Opinion ID: 1452791
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility of the Demond Brown Transcript Under Ohio v. Roberts

Text: Vasquez asserts that the Confrontation Clause, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), abrogated by Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), required the state court to exclude Brown's hearsay transcript testimony because it neither fell within a firmly-rooted hearsay exception nor contained particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. But Vasquez waived his Roberts claim regarding the admission of Brown's testimony by not presenting it to the district court in his habeas petition. See, e.g., Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 556, 61 S.Ct. 719, 85 L.Ed. 1037 (1941); Brown v. Marshall, 704 F.2d 333, 334 (6th Cir.1983) (per curiam). Moreover, Vasquez procedurally defaulted the Roberts claim by failing to exhaust it in the state courts, and he has never attempted to show cause and prejudice sufficient to excuse the default. See, e.g., Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 87, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). Vasquez's citation to Roberts in a footnote in the ineffective-assistance section of his direct-appeal brief did not fairly present[ ] this claim to the state courts. See, e.g., Newton v. Million, 349 F.3d 873, 877 (6th Cir.2003). Although Vasquez need not cite book and verse on the federal constitution to satisfy the exhaustion requirement, Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S. 364, 365, 115 S.Ct. 887, 130 L.Ed.2d 865 (1995) (per curiam) (internal quotations omitted), his sporadic and undeveloped allusions to Roberts do not suffice. Therefore, we decline to entertain Vasquez's Roberts claim. [1]