Court Opinion

ID: 9495640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:07:40.304319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:41.487507
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
While I concur in the result reached by the court, I cannot join Part B of its opinion which concludes that the district court erred in holding that Sandgathe’s incompetence-to-plead claim was procedurally defaulted.
The court’s opinion cites the Supreme Court’s holding in Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 111 S.Ct. 2590, 115 L.Ed.2d 706 (1990), in support of its conclusion that “[bjeeause the post-conviction trial court explicitly ruled on the federal constitutional issues and there is no indication that the Court of Appeals did not, we presume that the subsequent mute affirmance by the Court of Appeals rested on the same grounds as the decision it was affirming.” Maj. Op. at 378. There are two problems with reliance on Ylst, one factual and the other legal.
First, as the opinion notes, “Sandgathe ... did not frame his claim of incompetence to enter a plea ... in terms of any federal right.” Maj. Op. at 376. I cannot pretend to understand why this fact does not end our inquiry and compel the conclusion that Sandgathe, by failing to make a federal constitutional claim in state court, is barred from raising it in federal court. Any other conclusion flies in the face of our clear holding that “the petitioner must make the federal basis of the claim explicit either by citing federal law or the decisions of federal courts.” Lyons v. Crawford, 232 F.3d 666, 668 (9th Cir.2000). Undeterred by this explicit requirement, the court nevertheless concludes that the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled on Sandgathe’s incompetence-to-plead claim. The court, then, would have us believe — and indeed presume — that the Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled on an issue that both the court and the petitioner himself admit was never actually presented to it.
Second, the court’s reliance on Ylst to overcome the inconvenient fact of Sand-gathe’s failure to present his claim is mis*384placed. Ylst does indeed hold that “[w]here there has been one reasoned state judgment rejecting a federal claim, later unexplained orders upholding that judgment or rejecting the same claim rest upon the same ground.” Ylst, 501 U.S. at 803, 111 S.Ct. 2590. But rather than compelling the conclusion reached by the court here, reliance on the Ylst decision begs the question we must decide — namely, whether Sandgathe actually presented his incompetence-to-plead claim to the Oregon Court of Appeals. Ylst allows federal courts to “look through” unreasoned summary affirmances to determine “[i]f the last state court to be presented with a particular federal claim reache[d] the merits.” Id. at 801, 111 S.Ct. 2590. Thus, before a federal court can engage in the practice of “looking through” unexplained orders to the last reasoned decision, the federal court must first ensure that the claim was actually presented to the state courts. The presentation of the claim, therefore, is a prerequisite to the application of Ylst’s presumption. Where, as here, the petitioner failed to present a federal constitutional claim to the Oregon Court of Appeals, that court cannot be said to have ruled on such claim — even if it affirmed a trial court ruling that did consider the federal claim. To hold otherwise is inconsistent with clear Supreme Court precedent. See Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S. 364, 365-66, 115 S.Ct. 887, 130 L.Ed.2d 865 (1995) (“If state courts are to be given the opportunity to correct alleged violations of prisoners’ federal rights, they must surely be alerted to the fact that the prisoners are asserting claims under the United States Constitution.”) and Picard, v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 275-76, 92 S.Ct. 509, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971) (“We emphasize that the federal claim must be fairly presented to the state courts.... Only if the state courts have had the first opportunity to hear the claim sought to be vindicated in a federal habeas proceeding does it make sense to speak of the exhaustion of state remedies.”).
Accordingly, I must decline to join Part B of the court’s opinion and concur only in the judgment.