Opinion ID: 523156
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: exclusion of veniremembers weaver, foley and finney

Text: 22 (GROUND FOR RELIEF ONE) 23 The parties contest whether McCoy's challenges to the exclusion of these prospective jurors for cause was barred by his counsel's failure to object at trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, on direct review, held that McCoy waived his challenge. McCoy v. State, 713 S.W.2d at 953. This holding was clear and explicit pursuant to Harris v. Reed, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 1038, 1039-40, 103 L.Ed.2d 308 (1989). 24 On state habeas review, McCoy again raised this claim as well as a related ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The state habeas court did not squarely address the first claim as such. It held, rather, that trial counsel were not constitutionally ineffective for failure to challenge the exclusion of these veniremembers because, under the first prong of Strickland, such challenges lacked merit. Counsel for McCoy may contend either (1) that the last state court to address the challenge of these jurors did so on the merits, albeit in the context of another issue, or (2) that the last state court did not explicitly rely upon procedural bar as to the issue of excluding these veniremembers. In either case, according to McCoy, no procedural bar arises following the adoption in Harris v. Reed of the plain statement rule. Harris, 109 S.Ct. at 1039-40 (a procedural default does not bar consideration of a federal claim on ... habeas review unless the last state court rendering a judgment in the case 'clearly and expressly' states that its judgment rests on a state procedural bar). 25 How we characterize our scope of review makes no difference to the result. If the claim is procedurally barred, McCoy loses in his application for federal habeas relief. If it is not procedurally barred, he still loses. The discussions in Part IV and VIII(1) below explain that the trial court's basis for excluding veniremembers is a finding of fact and that, in each of these three cases, the prospective jurors admitted they could not impose the death penalty. The appropriate testimony of each juror is cited and has been reviewed by us. Whether we are procedurally barred from addressing this issue would seem a moot point. 26 There is no doubt that Harris can be literally read to prevent the use of procedural bar here. To do so, however, undermines the finality of state review procedures and encourages the petitioner's repetitious raising of frivolous points in hopes that some last court, somewhere, will not incant the magic phrase of procedural bar. Here, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said precisely that McCoy's claim was waived. As a court answerable to the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state habeas court had no authority to go behind or modify that holding, and it did not do so. A proper concern for state procedures should suggest that the issue, although not explicitly declared procedurally barred by the state habeas court, is in fact so barred. 27 If one alternatively reads Harris to dispense with procedural bar of the juror challenge on the merits because the state habeas court treated it within the sixth amendment ineffectiveness of counsel claim, another unpalatable situation arises. This result leads to the reverification of every challenge not made at trial and completely undoes the theory of procedural bar. Such a catch-22 would seem avoidable under Harris if the state habeas court adds that it has no power to review the merits of such underlying issues because of the prior court's finding of waiver. Yet, this conclusion should seem superfluous where the prior court was the state's highest tribunal. 28 We resolve the apparent tension within Harris by alternative holdings: if the claim was procedurally barred, we pretermit its consideration; if it was not procedurally barred, we have considered and rejected it on the merits.