Court Opinion

ID: 9470085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:56:46.598825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:43.475329
License: Public Domain

DUPLANTIER, District Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the result. However, I would decline to consider the claimed due process violations discussed in Part II of the opinion on the fundamental ground that they are not raised in the petition and are argued by petitioner for the first time on appeal. See Robinson v. Wade, 686 F.2d 298 (5th Cir.1982); Gray v. Lucas, 677 F.2d 1086 (5th Cir.1982); United States v. Scott, 672 F.2d 454, 455 (5th Cir.1982). The district judge’s opinion discusses neither ground. The magistrate, after identifying four issues as being the only ones asserted by the petitioner, for some reason mentions the two due process matters but states specifically that they are not raised by petitioner. Neither a magistrate nor a court should wander through a state criminal trial record in search of some error not raised by the petitioner.
In my view, since the claims are not presented by the habeas corpus petition, there is no issue of failure to exhaust these claims in the state court. However, I respectfully record my disagreement that there is in this circuit an “established rule of refusal to consider late claims of failure to exhaust.” See ante, at 2126, n. 5. While exhaustion may not be a jurisdictional prerequisite, the failure to exhaust should be an issue which can be raised at any time, even by the court sua sponte. I could find no Fifth Circuit authority (but some dicta) to the contrary.1 While the Supreme Court has not spoken on the precise issue, the principles of comity and federalism instruct that it is “ ‘unseemly in our dual system of government for a federal district court to upset a state court conviction without an opportunity to the state courts to correct a constitutional violation.’ ” Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 518, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1203, 71 L.Ed.2d 379, 387 (1982). When a federal court compels a state prisoner to present his federal constitutional claims to a state court before seeking relief from a federal court, this “furthers the purpose underlying the habeas statute.” Id. at 510, 102 S.Ct. at 1199, 71 L.Ed.2d at 382. It is an action “designed to protect the state courts’ role in the enforcement of federal law and prevent disruption of state judicial proceedings.” Id. at 518, 102 S.Ct. at 1203, 71 L.Ed.2d at 387.

. In a case of first instance in this circuit, Felder v. Estelle, 693 F.2d 549 at 550 (5th Cir.1982), the court decided that “the state may explicitly waive the exhaustion requirement in federal habeas corpus proceedings under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.” That is of course a different issue.