Court Opinion

ID: 9455625
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:27:37.155426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:39.931367
License: Public Domain

BLUMENFELD, District Judge
(concurring in the result) :
I concur in the judgment which upholds Judge Foley’s dismissal of the petition. He dismissed the petition for failure to exhaust state remedies and I rest my concurrence on that ground.
Although there are some indications of waiver which may be inferred from the bare record, that issue was never clearly passed upon in Agron’s case by either the state court or Judge Foley. With all deference, I think it is premature to decide that what is before us is sufficient to foreclose “an evidentiary hearing to determine whether petitioner ‘after consultation with competent coun*128sel or otherwise, understandingly and knowingly forewent the privilege of seeking to vindicate his federal claims in the state courts, whether for strategic, tactical, or any other reasons that can fairly be described as the deliberate by-passing of state procedures * * Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 439, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837.” Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U.S. 443, 450, 85 S.Ct. 564, 569, 13 L.Ed.2d 408 (1965). It would not be unlikely that the petitioner, as the one with whom counsel consulted, would have at the very least his own testimony to offer on whether he made a “considered choice.” Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 439, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963).