Opinion ID: 684125
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Raise the Claim on Appeal

Text: 24 We also conclude that English, Tano, and Davis did not commit a procedural default by failing to raise their claims on direct appeal prior to our denial of the petition for rehearing, in their petitions for certiorari in the Supreme Court, or in a subsequent motion in this court to recall the mandate. Initially, we note that the petitioners' failure to raise their claims on direct appeal to this court is excused for the same reason as the failure to raise the claims in the trial court. We decided all of the petitioners' direct appeals before the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Gomez. Thus, it would have been futile for English, Tano, and Davis to challenge the jury selection procedures on their direct appeals. 25 The only question we must face, then, is whether English, Tano, and Davis committed a procedural default by failing to raise their Gomez claims in petitions for certiorari or motions to recall the mandate in this court. We find no rule which required the petitioners to raise these claims in such a manner. (This is not surprising, because the filing of a petition for certiorari or a motion to recall the mandate is ordinarily unnecessary to exhaust one's remedies). Moreover, we conclude that the petitioners did not deliberately bypass the available means of seeking relief on direct review. 26 At least as of 1989 (when the petitioners' convictions became final), we adhered to the rule enunciated in Kaufman, that Sec. 2255 relief cannot be denied solely on the ground that relief should have been sought by appeal to prisoners alleging constitutional deprivations. Kaufman, 394 U.S. at 223, 89 S.Ct. at 1072. Under Kaufman, a federal prisoner's failure to raise a constitutional claim on direct appeal does not constitute a procedural default unless it amounts to a deliberate by-pass. Id. at 220 n. 3, 89 S.Ct. at 1071 n. 3. Thus, it has been the general rule in this circuit that constitutional claims may be raised in collateral proceedings even if the defendant failed to pursue them on appeal. United States v. Schaflander, 743 F.2d 714, 717 (9th Cir.1984) (per curiam) (citing Davis v. United States, 417 U.S. 333, 345 n. 15, 94 S.Ct. 2298, 2305 n. 15, 41 L.Ed.2d 109 (1974); Marshall v. United States, 576 F.2d 160, 162 (9th Cir.1978)), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1058, 105 S.Ct. 1772, 84 L.Ed.2d 832 (1985). 6 27 We have recognized that Frady and Davis carved out a class of constitutional claims that are not subject to the general rule identified in Schaflander and Kaufman. United States v. Spawr Optical Research, Inc., 864 F.2d 1467, 1471 (9th Cir.1988). However, we have also noted that Frady and Davis by their terms apply only to claims that run afoul of express waiver provisions. Id.; see also United States v. Corsentino, 685 F.2d 48, 50 (2d Cir.1982) (Frady, [Wainwright v.] Sykes, and Sykess predecessors, Davis v. United States and Francis v. Henderson, 425 U.S. 536, 96 S.Ct. 1708, 48 L.Ed.2d 149 (1976), concerned the limited scope of collateral attack to raise errors that were required to have been asserted at or before trial by federal or state contemporaneous objection rules.) (citations omitted). Where no procedural rule explicitly requires a constitutional claim to be raised at trial or on direct appeal, we have 'not held that the mere failure to raise a constitutional claim on direct review constitutes a procedural default and thus prevents consideration of the issue in a collateral proceeding absent a showing of cause and prejudice.'  Chambers v. United States, 22 F.3d 939, 945 (9th Cir.1994) (quoting United States v. O'Mara, 827 F.Supp. 1468, 1472 (C.D.Cal.1993)). 7 28 To be sure, two of our cases have included language that could be read as suggesting that a procedural default occurs when a defendant fails to avail himself of an opportunity to raise a claim on appeal. See United States v. Dunham, 767 F.2d 1395, 1397 & n. 2 (9th Cir.1985); Abatino v. United States, 750 F.2d 1442, 1445 (9th Cir.1985). However, these cases did not hold that the mere failure to raise a claim on direct review--absent a specific procedural rule which required the defendant to raise it--constitutes a procedural default. In fact, they dealt with precisely the same issue addressed in Frady--whether a petitioner may raise a challenge to an erroneous jury instruction in a Sec. 2255 proceeding, when he failed to object before the jury retired as required by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 30. In Abatino, the petitioner's Sec. 2255 motion contended that the district court's instructions had placed undue pressure on jurors to reach a fast verdict. Because the petitioner violated Rule 30 by failing to object to the jury instruction at trial, and then failed to allege plain error on direct appeal, we held that the cause and prejudice requirement applied to bar his claim. See Abatino, 750 F.2d at 1445. 8 In Dunham, the petitioner claimed that a supplemental instruction given in response to an inquiry from the jury improperly directed a verdict against him on the mens rea element of his offense. See United States v. Dorri, 15 F.3d 888, 891 (9th Cir.1994) (applying Rule 30 in this situation). Although our opinion included language which could be construed as requiring the application of the cause and prejudice standard applies whenever a petitioner fails to raise a claim at trial or on appeal, see Dunham, 767 F.2d at 1397, our decision was again bottomed on the narrow rule announced in Frady--that the failure to object to a jury instruction as required by Rule 30 constitutes a procedural default which bars collateral review absent a showing of cause and prejudice. 9 29 At least as of 1989, then, this circuit applied the rule set forth in Kaufman, as embellished in Frady and Davis. 10 We imposed no general requirement that federal defendants raise constitutional claims on direct appeal. Only if the defendants deliberately bypassed direct review, or violated some specific procedural rule requiring a particular claim to be raised at a certain time, did we find a procedural default. We note that one circuit has held that the cumulative effect of a trilogy of recent Supreme Court decisions involving 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254 11 was to overrule Kaufman and imposed a general requirement that federal defendants raise their claims on direct review or forfeit them. See Campino v. United States, 968 F.2d 187, 190 (2d Cir.1992). While it is far from obvious that the recent Supreme Court decisions--which all involve state court proceedings and all deal with quite different issues from the question resolved by Kaufman--in fact overrule Kaufman, we need not face this question here. In 1989 at least, Kaufman was the law of this circuit. 30 The government has not identified any specific procedural rule which required a defendant to raise in a petition for certiorari or a motion to recall the mandate a claim that a magistrate impermissibly conducted voir dire, and we are not able to discover any such rule. Nor are we able to discover any rule which required this claim to be raised at all on direct review. Thus, under Kaufman, the petitioners did not commit any procedural default so long as (1) their claim is constitutionally based; and (2) their failure to raise the claim on direct review did not constitute a deliberate bypass. We conclude that the petitioners did not default on their claims. 12 31 We have little difficulty in determining that the petitioners' claims are constitutionally based. As we explained in France, the decision in Gomez should be treated as a constitutional decision for the purposes of procedural doctrines involving the assertion of constitutional claims: The Supreme Court, although its decision was, in the end, one of statutory construction, made clear that its holding was compelled by the notion that any other result might well run afoul of the Constitution by authorizing the deprivation of one of the 'basic rights' of a criminal defendant. France, 886 F.2d at 226 (citing Gomez, 490 U.S. at 863, 871-76, 109 S.Ct. at 2241, 2246-48). Even the Supreme Court's subsequent opinion in Peretz, which held that a defendant's consent to a magistrate's conduct of voir dire cures any Gomez problem, made clear Gomez's constitutional underpinnings. In a footnote explaining why the Gomez Court found the constitutional question to be a substantial one, the Court in Peretz quoted extensively from Commodity Futures Trading Comm'n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833, 848, 106 S.Ct. 3245, 3255, 92 L.Ed.2d 675 (1986), which had emphasized the importance of the personal right to an Article III adjudicator. Peretz, 501 U.S. at 930 n. 6, 111 S.Ct. at 2665 n. 6. 13 32 Of course, we do not mean to suggest that the Supreme Court would necessarily have decided the constitutional issue in Gomez's favor had it been unable to construe the statute to avoid the question. However, we believe that when a petitioner raises a substantial constitutional claim (as the petitioners here have surely done), he should not lose his right to collateral review simply because the Supreme Court has mooted the constitutional aspect of the claim by resting on a nonconstitutional ground which favors him. We also believe that it would be inappropriate to render a wholly advisory opinion on the constitutional issue when the Supreme Court has for sound and principled reasons avoided the question. Rather, as in France, in which we held that the retroactivity rules governing constitutional claims apply to the Gomez holding, we conclude that a petitioner raising a Gomez claim is entitled to the benefit of the procedural doctrines which govern the assertion of constitutional claims in Sec. 2255 proceedings. 33 Moreover, even if there is no constitutional right to have an Article III judge rather than a magistrate conduct voir dire, a defendant has a basic right to have all critical stages of a criminal trial conducted by a person with jurisdiction to preside. Gomez, 490 U.S. at 877, 109 S.Ct. at 2248. This right, rooted in due process, is itself constitutional in status, as the Gomez Court made clear by analogizing it to such basic fair trial rights as a defendant's 'right to an impartial adjudicator, be it judge or jury.'  Id. (quoting Gray v. Mississippi, 481 U.S. 648, 668, 107 S.Ct. 2045, 2056, 95 L.Ed.2d 622 (1987)). 14 We join our fellow circuits which have adopted this reading of Gomez and held that the right to have all stages of a criminal trial conducted by a person with jurisdiction to preside is a constitutional right. See United States v. Chantal, 902 F.2d 1018, 1021 n. 4 (1st Cir.1990); Matter of Hipp, Inc., 895 F.2d 1503, 1521 (5th Cir.1990); see also United States v. Baron, 721 F.Supp. 259, 261-62 (D.Hawaii 1989) (holding that a violation of this right undermin[es] the fundamental fairness of a felony trial). 15 At the very least, the petitioners here are asserting the constitutional right to have voir dire conducted by an officer with jurisdiction. 34 We also cannot conclude that English, Tano, and Davis deliberately bypassed direct review. In order to find a deliberate bypass, we must find that the petitioners themselves--and not merely their counsel--made a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decision to forego presenting the claims on direct review. As the Supreme Court explained when it set forth the deliberate bypass standard in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), we may hold that a defendant deliberately bypassed direct review only if the bypass satisfies [t]he classic definition of waiver enunciated in Johnson v. Zerbst, [304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938) ]--'an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege.'  Id. at 439, 83 S.Ct. at 849. We will only find a deliberate bypass where a habeas applicant, after consultation with competent counsel or otherwise, understandably and knowingly forewent the privilege of pursuing his claims on direct review. Id. When applying this standard, [a] choice made by counsel not participated in by the petitioner does not automatically bar relief. Id. Rather, we will find a deliberate bypass only if the failure to pursue appellate remedies results from the considered choice of the petitioner. Id. 35 The government has not satisfied its burden of showing a deliberate bypass here. Although it is clear that the petitioners' attorneys made a conscious decision to pursue the Gomez claims in Sec. 2255 proceedings rather than on direct review, 16 the record is devoid of any evidence that the petitioners themselves had any input into this decision. A decision of this character--whether to pursue a particular claim in the Supreme Court on a petition for certiorari, in this court on a motion to recall the mandate, or in a district court on a Sec. 2255 motion--is one that is typically made by the lawyer, not the client. Nothing in the record suggests that the typical practice was not followed in this case. 36 Even if the petitioners were consulted, we would be quite surprised if they had any understanding of the relevant differences between pursuing the claim on direct appeal and filing a Sec. 2255 motion. The choice of forum in this case appears to have resulted from purely legal considerations. The attorneys for English and Tano contend that they failed to pursue the claim in their petition for certiorari because they believed that Supreme Court rules prevented them from raising the issue in that court for the first time, and that they failed to move this court to recall the mandate because they believed that the claim was a jurisdictional one that could be addressed in a Sec. 2255 motion in the first instance. 17 Although the petitioners' attorneys may have erred in this assessment (a conclusion on which we express no view), the government must make a far stronger showing before we would conclude that the petitioners themselves had sufficient knowledge and understanding of these issues to satisfy the Johnson v. Zerbst waiver standard. 37 Indeed, our conclusion that the petitioners did not make a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decision to forego direct appeal would only be strengthened if we were to decide that their attorneys erred in choosing to pursue the claim in the district court. Defendants ought not to be expected to understand the complex web of procedural rules that now regulates the time and place in which a party may raise a meritorious claim. They must rely on their attorneys to advise them accurately regarding the risks and consequences of choosing to pursue the claim in one forum rather than another. Where an attorney erroneously advises a defendant that he is not required to raise a claim on direct appeal, we cannot say that the defendant deliberately bypassed direct review. 38 We conclude that English, Tano, and Davis did not deliberately bypass the opportunities to raise their Gomez claims on direct review. We also conclude that there was no specific procedural rule which required them to assert the claim in petitions for certiorari or motions to recall the mandate. Accordingly, they did not procedurally default on their claims. Thus, the cause and prejudice analysis is inapplicable here. The district court was required to reach the merits of English, Tano, and Davis's claims. Had it done so, it would have been obliged to rule in the petitioners' favor.