Opinion ID: 774531
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: McGrath's Description of Assailant/Descriptions of Other Suspects

Text: 114 Lott argues that Respondent suppressed evidence from him concerning McGrath's description of his attacker, which Lott suggests differed significantly from his physical appearance (description-by-victim claim). Specifically, McGrath described his attacker to police, in a statement that was not introduced at trial, as a six-foot-tall, medium-build, very light-complexioned African-American man with long straight hair, who, at the time of the assault, was wearing a light-colored shirt, white-gray tennis shoes, and a cap without a bill. Lott is a medium-to-dark-complexioned African-American man, who is five feet, ten inches tall, 176 pounds, with short hair; at the time of Lott's arrest, police found light-colored tennis shoes in the trunk of his car. Lott also alleges, in what we will refer to as his other-suspects claim, that Respondent withheld from Lott: (1)other physical descriptions of McGrath's assailant that were consistent with McGrath's description; (2) evidence that a light-complexioned man informed police officers that he was wanted for questioning in connection with McGrath's death and several burglaries; (3) evidence that one of eyewitness Deidra Coleman's neighbors described the perpetrator as having a heavy build with a pot belly; and (4) evidence that McGrath told police in 1983 that he could identify the man who burglarized his home in 1983. 115 Lott failed to raise the description-by-victim claim at all in the state courts, and failed to raise the other-suspects claim either in the state courts or in his federal habeas petition, and thus, absent a showing of cause and prejudice for the defaults, is precluded from raising them now. He argued unsuccessfully before the district court that, because he raised his fingerprints claim on direct appeal (as part of an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim), the instant Brady claims are not defaulted, reasoning that he fairly presented to the state courts the legal theory on which his claim was based, even if he failed to present all of the factual premises for that claim. 116 Citing Landano v. Rafferty, 897 F.2d 661 (3d Cir. 1990), the district court found that [p]resenting two claims under the same legal umbrella but with entirely different factual underpinnings, as here, does not constitute fair presentation to the state courts; Lott's description-by-victim claim was not the substantial equivalent of the fingerprints claim presented to the state courts, because he failed to present both the legal theory and the facts on which [his] federal claim rests. Landano, 897 F.2d at 669; see also Daye v. Attorney Gen. of New York, 696 F.2d 186, 191 (2d Cir. 1982) (In order to have fairly presented his federal claim to the state courts the petitioner must have informed the state court of both the factual and the legal premises of the claim he asserts in federal court.). We agree with the district court that Lott's presentation of aBrady claim premised on the fingerprints issue does not permit him now to put forward other supposed Brady claims predicated on factually dissimilar premises. 117 Even if Lott's claim were not procedurally barred, he would, as the district court found, nevertheless have difficulty demonstrating that the information which forms the basis for this claim was outside, or dehors, the record at the time of his direct state court appeals, or that it became available to him only after state avenues to address it were no longer available to him. The district court rejected Lott's suggestion that the fingerprint evidence would have served to undermine the only identification of Lott at trial (Coleman's testimony) in a case that was built entirely of circumstantial evidence, reasoning that [w]hile a court could conclude that the lack of fingerprints might serve to weaken the force of Coleman's identification of Lott as the individual driving McGrath's car, the standard under the AEDPA is not whether the district court would come to the same conclusion, but whether the conclusion is debatable among reasonable jurists. Although we recognize that the applicable AEDPA standard has changed since the district court considered this issue, see Harris v. Stovall, 212 F.3d 940, 942-43 (6th Cir. 2000) (discussing the Supreme Court's rejection in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 408-13 (2000), of the debatable among reasonable jurists standard), we are nevertheless unpersuaded that the state court's conclusion on this point resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law. See 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(1). We thus reject Lott's argument. 118