doc-
trine in federal habeas, habeas petitioners would be able to
avoid the exhaustion requirement by defaulting their federal
claims in state court. The independent and adequate state

3 Last Term, in a per curiam summary reversal, we clearly expressed
the view that a habeas petitioner must satisfy the “cause and prejudice”
standard before his procedurally defaulted ineffective-assistance claim
will excuse the default of another claim. Stewart v. LaGrand, 526 U. S.
115, 120 (1999). Respondent contends that we are not bound by LaGrand
because in that case the habeas petitioner had waived his ineffective-
assistance claim in the District Court, thereby rendering our procedural
default discussion dicta, and because, in any event, per curiam opinions
decided without the beneﬁt of full brieﬁng or oral argument are of little
precedential value. Whether our procedural default analysis in LaGrand
is properly characterized as dictum or as alternative holding, and what-
ever the precedential value of a per curiam opinion, the ease with which
we so recently resolved this identical question reﬂects the degree to which
the proper resolution ﬂows irresistibly from our precedents.