Opinion ID: 2977897
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Jury Instruction on Malice

Text: Zagorski contends that the trial court provided the jury with an unconstitutional instruction on malice, shifting the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defense. But this claim is procedurally defaulted because Zagorski failed to raise it before the state court and he neither shows cause or prejudice, nor that a miscarriage of justice will result from enforcing the default. Broom v. Mitchell, 441 F.3d 392, 401 (6th Cir. 2006) (citing Seymour v. Walker, 224 F.3d 542, 549–50 (2000)). Zagorski proffers two reasons to find that he did not default his claim. First, he argues that the Tennessee Supreme Court exhaustively reviewed the record for all possible claims: “the [court] expressly stated that ‘[a]fter consideration of . . . the entire record,’ it found ‘no reversible error . . . committed at trial.’” This mischaracterizes the Tennessee Supreme Court’s review; it examined the record pertaining to the issues Zagorski raised, but those claims he did not present remain defaulted. See Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 31 (2004) (a petitioner does not “fairly present” a federal claim to a state court for exhaustion purposes if the court must look beyond a petition or brief to find material alerting it to the claim). Second, Zagorski advances a perfunctory equal-protection challenge that the procedural default violates the Fifth Amendment. This claim is without merit; we 10 No. 06-5532 Zagorski v. Bell have held that the state procedural rules implicated by procedural default are firmly established and regularly enforced. See, e.g., Harbison v. Bell, 408 F.3d 823, 832–33 (6th Cir. 2005) (statute of limitations), rev’d on other grounds, 556 U.S. __ (2009); Coe v. Bell, 161 F.3d 320, 330 (6th Cir. 1998) (waiver). Finding that Zagorski’s jury instruction challenge is procedurally defaulted, we turn to his last argument.