Opinion ID: 78555
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Cunningham's Contentions and Arguments

Text: Recognizing that the Supreme Court has approved Alaska's procedures, Cunningham makes great efforts to distinguish them from Alabama's. He argues that Alabama's process is facially inadequate because, unlike Alaska's, it categorically forecloses any possibility of postconviction access to DNA evidence in non-capital cases. It is essential to Cunningham's argument that this Court find Alabama's process inadequate on its face, not just as it might apply to his particular case, because only then can his failure to properly pursue state-law remedies be excused. Osborne held that, where state procedures for postconviction relief were adequate on their face, a claimant could not challenge their application in practice until he had actually tried them. 129 S.Ct. at 2321. That holding applies even more strongly in this case than it did in Osborne itself, where there was some disagreement about how thoroughly Osborne had pursued state-law remedies. See 129 S.Ct. at 2333 & n. 5 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Here, it is undisputed that in neither of his two previous Rule 32 petitions did Cunningham ever raise the DNA issue, nor did he otherwise ask a state court to order testing. Instead, he made a series of out-of-court requests to various authorities to release the evidence, and they refused to do so without a court order. Cunningham's counsel admitted at oral argument that they never sought an order from a state court; he said that, as he understood Alabama law, such a request was procedurally impossible. In order to have a chance of prevailing, then, Cunningham must show that Alabama's procedures are so inadequate on their face thatunlike Alaska'sthey do not satisfy Osborne 's requirement of fundamental fairness. This is a difficult showing to make. Even the dissenters in Osborne did not dispute the facial adequacy of Alaska's statute, but instead found fault with how the state courts had applied it in that case. See id. at 2332 (Stevens, J., joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter, JJ., dissenting) (agreeing that the statute was not facially deficient but questioning whether the procedures were fundamentally fair in their operation); id. at 2343 (Souter, J., dissenting) (describing Alaska's process as facially reasonable but finding procedural unfairness in its handling of Osborne's case). To support his claim of facial inadequacy, Cunningham makes two arguments. He first points to Alabama's recently enacted statute providing for postconviction DNA testing in capital cases and contends that it somehow prohibits testing in non-capital cases. See Ala. Acts 2009, No.2009-768, § 1 (effective Aug. 1, 2009), codified at Ala.Code § 15-18-200 (1975). That statute allows a capital defendant to bring a motion for DNA testing based on actual innocence. Id. § 200(a)-(b). If the motion is granted and the test produces an exculpatory result, the defendant can then move under Ala. R.Crim. P. 32 to have his conviction vacated. Id. § 200(h)(2). [16] Because it applies only to capital defendants, Cunningham argues that the new statute constitutes a deliberate policy choice by Alabama to deny evidence for DNA testing in non-capital cases such as his own. We are not persuaded. The statute does not address non-capital cases at all, and nothing in its language suggests any legislative intent to restrict or eliminate existing possibilities for non-capital defendants to seek discovery under Rule 32. The legislature might well have thought that death penalty cases had a more urgent claim on its attention and warranted more explicit and specific procedures, while leaving the procedure in non-capital cases to the courts to develop. Cunningham also contends that it is impossible to obtain DNA testing through the existing discovery provisions of Rule 32, which is Alabama's general postconviction relief provision. He argues that a request for DNA testing cannot succeed because Rule 32 requires that a petitioner already have evidence of innocence before he can state a claim and obtain discovery of evidence for DNA testing to show his innocence. Rule 32.1(e) allows a convict to institute a proceeding to secure relief on the ground that ... [n]ewly discovered material facts exist  which require that the conviction be vacated. Ala. R.Crim. P. 32.1(e) (emphasis added). According to Cunningham, the word exist creates a Catch-22 requirement that he must already have exculpatory test results (the newly discovered material facts) before he can state a claim under Rule 32 that would entitle him to evidence that would lead to exculpatory test results. The State disagrees and assured us at oral argument that Rule 32's language merely states a pleading requirement under which a claimant can allege facts that if true would entitle him to relief, and then can obtain discovery to prove those facts.