Opinion ID: 3000054
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Procedural Default and Exhaustion

Text: The respondent argues that Guest’s judicial bias claim is procedurally barred as a result of his failure to present it in state court. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, before a state habeas petitioner is allowed to pursue his claims in federal court, he must exhaust his remedies in the state courts. See O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 842-46 (1999) (“state prisoners must give the state courts one full opportunity to resolve any constitutional issues by invoking one complete round of the State’s established appellate review process”). In Illinois, this means that a petitioner must have directly appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court and presented the claim in a petition for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. See id. If a habeas petitioner has not exhausted a claim, and complete exhaustion is no longer available, the claim is procedurally defaulted. See id. at 848. Guest did not present his judicial bias claim to the Illinois state courts and there is no longer time to do so. No. 04-3736 5 This means that his claim is defaulted unless he can demonstrate either cause for the default and prejudice or that ignoring the default is necessary to prevent a fundamental miscarriage of justice. See Badelle v. Correll, 452 F.3d 648, 661 (7th Cir. 2006). The district court concluded that Guest had demonstrated cause for the failure because the details of Judge Pompey’s corruption did not surface until Judge Maloney’s 1993 corruption trial, one year after Guest filed his appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. The district court rejected the respondent’s argument, raised again here on appeal, that Guest was put on notice by a newspaper article in 1983 that suggested corruption on the part of Judge Pompey, a grand jury subpoena of Judge Pompey’s records, and a statement made in a television report linking Judge Pompey to Operation Greylord. In order to demonstrate cause for failure to exhaust, Guest must demonstrate that “some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel’s efforts to comply with the State’s procedural rule.” See McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 493 (1991) (quoting Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478 (1986)). The Court in McCleskey identified three types of “objective factors” that would constitute sufficient cause: (1) “interference by officials that makes compliance . . . impractical”; (2) constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel; and (3) “a showing that the factual or legal basis for a claim was not reasonably available to counsel.” Id. The third factor is applicable here. The scattered news items and court filings identified by the respondent were insufficient to put Guest on notice. We cannot say that the factual basis for a judicial bias claim was “reasonably available” to counsel on the basis of the items cited by the respondent. A prisoner is not necessarily expected to be aware of even the most obscure news stories which might expose the basis for a claim of unconstitutional imprisonment. The district 6 No. 04-3736 court did not address the question of actual prejudice, and we need not either since it is effectively subsumed by Guest’s substantive claim. There is no harmless error in a judicial bias case. See Bracy v. Schomig, 286 F.3d 406, 414 (7th Cir. 2002). However, the respondent also argues that Guest could have returned to the state courts after the discovery of new evidence under the Illinois Post-Conviction Hearing Act, 725 ILCS 5/122-1 et seq. and advances this as a secondary argument for procedural default. We need not reach this argument because, as explained in detail below, even under the more liberal standard of review applicable where we address issues not adjudicated by the state courts, it is clear that Guest’s judicial bias claim fails on the merits.