Source: http://wisconsinlawreview.org/requiring-exhaustion-for-cumulative-error-review-of-harmlessness-does-not-add-up/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 08:36:18+00:00

Document:
In January 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit became the fifth circuit court to hold that a habeas corpus procedural rule—exhaustion—bars habeas petitioners from advancing all cumulative error arguments when they failed to raise cumulative error in their state court proceedings. Only one circuit—the Fifth Circuit—allows petitioners to raise cumulative error for the first time in his or her habeas appeal. 1 This Essay argues that the plurality has erred.
First, this Essay briefly describes the cumulative error and exhaustion doctrines. Habeas’ exhaustion requirements only apply to “claims.” 2 There are two types of cumulative error arguments. 3 First, there is a standalone claim that state trial errors taken together violated a defendant’s due process rights. 4 Second, there is a cumulative error argument that functions as a standard of review (cumulative prejudice), in which courts can determine whether claims not separately prejudicial together show sufficient prejudice. 5 Because the second argument is not a claim, exhaustion should not apply to it.
Then, this Essay offers three reasons why exhaustion should not prevent habeas petitioners from raising “unexhausted” cumulative prejudice claims in federal court: (1) cumulative prejudice review—unlike the first type of cumulative error—is not a claim; (2) preventing a litigant from arguing cumulative error with regards to prejudice is inequitable; and (3) barring cumulative error arguments does not support “comity,” the policy basis of exhaustion.
In January 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that “cumulative error” is a separate “claim,” and therefore the cumulative error “claim” must be exhausted. 30 The Third Circuit’s holding is troubling because its reasoning was essentially limited to citing the plurality of courts that have also held cumulative error is a claim that must be exhausted. 31 In other words, the Third Circuit’s holding may suggest the sheer numerosity of holdings requiring exhaustion has ended the argument. 32 However, there are at least three reasons why these circuits’ holdings with regard to cumulative prejudice should be rejected: (1) cumulative prejudice review—unlike the first type of cumulative error—is not a claim; (2) preventing a litigant from arguing cumulative error with regards to prejudice is inequitable; and (3) barring cumulative error arguments does not support “comity,” the policy basis of exhaustion.
(1) there would have to be a Supreme Court holding establishing it, and (2) it would be a claim solely composed of other claims.
However, cumulative prejudice is clearly established when understood as a necessary corollary to harmless error analysis. Under harmless error analysis, a court is required to determine harmlessness “in light of the record as a whole.” 38 No further Supreme Court guidance is needed to determine that the “record as whole” includes items on both sides of the prejudice scale: showing harmlessness or prejudice. 39 Thus, cumulative prejudice is only viable when a part of harmless error analysis—not as a claim. If it is not a claim, it does not need to be exhausted.
Cumulative prejudice does not raise a novel due process claim about other claims; it addresses the harmless error defense to those claims.
Unreasonably preventing a petitioner from arguing cumulative prejudice inequitably favors the State and allows constitutional errors to justify the denial of relief for other constitutional errors.
First, when courts deny cumulative prejudice review, they inequitably allow the State—but not the petitioner—to cumulate without justification. The State almost always cumulates its evidence. For instance, no rational juror would consider the prosecution’s presentation of an eyewitness, ballistics evidence, and DNA evidence separately to determine whether each proved that a defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, in Brecht itself, the Court had license to rove through the record and cumulate evidence against the petitioner to create a conclusive case and render errors harmless. 43 Justice is a “big picture” concept. 44 It is inequitable for the State to be able to discuss the “big picture” while limiting petitioners to isolated pixels.
This potentially fractious relationship between a petitioner’s competing habeas claims—in which the prejudice from other claims prevents any one claim from being singularly, sufficiently prejudicial 49 when cumulative prejudice is denied and the Brecht standard is applicable—is inequitable. When multiple constitutional errors together are prejudicial, a petitioner should not be kept in custody because no single error was the but-for cause of the flawed verdict. Such reasoning has rightly been repudiated in torts, 50 and, a fortiori, should be equally repudiated where an individual’s liberty is at stake.
Requiring cumulative prejudice to be exhausted is not supported by the policy rationale for exhaustion—comity. The Supreme Court has held that exhaustion is a “rule of comity [that] reduces friction between the state and federal court systems by avoiding the ‘unseem[liness]’ of a federal district court’s overturning a state court conviction without the state courts having had an opportunity to correct the constitutional violation in the first instance.” 51 Because cumulative prejudice is not a “constitutional violation,” that goal does not apply literally. More importantly, requiring cumulative prejudice to be exhausted is patronizing rather than respectful. A federal judge who requires cumulative error to be exhausted holds essentially that when a petitioner says that he or she sat down and ate “steak” and “potatoes” the state judge would not understand that the petitioner sat down and ate “steak and potatoes.” Insisting that state judges are limited machines who require “magic words” 52 to process obvious arguments is contemptuous. Because this application of exhaustion runs directly counter to the policy behind exhaustion, there is no policy argument for requiring the exhaustion of cumulative prejudice.
Habeas petitions are often filed by poor, legally ignorant prisoners. While the vast majority of petitions are wholly meritless and deserve quick dismissal, courts should not invent complicated doctrinal traps for the unwary to avoid their Article III duties to consider even meritless petitions. This Commentary has presented three arguments why cumulative prejudice does not need to be exhausted. Hopefully, the reader does not require the author to indicate that those arguments should be considered cumulatively.
See Derden v. McNeel, 978 F.2d 1453, 1454 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc) (holding cumulative error is available when the constituted “errors were not procedurally defaulted for habeas purposes”).
28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A) (2012).
Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 29 (2004) (quoting Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S. 364, 365–66 (1995) (per curiam)).
Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 9–10 (2000) (emphasizing that procedural default and exhaustion apply to “claims”).
See, e.g., O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 844–45 (1999).
See Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 116 (2007) (relying on “finality, comity, and federalism”).
In addition to general harmless error analysis, most habeas claims will have their own prejudice analyses. See, e.g., Premo v. Moore, 131 S. Ct. 733, 743–45 (2011) (discussing the difficulty in showing prejudice on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim on habeas).
Fry, 551 U.S. at 116 (quoting Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967)).
Id. at 631 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776 (1946)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
See Marshall v. Hendricks, 307 F.3d 36, 78 (3d Cir. 2002) (“Indeed, in Chapman itself, the cumulative effect of the error was weighed together.”); see also Brecht, 507 U.S. at 629, 638 (applying the harmless error test “in light of the record as a whole”); Chapman, 386 U.S. at 22 (holding that errors may be “so unimportant and insignificant that they may . . . be deemed harmless” “in the setting of a particular case”) (emphasis added).
See Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296−97 (1991).
See Rachel A. Van Cleave, When Is an Error Not an “Error”? Habeas Corpus and Cumulative Error Analysis, 46 Baylor L. Rev. 59, 60–61 (1994) (comparing a situation in which “a court might find . . . several ‘constitutional errors,’ otherwise individually harmless, were collectively harmful” under “cumulation of harmlessness” and a situation in which “numerous errors of state law may operate together to deprive a petitioner of a fair trial under the Due Process Clause”). Most courts apply some form of cumulative error and apply it the same way on direct and habeas review. See John H. Blume & Christopher Seeds, Reliability Matters: Reassociating Bagley Materiality, Strickland Prejudice, and Cumulative Harmless Error, 95 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1153, 1185 n.117 (2005) (“Except for the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits, the federal courts of appeals apply cumulative error analysis, without explicit distinction from the direct-appeal context, in the review of habeas corpus petitions.”).
See, e.g., United States v. Rivera, 900 F.2d 1462, 1469–70 (10th Cir. 1990) (en banc) (“Such an analysis is an extension of the harmless-error rule, which is used to determine whether an individual error requires reversal.”).
See, e.g., Derden v. McNeel, 978 F.2d 1453, 1459–61 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc) (attempting to cumulate the judge’s “allegedly offensive” remarks, the court’s sustaining four prosecution objections, prosecution’s misconduct during voir dire, prosecution’s eliciting impermissible evidence, and a Brady error).
See Collins v. Sec’y of Pa. Dep’t of Corr., 742 F.3d 528, 540–43 (3d Cir. 2014) (noting petitioner’s argument “that ‘the cumulative error doctrine is a required method of conducting prejudice analysis,’ not a standalone constitutional claim”).
See Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 635 (1993) (identifying comity, finality, and federalism as reasons to find errors harmless on habeas review); Derden, 978 F.2d at 1462 (Higginbotham, J., concurring) (disputing that cumulative error “is an open‑ended threat to comity, finality, and federalism”).
See, e.g., United States v. Smith, 776 F.2d 892, 899 (10th Cir. 1985) (offering no support for its cumulative prejudice analysis); United States v. Berry, 627 F.2d 193, 200–01 (9th Cir. 1980) (similar); cf. Blume & Seeds, supra note 18, at 1185 (“When one sets out to investigate the origins of cumulative harmless error, there is not a lot to find.”).
See Brecht, 507 U.S. at 638 n.9; Taylor v. Kentucky, 436 U.S. 478, 487 n.15 (1978).
See Parle v. Runnels, 505 F.3d 922, 927 & n.5 (9th Cir. 2007) (applying Supreme Court direct review cases to argue cumulative error is clearly established).
See Ford v. Schofield, 488 F. Supp. 2d 1258, 1368 (N.D. Ga. 2007) (“There is no clearly established Supreme Court precedent requiring states to consider the cumulative effect of alleged constitutional errors in order to determine whether a criminal defendant has received due process of law.”); Van Cleave, supra note 18, at 60 (“The United States Supreme Court has not considered the use of cumulative error analysis in habeas corpus petitions and recently denied certiorari in a case which squarely presented these issues.”); cf. Ruth A. Moyer, To Err Is Human, To Cumulate, Judicious: The Need for U.S. Supreme Court Guidance on Whether Federal Habeas Corpus Reviewing State Convictions May Cumulatively Assess Strickland Errors, 61 Drake L. Rev. 447, 452 (2013) (“[T]he cumulation of Strickland errors is not currently clearly established law . . . .”).
See Collins v. Sec’y of Pa. Dep’t of Corr., 742 F.3d 528, 540–43 (3d Cir. 2014); see also Blume & Seeds, supra note 18, at 1192 n.131 (arguing cumulative error must be exhausted).
See Collins, 742 F.3d at 540–43 (noting its own agreement with the Second, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits).
Cf. Brian J. Levy, 20 U.S.C. § 1406(b), 62 Buff. L. Rev. 377, 380 (2014) (“[D]octrines . . . reverberate from court to court, judge to judge, and case to case, with each voice giving the doctrines more force and wider application as they resonate.”).
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (2012).
See Moyer, supra note 30, at 474–75 (arguing cumulative error review of Strickland claims is impermissible on habeas because it has not been “clearly established”); Moore v. Parker, 425 F.3d 250, 256 (6th Cir. 2005) (similar).
See, e.g., Ballard v. McNeil, 785 F. Supp. 2d 1299, 1335 (N.D. Fla. 2011) (“Notwithstanding Petitioner’s failure to exhaust this claim, the [cumulative error] claim is without merit.”). Were it otherwise, courts create more traps for the unwary. See Diane E. Courselle, AEDPA Statute of Limitations: Is It Tolled when the United States Supreme Court Is Asked To Review a Judgment from a State Post-Conviction Proceeding?, 53 Clev. St. L. Rev. 585, 585 (2005–06) (“[AEDPA’s] procedural rules have created numerous traps for the unwary.”).
See Albrecht v. Horn, 485 F.3d 103, 139 (3d Cir. 2007) (holding that Brecht “is the standard applicable here [to analyze cumulative error], because ‘a cumulative‑error analysis merely aggregates all the errors that individually have been found to be harmless, and therefore not reversible, and it analyzes whether their cumulative effect on the outcome of the trial is such that collectively they can no longer be determined to be harmless’”) (quoting Darks v. Mullin, 327 F.3d 1001, 1018 (10th Cir. 2003)).
Cf. Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 465–67 (2010) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (describing the difference between a corporation and its stakeholders); Theodore Sturgeon, More than Human (1953).
See, e.g., Hayes v. Ayers, 632 F.3d 500, 524 (9th Cir. 2011) (allowing cumulative error only where an “error of constitutional magnitude occurred”); Turner v. Quarterman, 481 F.3d 292, 301 (5th Cir. 2007) (requiring the cumulated errors to be constitutional errors).
See Derden v. McNeel, 978 F.2d 1453, 1458 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc) (holding that the component errors “must not have been procedurally barred from habeas corpus review.”).
See Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 638–39 (1993).
See Blume & Seeds, supra note 18, at 1154–55 (“A verdict’s reliability cannot sensibly be measured by assessing deficiencies of counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, and any other errors affecting reliability in isolation from one another.”).
Cf. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 307–08 (1991) (holding trial error “may . . . be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence” to determine harmlessness).
Brecht, 507 U.S. at 631 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776 (1946)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
See Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 296−97.
Cf. Blume & Seeds, supra note 18, at 1183–84 (arguing that courts’ categorization of errors as separately prejudicial cause the fractional prejudice of each error to be rounded to zero before adding them together). For more on categorization, see generally Levy, supra note 33, at 422−37.
In other contexts, this has been called the “three stooges effect.” See Gregory Cochran, John Hawks & Henry Harpending, Overdominance and Rapid Adaptation (July 30, 2011), https://web.archive.org/web/‌20140422133052/http://‌harpending.‌humanevo.‌‌utah.edu/Documents/fisher-geometric-11-2011.pdf (retrieved from Internet Archive) (describing “the ‘stooge effect,’” which was named “after the Three Stooges all trying to get through a doorway at the same time,” causing their mutual failure); The Simpsons: The Mansion Family (FOX television broadcast Jan. 23, 2000) (similar).
See, e.g., Summers v. Tice, 199 P.2d 1 (Cal. 1948).
See, e.g., O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 844–45 (1999) (quoting Darr v. Buford, 339 U.S. 200, 204 (1950)) (“Comity thus dictates that when a prisoner alleges that his continued confinement for a state court conviction violates federal law, the state courts should have the first opportunity to review this claim and provide any necessary relief.”) (citing Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 515–16 (1982)); Darr, 339 U.S. at 204).
See, e.g., Jimenez v. Walker, 458 F.3d 130, 149 (2d Cir. 2006) (holding that a petitioner did “not give the state court fair notice of a distinct cumulative-error claim” when he asserted that one error “was exacerbated by” another).
∗ J.D., New York University School of Law. Thanks to Tommy Bennett for his always insightful suggestions and edits. Thanks to Elissa, John, Janet, Andrew, and Debby for their support.

References: v. 
 § 2254
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 1406
 § 2254
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.