Opinion ID: 2650680
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fair presentation in state court

Text: As an initial matter, we agree with the district court that Dickens failed to exhaust his “new” IAC claim. To exhaust a constitutional claim, the claim must be “fairly present[ed]” in state court to provide the state courts an opportunity to act on them. Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S. 364, 365 (1995) (per curiam). A claim has not been fairly presented in state court if new factual allegations either “fundamentally alter the legal claim already considered by the state courts,” Vasquez, 474 U.S. at 260; Beaty, 303 F.3d at 989–90, or “place the case in a significantly different and stronger evidentiary posture than it was when the state courts considered it.” Aiken, 15 Martinez defines an initial-review collateral proceedings as “collateral proceedings which provide the first occasion to raise a claim of ineffective assistance at trial.” Martinez, 132 S. Ct. at 1315. DICKENS V. RYAN 31 841 F.2d at 883; accord Nevius v. Sumner, 852 F.2d 463, 470 (9th Cir. 1988). In Aiken, the habeas petitioner presented new evidence consisting of a decibel sound test performed by an expert which strengthened his claim that the interrogating officers heard him request counsel. 841 F.2d at 883. The court held that his right to counsel claim was unexhausted, because the new decibel evidence “substantially improve[d] the evidentiary basis for [his] right-to-counsel and voluntariness arguments, thereby presenting the very type of evidence which the state should consider in the first instance.”16 Id. Similarly, in Nevius, this Court held that a habeas petitioner failed to exhaust his Batson claim in state court where he attempted to introduce new and substantial supporting evidence on appeal. 852 F.2d at 469–70. At oral argument and in his appellate briefs, Nevius made allegations concerning comments the prosecutor allegedly made to defense counsel. The comments, “if proven, might have presented in a different light the factual issues concerning the motivation of the prosecutor in exercising his peremptory challenges.” Id. at 470. However, because the alleged 16 Our holdings in Aiken and Nevius are consistent with case law in other circuits. See, e.g., Smith v. Quarterman, 515 F.3d 392, 402 (5th Cir. 2008) (dismissing habeas petition for failure to exhaust because new evidence “regarding [petitioner]’s childhood and the effects of his substance abuse . . . constitute ‘material additional evidentiary support [presented] to the federal court that was not presented to the state court’” (citation omitted)); Demarest v. Price, 130 F.3d 922, 938–39 (10th Cir. 1997) (finding failure to exhaust because “new evidence submitted to the district court by [the petitioner] transformed his ineffective assistance of counsel claim into one that was ‘significantly different and more substantial’” (citation omitted)). 32 DICKENS V. RYAN remarks were not previously presented in a state court, this court found that the claims were unexhausted and not addressable in federal court. We conclude that the new allegations and evidence Dickens presented to the federal district court fundamentally altered Dickens’s previously exhausted IAC claim. Indeed, the new evidence creates a mitigation case that bears little resemblance to the naked Strickland claim raised before the state courts. There, Dickens did not identify any specific conditions that sentencing counsel’s allegedly deficient performance failed to uncover. He only generally alleged that sentencing counsel did not effectively evaluate whether Dickens “suffer[ed] from any medical or mental impairment.” This new evidence of specific conditions (like FAS and organic brain damage) clearly places Dickens’s Strickland claim in a “significantly different” and “substantially improved” evidentiary posture. See Nevius, 852 F.2d at 470; Aiken, 841 F.2d at 883. As such, the Arizona courts did not have a fair opportunity to evaluate Dickens’s altered IAC claim. Therefore, the district court correctly determined that Dickens’s newly enhanced Strickland claim is procedurally barred.