Court Opinion

ID: 9472367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:58:17.235783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:53.944876
License: Public Domain

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority finds that Sandstrom’s claim that the judge cited and sentenced him for contempt in violation of the federal constitution was exhausted in the state courts. They do so on the theory that, while Sandstrom did not raise his federal constitutional claim during his contempt proceedings or in his direct appeal from those proceedings, the state appellate court reached out and addressed it in its dispositive opinion. I do not agree that its opinion can reasonably be read as addressing the *1215federal constitutional claim Sandstrom now presents; accordingly, I dissent.
The majority determines that the Florida District Court of Appeal decided Sandstrom’s fourteenth amendment due process claim because the court alluded to a U.S. Supreme Court case discussing the federal constitutional standard for disqualification of a judge as presenting the relevant case law. The majority relies on Booker v. Wainwright, 703 F.2d 1251 (11th Cir.1983), as indicating that where a state court cites a federal case articulating a federal constitutional rule, without describing that rule as analogous to the relevant state law rule, the state court is deemed to have addressed the state law rule in addition to the federal constitutional rule. In Booker, however, one key fact was present that rendered the above proposition reasonable; in that case, the petitioner had raised the federal constitutional claim, as well as the state law claim, in his brief before the state court. Thus, the federal court could conclude that the state court had ruled on the claims presented to it.
Here, petitioner never pointed out to the Florida District Court of Appeal that he was presenting a federal constitutional claim. It is therefore just as likely that that court, in quoting from Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455, 91 S.Ct. 499, 27 L.Ed.2d 532 (1971), was only articulating a state rule, i.e., adopting its view of the federal constitutional standard as the state rule on judge disqualifications.
The exhaustion requirement is vital to the integrity of the judicial system. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982); Darden v. Wainwright, 725 F.2d 1526, 1533 (11th Cir.1984) (Tjoflat, J. dissenting). In a case like this one, where the petitioner has not “fairly presented” the substance of his federal habeas corpus claim to the state courts, see Anderson v. Harless, 459 U.S. 4, 103 S.Ct. 276, 74 L.Ed.2d 3 (1982), and the state courts have not unequivocally indicated that petitioner has presented such a claim, the importance of enforcing the policies behind the exhaustion requirement should militate against finding the asserted federal claim to have been exhausted.