Court Opinion

ID: 9481270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:12:35.404249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:10.936395
License: Public Domain

TUTTLE, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent. I simply cannot agree that the new principle announced by the Supreme Court in Batson was not sufficiently novel to excuse court-appointed counsel in the Alabama State Court from raising a Batson claim on direct appeal of Pitts’ conviction. I agree with the Court’s statement that the novelty of a claim will constitute cause to excuse a procedural default if the legal basis for the claim was “not reasonably available to counsel.” That language is explicitly used in Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 104 S.Ct. 2901, 82 L.Ed.2d 1 (1984).
As stated in the majority opinion:
Neither the Supreme Court or the Eleventh Circuit has addressed whether a Batson claim before April 1986 was sufficiently novel to constitute cause for failing to object contemporaneously to the prosecution’s use of its peremptory challenges.
That means that the duty devolves on us to decide this precise issue, because there is no dispute over whether the Batson decision was “novel.”
The record here clearly discloses that Pitts has been denied his constitutional right to be tried by a fair jury. This Court should not lightly decide that a Supreme Court opinion that the Court has stated was “an explicit and substantial break with prior precedent” was not sufficiently novel to provide cause for Pitts’ failure to raise it on his appeal.
The Court in Allen v. Hardy, 478 U.S. 255, 106 S.Ct. 2878, 92 L.Ed.2d 199 (1986), stated: “The rule in Batson v. Kentucky is an explicit and substantial break with prior precedent,” and “Batson overruled that portion of Swain, changing the standard for proving unconstitutional abuse of peremptory challenges.”
While dealing with the contention of a defendant in a criminal case that he had been represented by inefficient counsel, the Court in Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 104 S.Ct. 2901, 82 L.Ed.2d 1 (1984), cast considerable light on the issue of novelty as cause. The Court stated:
Counsel’s failure to raise a claim for which there was no reasonable basis in existing law does not seriously implicate any of the concerns that might otherwise require deference to a State’s procedural bar.... It is in the nature of our legal system that legal concepts, including constitution concepts, develop slowly, finding partial acceptance in some courts while meeting rejection in others. Despite the fact that a constitutional concept may ultimately enjoy general acceptance, as the Mullaney [v. Wilbur, *1575421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975)] issue currently does, when the concept is in the embryonic stage, it will, by hypothesis, be rejected by most courts. Consequently, a rule requiring a defendant to raise a truly novel issue is not likely to serve any functional purpose. Although there is a remote possibility that a given state court will be the first to discover a latent constitutional issue and to order redress if the issue is properly raised, it is far more likely that the court will fail to appreciate the claim and reject it out of hand. Raising such a claim in state court, therefore, would not promote either the fairness or the efficiency of the state criminal justice system. It is true that finality will be dis-served if the federal courts reopen a state prisoner’s case, even to review claims that were so novel when the cases were in state court that no one would have recognized them. This Court has never held, however, that finality, standing alone, provides a sufficient reason for federal courts to compromise their protection of constitutional rights under § 2254.
In addition, if we were to hold that the novelty of a constitutional question does not give rise to cause for counsel’s failure to raise it, we might actually disrupt state-court proceedings by encouraging defense counsel to include any and all remotely plausible constitutional claims that could, some day, gain recognition. Particularly disturbed by this prospect, Judge Haynsworth, writing for the Court of Appeals in this case, stated:
“If novelty were never cause, counsel on appeal would be obliged to raise and argue every conceivable constitutional claim, no matter how far fetched, in order to preserve a right for post-conviction relief upon some future, unforeseen development in the law. Appellate courts are already over-burdened with meritless and frivolous cases and contentions, and an effective appellate lawyer does not dilute meritorious claims with frivolous ones. Lawyers representing appellants should be encouraged to limit their contentions on appeal at least to those which may be legitimately regarded as debatable.” [Ross v. Reed ] 704 F.2d [705] at 708 [(4th Cir.1983) ].
468 U.S. at 15, 104 S.Ct. at 2910.
The Court then made the following statement:
Although the question whether an attorney has a “reasonable basis” upon which to develop legal theory may arise in a variety of contexts, we confine our attention to the specific situation presented here: one in which this Court has articulated a constitutional principle that had not been previously recognized but which is held to have retroactive application. In United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537 [102 S.Ct. 2579, 73 L.Ed.2d 202] (1982), we identified three situations in which a “new” constitutional rule, representing “ ‘a clear break with the past,’ ” might emerge from this Court. Id. at 549 [102 S.Ct. at 2586] (quoting Desist v. United States, 394 U.S. 244, 258-59 [89 S.Ct. 1030, 1039, 22 L.Ed.2d 248] (1969)). First, a decision of this Court may explicitly overrule one of our precedents. United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. at 551 [102 S.Ct. at 2588]. Second, a decision may “overtur[n] a longstanding and widespread practice to which this Court has not spoken, but which a near-unanimous body of lower court authority has expressly approved.” Ibid. And, finally, a decision may “disapprov[e] a practice this Court arguably has sanctioned in prior cases.” Ibid. By definition, when a case falling into one of the first two categories is given retroactive application, there will almost certainly have been no reasonable basis upon which an attorney previously could have urged state court to adopt the position that this Court has ultimately adopted. Consequently, the failure of a defendant’s attorney to have pressed such a claim before a state court is sufficiently excusable to satisfy the cause requirement.
Id. at 17, 104 S.Ct. at 2911.
Although I recognize that the Reed case dealt with the retroactivity of a court opinion, Pitts finds himself in the same situation as did the appellant in Reed because *1576Batson was applicable to any case, as Pitts’, which was still on direct appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.
It appears to me, therefore, that this language should be accepted by us to control the ease now before us. I would, therefore, hold that Pitts had established the required “cause” for failing to raise the Batson issue in the state court in Lee County, Alabama.