Opinion ID: 3038774
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Comer’s Impliedly Exhausted Habeas Claims

Text: The District Court found seven of Comer’s present habeas claims to be procedurally defaulted because Comer failed to raise them in state court.16 As explained below, however, under the Arizona Supreme Court’s independent review process, four of these seven claims were impliedly exhausted; therefore, we may address the merits of those claims. The preceding discussion makes clear that during its independent review, the Arizona Supreme Court examines the entire record, particularly the sentencing hearing, to determine if any procedural errors occurred or other arbitrary factors influenced the sentencing court’s decision to impose the death sentence. The Arizona Supreme Court is clearly conscious of its duty to respect the dictates of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and to ensure that the death penalty is not imposed in an arbitrary and capricious fashion. Four of the claims Comer initially presented to the District Court (Claims VIII, IX, X, and XI) relate to the procedural conduct of his sentencing hearing, and directly implicate Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment protections against the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. These claims were also readily apparent from the record that the Arizona Supreme Court painstakingly reviewed. Cf. Falcone v. Stewart, 120 F.3d 1082, 1084 n.2 (9th Cir. 1997) (constitutional 16 Specifically, those claims include: (1) the unconstitutionality of the trial court’s failure to follow a statutorily required procedure at a postcompetency hearing (Claim VIII), (2) the unconstitutionality of the trial court’s conducting a post-competency hearing in Comer’s absence (Claim IX), (3) the unconstitutionality of the trial court’s sentencing Comer while unclothed and semi-conscious (Claims X and XI), (4) the insufficiency of evidence to support the court’s finding that Comer committed the homicide for pecuniary gain (Claim XII), (5) the Arizona Supreme Court’s failure to consider the cumulative weight of Comer’s mitigation evidence (Claim XIV), and (6) the Arizona death penalty statute’s failure to narrow the class of defendants subject to the death penalty (Claim XVI). COMER v. SCHRIRO 11151 claims that are “readily apparent from the record” fall under the penumbra of the automatic review process), vacated on other grounds, 524 U.S. 947 (1998). Therefore, we hold that they were impliedly exhausted, on their merits, by Arizona’s independent review of Comer’s capital case. We examine the implied exhaustion of each of these penalty-phase claims in turn. First, Comer claims that the trial court violated his Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights by not determining his competency during the sentencing hearing, and not following a statutorily required procedure at a post-sentence competency hearing (Claim VIII). Comer’s compromised physical and mental condition during sentencing is readily apparent from the record that was presented to the Arizona Supreme Court. That record included a transcript of the sentencing hearing, which begins with the very question of whether Comer is even conscious. This question arose because Comer was presented to the court nearly naked, shackled to a wheelchair, with his head slumped to the side, and bleeding from a head wound. A videotape of the sentencing, demonstrating Comer’s condition, was also before the Arizona Supreme Court. Furthermore, the record included a transcript of the post-sentencing competency hearing, held the next day, in which Comer’s competency during sentencing was explicitly discussed. These transcripts and videotape gave ample notice to the Arizona Supreme Court that Comer’s competency was of concern during the sentencing hearing. Additionally, to sentence a defendant while he is incompetent is a federal due process violation. See Sailer v. Gunn, 548 F.2d 271, 273-74 (9th Cir. 1977); see also Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 378 (1966); Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 172 (1975). The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision not to address this constitutional issue during its independent review was an implicit rejection of any error. Second, Comer claims that the conduct of the post-sentence competency hearing in his absence violated his Sixth, Eighth, 11152 COMER v. SCHRIRO and Fourteenth Amendment rights (Claim IX). Again, Comer’s absence from the post-sentence hearing is readily apparent from the transcripts. A defendant has a constitutional right to be present at any critical stage of his prosecution, including at capital sentencing hearings, see Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349 (1977), and hearings to determine the defendant’s competency, see Sturgis v. Goldsmith, 796 F.2d 1103, 1108 (9th Cir. 1986). Thus, by failing to address this issue, the Arizona Court again impliedly rejected any error. Third, Comer claims his sentencing while unclothed and semi-conscious violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Claims X and XI). The egregious circumstances of Comer’s condition during sentencing are readily apparent from both the trial transcript and the videotape presented to the Arizona Supreme Court. By not commenting on this issue, the Arizona Court implicitly signaled its rejection of any error. [19] We hold, therefore, that these four claims were exhausted on their merits by the Arizona Supreme Court’s independent review of Comer’s capital case. Comer’s three other claims (Claims XII, XIV, and XVI) are neither as readily apparent from the record nor as clearly encompassed within Arizona’s independent review. Thus, we do not find them to be impliedly exhausted. We may proceed to decide the merits of Comer’s impliedly exhausted claims without remand to the District Court. See Beam, 966 F.2d at 1570-75; Granberry v. Greer, 481 U.S. 129, 131 (1987) (noting that a federal appellate court may appropriately decide the merits of a habeas petition). Additionally, Comer argues that Arizona’s fundamental error review exhausted most of the other claims he presented to the District Court. We have held, however, that we will only consider a claim to be exhausted by Arizona’s fundamental error review if it was explicitly noted in the briefs presented to the state appellate court, or the state court menCOMER v. SCHRIRO 11153 tions it is considering the claim sua sponte. See Moormann v. Schriro, 426 F.3d 1044, 1057 (9th Cir. 2005). Because neither occurred in this case, we affirm the District Court’s finding that most of Comer’s other habeas claims were procedurally defaulted. We now proceed to address on the merits Comer’s impliedly exhausted and actually exhausted claims. First, we will consider the four guilt-phase claims that Comer raises in his appeal brief and that the District Court found were actually exhausted and thus not procedurally defaulted. Second, we will address Comer’s penalty phase claims, which include an actually exhausted claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and the four impliedly exhausted claims we have discussed in this section. COMER v. SCHRIRO 11155 Volume 2 of 2 11156 COMER v. SCHRIRO