Court Opinion

ID: 9470243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:00:25.923912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:48.049385
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority appears to hold that failure to raise on a state appeal a federal constitutional claim is a waiver of the claim. In the facts of this case, moreover, the majority finds that a failure to emphasize is a failure to raise.
Spurlark’s state appellate brief recounted the fact of denial of counsel of his choice at sentencing, although in arguing his Sixth Amendment deprivation the brief writer did not separately address the denial at sentencing. Spurlark’s petition to the Supreme Court of Illinois, however, directly dealt with the claim of denial of counsel of choice at sentencing, calling to that court’s attention the failure of the appellate court to address the matter:
Neither would the Court allow new counsel to represent Defendant at the posh-trial proceedings either before or after sentencing, thus successfully precluding the full, fair and complete development of the record. The Appellate Court opinion chose to disregard this aspect of the trial court’s action....
Petition for Leave to Appeal at 15.
In my opinion the state courts were given ample opportunity to address the petitioner’s claim, both at trial and on appeal; Spurlark’s attempts to describe the scope of his denial of counsel of choice, while inartful, presented the appellate court and certainly the state supreme court with the same issue finally addressed by the federal courts. To require that a petitioner do more than raise the “substance of a federal habeas claim ... to the state courts,” Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 278, 92 S.Ct. 509, 513, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971), unduly narrows the scope of the petitioner’s right to have his claims reviewed in a federal forum. Cf. Williams v. Holbrook, 691 F.2d 3, 8-11 (1st Cir.1982).
The state, moreover, failed to claim waiver of the claim of denial of counsel at sentencing before the district court; and before the original panel of this court the state did no more than hint at the possibility in a footnote.
*364Norris v. United States, 687 F.2d 899 (7th Cir.1982) dealt, of course, with collateral attack on a federal conviction. It is here being extended to federal collateral attack on a state conviction. I am not persuaded that Norris was soundly decided. See id. at 904 — 12 (Cudahy, Circuit Judge, concurring) and id. at 912 (Wood, Circuit Judge, joined by Bauer, Circuit Judge, dissenting from decision not to hear the case en banc).
Under the circumstances of this case, this en banc court need not and, I think, should not reach the question whether to confirm and extend Norris.
I therefore respectfully dissent.