Opinion ID: 774531
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether claim is procedurally barred because state court reached merits.

Text: 44 Relying on the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals's language in the decision on his Murnahan motion, Lott argues that his jurisdiction claim is not procedurally barred because the Court of Appeals reached the merits of the claim. The Court of Appeals stated that [a] review of the record demonstrates that the appellant waived his right to a jury trial in conformity with Crim. R. 23(A) and R.C. 2945.05, suggesting that the Court of Appeals decided the merits of the waiver question (and thus did not raise a procedural bar to consideration of the issue). That language, however, expressly referred to Lott's sixteenth proposed assignment of error, which concerned only the ineffectiveness of his appellate counsel for failing to argue on appeal the involuntariness of Lott's jury waiver. At no point did Lott ever raise in his Murnahan motion the instant jurisdiction issue as a discrete claim; the court, therefore, never had an opportunity to reach that precise issue. 45 It is true that Lott raised the jury-waiver issue, discussed infra, in state court. It is also true that the voluntariness of his waiver and the court's compliance with the requirements of §2945.05 to effectuate a valid waiver are related issues -- the former is a function of the latter. The relatedness of the issues, however, does not save Lott's claim. Lott's jurisdiction claim is not based on the same theory as the waiver claim that was presented in state court, see Wong v. Money, 142 F.3d 313, 322 (6th Cir. 1998), and, in any event, Lott himself apparently viewed the issues as distinct, as evidenced by the fact that he raised them as separate assignments of error in his federal habeas petition. Lott's jurisdiction claim, therefore, is procedurally barred. 7 46