Opinion ID: 768370
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Third Maupin Prong - Adequate and Independent State Ground

Text: 37 Scott claims not only that the Ohio Supreme Court did not enforce the contemporaneous-objection rule and hold his challenge to the unanimity instructionbarred; he claims that because the contemporaneous-objection rule does not preclude the state appellate courts from performing a plain-error review, the rule itself is dependent on federal law and is therefore not an independent and adequate state ground under Maupin. Here the district court agreed. For support, it turned to our unpublished decision in Knuckles v. Rogers, No. 92-3208, 1993 WL 11874, at -3 (6th Cir. Jan. 21, 1993) (per curiam): 38 [I]t is clear that Ohio has a contemporaneous objection rule, and that the Ohio courts treat the failure to object to a claimed error as a procedural default. Ohio R. Crim. P. 52; State v. Williams, 304 N.E.2d 1364 (Ohio 1977). Since Knuckles failed to object contemporaneously to the allegedly improper remarks, he violated Ohio's contemporaneous objection rule and committed a procedural default. However, the procedural default did not foreclose all consideration by the Ohio appellate court; the Ohio court examined the record to determine if the allegedly improper remarks were plain error. 39 The basic inquiry in the plain error analysis in Ohio is whether the defendant has been denied a fair trial. Whether a person is denied a fair trial is a question to be resolved by applying principles of federal constitutional law. Therefore, we conclude that the Ohio appellate court's decision was not independent of federal law. 40 (footnote omitted). The district court concluded that [g]iven the reasoning in Knuckles, this court must conclude that Ohio's application of its contemporaneous objection rule in this case was not independent of federal law. For the reasons that follow, we hold that the district court erred in holding that the Ohio Supreme Court's dismissal of this claim does not rest on an adequate and independent state ground. 41 In the recent published opinion in Coe v. Bell, 161 F.3d 320 (6th Cir. 1998), this circuit addressed the issue of whether a federal habeas court is required to disregard a state court's finding of procedural bar because the state court also issued an alternative holding. We explained in Coe that, in contrast to the state court's statements in Harris that the state had a well-settled principle of law that issues which could have been raised on direct appeal but were not are considered waived, and that petitioner's claim could have been raised in [his] direct appeal, id. at 330 (quoting Harris, 489 U.S. at 258 (alteration in original)), the state court in Coe took things one step further, . . . and explicitly and clearly said that Coe had no cognizable claim. There was, therefore, a sufficiently clear and express statement here. Id. at 330-31. It is Coe that governs our analysis here. 42 Knuckles, on the other hand, is an unpublished opinion, and therefore is not binding upon subsequent panels of the court. See 6 Cir. R. 206 (1998). And, in any event, in Knuckles we did not hold that Ohio's contemporaneous-objection rule or the Ohio court's application of that rule was not independent of federal law; rather, we held that in that case the Ohio court's decision that there was no plain error was not independent of federal law. 43 Here, the district court itself acknowledged that its adequate and independent state ground analysis was more tenuous with regard to the unanimity instruction than the other two claims, because the Ohio Supreme Court did not clearly apply a plain error analysis to Scott's eighteenth ground . . . 5 As we have indicated, however, the concluding sentence in the relevant Ohio Supreme Court passage simply did not amount to any type of review, much less one dependent on or intertwined with federal law. 44 More importantly--and we use that term advisedly--Harris specifically instructed state courts that theyneed not fear reaching the merits of a federal claim in an alternative holding. By its very definition, the adequate and independent state ground doctrine requires the federal court to honor a state holding that is a sufficient basis for the state court's judgment, even when the state court also relies on federal law. Thus, by applying this doctrine to habeas cases, Sykes curtails reconsideration of the federal issue on federal habeas as long as the state court explicitly invokes a state procedural bar rule as a separate basis for decision. In this way, a state court may reach a federal question without sacrificing its interests in finality, federalism, and comity. 45 Harris, 489 U.S. at 264 n. 10 (citations omitted). Further, the Supreme Court instructed in Coleman that [a] predicate to the application of the Harris presumption is that the decision of the last state court to which the petitioner presented his federal claims must fairly appear to rest primarily on federal law or to be interwoven with federal law. Coleman, 501 U.S. at 735. As Coleman makes very clear, to apply Harris any more broadly would eviscerate the very foundations of the adequate and independent state ground doctrine, which are federalism, finality and comity. See id. at 730-32, 738-39, 749. 46 The state court decision in the case before us here relied more obviously on adequate and independent state procedural grounds than did the state court decision in Coleman itself. There, the Virginia Supreme Court granted the state's motion that requested summary dismissal purely on state procedural grounds, although the court's use of the phrase [u]pon consideration whereof [referring to the parties' briefs] suggested that the court may have considered the merits of the filings as well. Coleman, 501 U.S. at 728. The Supreme Court refused to read this ambiguity as overriding the court's explicit grant of a dismissal motion based solely on procedural grounds. Those grounds are independent of federal law. Id. at 744. 47 Nothing in the Ohio Supreme Court's analysis with regard to the unanimity instruction suggests that the court relied on federal law. That court explicitly said that Scott had waived the error by failing to object at trial, and that it had previously interpreted a state statute to require unanimity anyway. There is no mention of a plain-error analysis, and not even a hint that federal law played a role in dismissing this claim. And the Ohio Supreme Court's concluding sentence in ruling on the unanimity instruction, even if it could be viewed as related to federal law, was in addition to and separate from its explicit holding on state procedural grounds. 48 Finally, in Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 124-29 (1982), the Supreme Court specifically found that default imposed for failure to object contemporaneously as required by Ohio's Rule 30 is an adequate and independent state ground to bar federal habeas review absent a showing of cause and prejudice. In so holding, the Court specifically rejected Scott's argument: 49 Relying upon State v. Long, [...] respondents argue that the Ohio Supreme Court has recognized its power, under Ohio's plain-error rule, to excuse Rule 30 defaults. Long, however, does not persuade us that the Ohio courts would have excused respondents' defaults. First, the Long court stressed that the plain-error rule applies only in exceptional circumstances, such as where, but for the error, the outcome of the trial clearly would have been otherwise. [...] Second, the Long decision itself refused to invoke the plain-error rule for a defendant who presented a constitutional claim identical to the one pressed by respondents. 50 See id. at 125 n. 27. In Coleman, the Court also very strongly implied its continued disapproval of the rule the district court here ascribes to Knuckles. As a preamble to its discussion of independent state grounds, the Court acknowledgedthat it had previously held that Oklahoma's review for fundamental trial error before applying state procedural defaults was not independent of federal law so as to bar direct review because the State had made application of the procedural bar depend on an antecedent ruling on federal law. Coleman, 501 U.S. at 741 (citing Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68 (1985)) (quotations and alterations omitted). The Coleman Court then distinguished that holding by observing simply that Ake was a direct review case. We have never applied its rule regarding independent state grounds in federal habeas. But even if Ake applies here, it does Coleman no good because the Virginia Supreme Court relied on an independent state procedural rule. Id. The Supreme Court, then, does not find the mere reservation of discretion to review for plain error in exceptional circumstances sufficient to constitute an application of federal law. Neither Scott nor Knuckles points to any change in Ohio law that could distinguish Engle or Coleman from the present case, and as in Ohio's Long case that Engle cites, the Ohio Court here did not invoke its plain-error review for this claim. 51 We issued a similar ruling in Paprocki v. Foltz, 869 F.2d 281, 284-85 (6th Cir. 1989). There we enforced a default for failure to object contemporaneously in a Michigan court, although the state courts reserved the right to excuse the default for manifest injustice. We noted that 52 [w]e would be loath to adopt an exception to the cause and prejudice rule that would discourage state appellate courts from undertaking the sort of inquiry conducted by the Michigan court, and we do not believe that the state court's explanation of why the jury instructions resulted in no manifest injustice can fairly be said to have constituted a waiver of the procedural default. 53 Id. at 285. Although this statement appears addressed more towards the determination of whether the state courts actually enforced the bar (Maupin's second prong) instead of its independence from federal law, the reasoning is equally applicable to this discussion. 54 All in all, we think it is clear that Knuckles, an unpublished decision of this court, cannot provide persuasive authority to support a finding that the Ohio Supreme Court did not rely on an independent state procedural ground in disposing of Scott's challenge to the trial court's penalty-phase instruction on jury unanimity. 55 In addition to his claim that Ohio's contemporaneous-objection rule is not independent of federal law, Scott also argues that it is not adequate because it is not consistently enforced. The Supreme Court has held that an independent state rule must be firmly established and regularly followed in order to be adequate. See Ford v. Georgia, 498 U.S. 411, 423-24 (1991); Byrd v. Collins, 209 F.3d 486, 520-21 (6th Cir. Apr. 6, 2000) (following Ford). Scott claims that the Ohio Supreme Court has retained unfettered discretion to waive the rule and has been remarkably inconsistent in applying it. He points to cases where the court ignored potential defaults and dismissed on the merits. In State v. Zuern, 512 N.E.2d 585, 592 (Ohio 1987), the capital defendant raised his nine constitutional challenges to the state's death penalty statute by a general oral objection rather than by a specific motion. The Ohio Supreme Court held that although this technically constituted waiver under Ohio law, because of the nature of the case and the exacting review necessary where the death penalty is involved, [it] reserve[d] the right to consider the constitutional challenges in particular cases. Id. This somewhat relaxed approach to reviewing a claim that was raised, but in an incorrect manner, is a separate matter entirely from Scott's complete failure to object contemporaneously. In State v. Hamblin, 524 N.E.2d 476, 479 (Ohio 1988), the capital defendant raised in the appellate court two grounds for ineffective assistance of counsel, and added three new grounds in the SupremeCourt. Although the new grounds were technically waived, the court said that [b]ecause this is a capital case, we will review all five arguments relating to the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. Id. As was the case in Zuern, Hamblin did not involve a completely forfeited issue. In State v. Williams, 528 N.E.2d 910, 914 (Ohio 1988), the Court observed that [b]ecause of the gravity of the sentence that has been imposed on appellant, we have reviewed the record with care for any errors that may not have been brought to our attention. In addition, we have considered any pertinent legal arguments which were not briefed or argued by the parties. Despite this observation, the court affirmed the sentence and did not discuss any specific error that the parties had not raised. None of these cases involved the contemporaneous-objection rule. Finally, in State v. Coleman, 544 N.E.2d 622, 627 (Ohio 1989), the court did apparently waive the default resulting from the defendant's failure to object contemporaneously to a jury instruction: However, since this is a capital case we have reviewed the jury instructions and find not only that there was a correct statement of the law but also that the trial court additionally instructed the jury it could not convict the defendant of aggravated murder unless it found [specific intent to kill]. 56 These cases do indicate that the Ohio Supreme Court employs an abundance of caution in capital cases, and, on occasion, has relaxed its enforcement of default. They do not, however, indicate that Ohio reserves so much leeway in capital cases that we are justified here in ignoring its sovereign decision founded upon its own procedural rule. In cases where state procedural grounds have not been enforced by federal courts because they were not firmly established and regularly applied, the facts have been much more extreme than these isolated examples of discretion. See, e.g, Ford, 498 U.S. at 423-24 (finding state rule governing timing of Batson challenges to racial makeup of jury not even remotely close to being firmly established and regularly followed because it was a novel rule applied retroactively); Barr v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 146, 149 (1964) (rejecting state court's explanation that petition was worded too generally to have raised an issue because that court had recently accepted an identically worded appeal); Warner v. United States, 975 F.2d 1207, 1213-14 (6th Cir. 1992) (rejecting Ohio Supreme Court's reliance on failure to raise ineffective assistance on direct appeal as reason for default because there was no such requirement at the time). Rather, this case is more like those in which some minor inconsistency in applying the rule has been noted but held not to be severe enough to override the federalism, finality and comity interests served by enforcing the bar. See, e.g., Coleman, 501 U.S. at 758 (White, J., concurring) (Petitioner argues that the Virginia court does in fact waive the rule on occasion, but I am not now convinced that there is a practice of waiving the rule when constitutional issues are at stake, even fundamental ones. The evidence is too scanty to permit a conclusion that the rule is no longer an adequate and independent state ground); Dugger v. Adams, 489 U.S. 401, 410 n. 6 (1989) (respondent asserts . . . that the Florida Supreme Court has failed to apply its procedural rule consistently and regularly because it has addressed the merits in several cases raising Caldwell claims on post-conviction review. In the vast majority of cases, however, the [court] has faithfully applied its rule that claims not raised on direct appeal cannot be raised on post-conviction review); Byrd, 209 F.3d at 520-21 (following Dugger in holding that four examples of waiver of default by Ohio courts are not enough to overcome the vast majority of cases enforcing the default); Coe, 161 F.3d at 331 (The few [cases that are not adverse or too old to be relevant] are isolated and unpublished, and so are . . . insufficient to defeat an otherwise 'strict and regular' practice); Shepard v. Foltz, 771 F.2d 962,966 (6th Cir. 1985) (we [recently] questioned our prior determination whether Michigan enforces a contemporaneous objection rule with respect to Sandstrom violations, and, in any event, we held that a federal habeas petitioner must meet the Sykes test if the Michigan courts in fact applied such a rule). 57 Application of the adequate and independent state ground doctrine in this case also requires an assessment of the specific state interest served by enforcing the contemporaneous-objection rule. See Wesselman v. Seabold, 834 F.2d 99, 101 (6th Cir. 1987) (noting that resolution of this prong turns on the substantiality of the state interest involved); Maupin, 785 F.2d at 138 (same). This consideration reinforces the need to enforce the procedural default here, because the contemporaneous-objection rule has been lauded as few other procedural requirements have been. Not only did the Court expressly endorse Ohio's Rule 30 in Engle, but the sweeping language of cases such as United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152 (1982) (raising the issue under the Federal Rules), suggests that the Court places high importance on the contemporaneous-objection rule regardless of jurisdiction: 58 Orderly procedure requires that the respective adversaries' views as to how the jury should be instructed be presented to the trial judge in time to enable him to deliver an accurate charge and to minimize the risk of committing reversible error. It is the rare case in which an improper instruction will justify reversal of a criminal conviction when no objection has been made in the trial court. 59 Id. at 165-66 (quoting Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 154 (1977)). Perhaps nowhere, however, has this conviction been stated more strongly than in Sykes: 60 The contemporaneous-objection rule itself is by no means peculiar to Florida, and deserves greater respect than Fay gives it, both for the fact that it is employed by a coordinate jurisdiction within the federal system and for the many interests which it serves in its own right. A contemporaneous objection enables the record to be made with respect to the constitutional claim when the recollections of witnesses are freshest, not years later in a federal habeas proceeding. It enables the judge who observed the demeanor of those witnesses to make the factual determinations necessary for properly deciding the federal constitutional question. While the 1966 amendment to § 2254 requires deference to be given to such determinations made by state courts, the determinations themselves are less apt to be made in the first instance if there is no contemporaneous objection to the admission of the evidence on federal constitutional grounds. 61 A contemporaneous-objection rule may lead to the exclusion of the evidence objected to, thereby making a major contribution to finality in criminal litigation. Without the evidence claimed to be vulnerable on federal constitutional grounds, the jury may acquit the defendant, and that will be the end of the case; or it may nonetheless convict the defendant, and he will have one less federal constitutional claim to assert in his federal habeas petition. If the state trial judge admits the evidence in question after a full hearing, the federal habeas court pursuant to the 1966 amendment to § 2254 will gain significant guidance from the state ruling in this regard. Subtler considerations as well militate in favor of honoring a state contemporaneous-objection rule. An objection on the spot may force the prosecution to take a hard look at its hole card, and even if the prosecutor thinks that the state trial judge will admit the evidence he must contemplate the possibility of reversal by the state appellate courts or the ultimate issuance of a federal writ of habeas corpus based on the impropriety of the state court'srejection of the federal constitutional claim. 62 We think that the rule of Fay v. Noia, broadly stated, may encourage sandbagging on the part of defense lawyers, who may take their chances on a verdict of not guilty in a state trial court with the intent to raise their constitutional claims in a federal habeas court if their initial gamble does not pay off. The refusal of federal habeas courts to honor contemporaneous-objection rules may also make state courts themselves less stringent in their enforcement. Under the rule of Fay v. Noia, state appellate courts know that a federal constitutional issue raised for the first time in the proceeding before them may well be decided in any event by a federal habeas tribunal. Thus, their choice is between addressing the issue notwithstanding the petitioner's failure to timely object, or else face the prospect that the federal habeas court will decide the question without the benefit of their views. 63 The failure of the federal habeas courts generally to require compliance with a contemporaneous-objection rule tends to detract from the perception of the trial of a criminal case in state court as a decisive and portentous event. A defendant has been accused of a serious crime, and this is the time and place set for him to be tried by a jury of his peers and found either guilty or not guilty by that jury. To the greatest extent possible all issues which bear on this charge should be determined in this proceeding: the accused is in the court-room, the jury is in the box, the judge is on the bench, and the witnesses, having been subpoenaed and duly sworn, await their turn to testify. Society's resources have been concentrated at that time and place in order to decide, within the limits of human fallibility, the question of guilt or innocence of one of its citizens. Any procedural rule which encourages the result that those proceedings be as free of error as possible is thoroughly desirable, and the contemporaneous-objection rule surely falls within this classification. 64 We believe the adoption of the Francis rule in this situation will have the salutary effect of making the state trial on the merits the main event, so to speak, rather than a tryout on the road for what will later be the determinative federal habeas hearing. There is nothing in the Constitution or in the language of § 2254 which requires that the state trial on the issue of guilt or innocence be devoted largely to the testimony of fact witnesses directed to the elements of the state crime, while only later will there occur in a federal habeas hearing a full airing of the federal constitutional claims which were not raised in the state proceedings. If a criminal defendant thinks that an action of the state trial court is about to deprive him of a federal constitutional right there is every reason for his following state procedure in making known his objection. 65 Sykes, 433 U.S. at 88-90 (footnote omitted, emphasis added). Certainly, Ohio's rule passes the third Maupin prong in this case. 66