Opinion ID: 475833
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application of Cause and Prejudice Standard

Text: 43 Even assuming that the cause and prejudice standard applies, I would reach the merits of Hughes's petition given the facts before us. There can be no doubt that Hughes has shown prejudice within the meaning of Wainwright. Hughes now is serving a 25-year prison sentence when he could have been serving a 15-year sentence. The prosecutor's failure to recommend unequivocally the shorter sentence, and his emphasis on certain aggravating circumstances, could well have resulted in the longer sentence. 44 Whether Hughes has shown cause for his default is a more difficult question. As the majority explains, Hughes claims that he is illiterate, and that he was incapable of perfecting an appeal or even understanding that he could take an appeal. 3 The inmate who aided Hughes in preparing his state post-conviction application was released after the state judge who sentenced Hughes denied the application. Without the aid of this inmate, Hughes could not even gain access to the prison's law library due to the prison's policy of granting access only upon written request. 45 I believe that these facts are sufficient to establish cause for Hughes's failure to appeal. As the majority notes, the Supreme Court has not given precise definition to the term cause, and has stated that the requirement may be satisfied under certain circumstances when a procedural failure is not attributable to an intentional decision by counsel.... Reed, 468 U.S. at 14, 104 S.Ct. at 2909. However, contrary to the majority's suggestion that only the failure to raise a constitutional issue reasonably unknown at the time of default satisfies this standard, Reed specifically left open for future decisions what other situations might constitute cause. Middleton v. Cupp, 768 F.2d 1083, 1087 (9th Cir.1985), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 3336, 92 L.Ed.2d 741 (1986). Furthermore, none of the Supreme Court cases has discussed the procedural default rules as applied to a defendant acting pro se at the time of the default. Interestingly enough, in Strickland v. Marshall, 632 F.Supp. 590, 599 (S.D.Ohio), the case the majority cites as the only one squarely addressing this context, the district court held that a petitioner who is representing himself on appeal because he is no longer entitled to the assistance of counsel should not be held to a stringent definition of 'cause.'  It is not clear to me why the majority ignores this part of Strickland, and adopts only its reasoning regarding the decision to apply the cause and prejudice standard instead of the deliberate by-pass standard. I believe that if we adopt the cause and prejudice standard, we should also adopt the Strickland approach to the cause requirement. Thus, we generally should allow illiterate petitioners who were acting pro se at the time of default to have their habeas claims heard notwithstanding their failure to appeal. Cf. Diggs, 740 F.2d at 245 n. 8 (lack of representation arguably constitutes cause). This approach would be in accord with the Supreme Court's pronouncement that ineffective assistance of counsel is cause for a procedural default. Murray, 106 S.Ct. at 2646. 46 I reject the majority's suggestion that illiterate petitioners will purposely wait until the jurisdictional period has lapsed and then proceed directly to federal court borders. I seriously doubt that an illiterate petitioner would be aware of, let alone understand, the intricacies of the exhaustion and procedural default doctrines, which we ourselves often have difficulty understanding, to a degree necessary to formulate the scheme the majority seeks to prevent. Cf. Diggs, 740 F.2d at 244-45 (cause prong inapplicable to pro se petitioners who normally are without aid of those schooled in technicalities of appellate process). That there may be isolated abuses of the process in the manner that the majority suggests does not justify the adoption of a per se rule that illiteracy cannot be cause for failing to appeal. Rather, I would proceed on the assumption, unless the state shows otherwise, that an illiterate petitioner who was acting pro se at the time of default has cause for the default. This approach would not require us to grant a vast number of habeas petitions. It merely would enable us to reach the merits of those petitions, a consequence I hardly see as dire. Thus, I believe that Hughes has shown cause and prejudice for his default, and that we should reach the merits of his claim.