Opinion ID: 412022
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Presentation of Legal Basis

Text: 17 The difficult question in many cases, including the present one, is whether the legal doctrines asserted in state and federal courts are substantially the same. Obviously if the petitioner has cited the state courts to the specific provision of the Constitution relied on in his habeas petition, he will have fairly presented his legal basis to the state courts. A defendant may, however, fairly present the substance of a federal constitutional claim to the state court without citing  'book and verse on the federal constitution.'  Picard v. Connor, supra, 404 U.S. at 278, 92 S.Ct. at 513 (quoting Daugharty v. Gladden, 257 F.2d 750, 758 (9th Cir.1958)). The requirement that the state court have been given a reasonable opportunity to pass on the federal habeas claim is satisfied if the legal basis of the claim made in state court was the substantial equivalent of that of the habeas claim. Picard v. Connor, supra, 404 U.S. at 278, 92 S.Ct. at 513; see also Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140, 147-48 n. 5, 99 S.Ct. 2213, 2217-20 n. 5, 60 L.Ed.2d 777 (1979); Callahan v. Le Fevre, supra, 605 F.2d at 73-74; Fielding v. Le Fevre, supra, 548 F.2d at 1107; United States ex rel. Gibbs v. Zelker, 496 F.2d 991, 993-94 (2d Cir.1974). This means, in essence, that in state court the nature or presentation of the claim must have been likely to alert the court to the claim's federal nature. 18 The courts may be alerted to the constitutional nature of a claim in a number of ways. Even absent a reference to book and verse of the Constitution the state court will have notice of the constitutional nature of a claim if, for example, the defendant relies on federal constitutional precedents. 5 See, e.g., United States ex rel. Gibbs v. Zelker, supra, 496 F.2d at 994 (intimating that a citation to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), would have alerted state court to the constitutional thrust of defendant's claim). Alternatively, the state court will be alerted to the constitutional nature of a claim if the defendant has claimed the deprivation of a particular right specifically protected by the Constitution. In Twitty v. Smith, supra, for example, the petitioner had claimed a violation of his right to effective assistance of counsel. 614 F.2d at 332. We held this adequate to alert the state court to consider the Sixth Amendment's guaranty of the accused's right to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. 19 The more specific the description of the right in question--e.g., assistance of counsel, double jeopardy, self-incrimination--the more easily alerted a court will be to consider a constitutional constraint couched in similarly specific terms. 6 The greatest difficulty arises when in the state court the petitioner has described his claim in very broad terms, such as denial of a fair trial. The concept of fairness embraces many concrete notions, ranging from such fundamental matters as the right of the defendant to know the charges against him, to such lesser interests as his right to have each count of the indictment charge him with no more than one criminal violation, United States v. Gibson, 310 F.2d 79, 80 n. 1 (2d Cir.1962); Fed.R.Crim.P. 8(a); or the right to have access to reports by informant witnesses to law enforcement officials, United States v. Sanchez, 635 F.2d 47, 65-66 (2d Cir.1980); or the right to present information in mitigation of punishment before being sentenced after conviction, Fed.R.Crim.P. 32(a). Obviously not every event in a criminal proceeding that might be described as unfair would be a violation of the defendant's rights under the Constitution. See, e.g., Kirksey v. Jones, 673 F.2d 58, 60 (2d Cir.1982) (Alleging lack of a fair trial does not convert every complaint about evidence or a prosecutor's summation into a federal due process claim.). In order to determine, therefore, whether a claim that the defendant has been denied a fair trial involves a constitutional claim, one must look to the factual allegations supporting the claim. Some will be of patently constitutional dimension. If the defendant claimed that he was accused of one crime but convicted of an entirely different crime and hence was denied a fair trial, no reasonable jurist would doubt that the defendant's claim implicated his constitutional right to due process of law. In contrast, a defendant's claim that he was deprived of a fair trial because of the admission in evidence of a statement objectionable as hearsay would not put the court on notice that the defendant claimed a violation of his constitutional right to be confronted by his accusers. 20 The general principle governing assessment of whether a fair trial claim is of constitutional dimension is that where the claim rests on a factual matrix that is well within the mainstream of due process adjudication, Johnson v. Metz, supra, 609 F.2d at 1057 (Newman, J., concurring); see also id. at 1056 n. 5 (opinion of the Court), the state courts must be considered to have been fairly alerted to its constitutional nature. If, on the other hand, the claim is based on a fact pattern not theretofore commonly thought to involve constitutional constraints, there is usually little reason to believe the courts were alerted to its supposed constitutional nature. 21 In addition, however, even if a particular matter is not treated generally as having constitutional dimension, if the courts of the state in question have themselves previously treated that fact pattern as appropriate for constitutional analysis, it would be unreasonable to suppose that they are not alert to constitutional considerations. Thus we consider that a defendant who cites state precedent that employs pertinent constitutional analysis has adequately put the state courts on notice of the constitutional thrust of his claim. 7 22 In summary, the ways in which a state defendant may fairly present to the state courts the constitutional nature of his claim, even without citing chapter and verse of the Constitution, include (a) reliance on pertinent federal cases employing constitutional analysis, (b) reliance on state cases employing constitutional analysis in like fact situations, (c) assertion of the claim in terms so particular as to call to mind a specific right protected by the Constitution, and (d) allegation of a pattern of facts that is well within the mainstream of constitutional litigation. In all such circumstances the federal habeas court should assume that the state courts, which are obliged,  'equally with the courts of the Union, ... to guard, enforce, and protect every right granted or secured by the Constitution of the United States,'  Irvin v. Dowd, supra, 359 U.S. at 404, 79 S.Ct. at 831 (quoting Robb v. Connolly, 111 U.S. 624, 637, 4 S.Ct. 544, 551, 28 L.Ed. 542 (1884)), have been alerted to consider, and have considered, the constitutional claim. To eschew that assumption is surely to disserve the interests of comity and the respect due the diligent jurists on the state bench. 8 23 We do not view Johnson v. Metz, supra, as inconsistent with this framework for assessment of exhaustion. Although subsequent panels have construed language in Johnson as imposing a requirement that the constitutional claim have been plainly labeled as such to the state court, see, e.g., Klein v. Harris, 667 F.2d 274 (2d Cir.1981); Gayle v. Le Fevre, 613 F.2d 21, 22-23 (2d Cir.1980), the analytical process followed by Johnson does not support this view. The Johnson panel did not rely merely on the fact that the petitioners had not expressly described their claim as one arising under the Constitution. Rather, it examined the cases cited by the petitioners to determine whether those cases in turn referred to constitutional doctrines. Finding that the cases cited were either state cases resting on state law or on state supervisory power or federal cases resting on federal court supervisory power, the panel concluded that the federal constitutional claim asserted in the habeas petition had not been fairly presented to the state courts. Thus, we regard Johnson as having recognized that explicit labeling is not a sine qua non of exhaustion, and that the invocation of state cases employing constitutional analysis would have sufficed to alert the state courts to the constitutional nature of the claim. 24 Nor do we read the Johnson majority as having rejected the general proposition discussed in Judge Newman's concurring opinion, 609 F.2d at 1057, and which we accept here, that a state court is alerted to the constitutional nature of a claim if its fact pattern brings it within the mainstream of due process litigation. Rather, the majority seemed uncertain that the Johnson petitioners' claim actually fell within that category. See id. at 1056 n. 5. It is with Johnson 's assessment of the applicability of the mainstream criterion that we have difficulty. See part C infra.