Court Opinion

ID: 9497880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:02:24.647858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:28.556698
License: Public Domain

JOHN M. WALKER, Jr., Chief Judge,
concurring.
I concur in Judge Pooler’s opinion affirming the district court’s denial of De-Berry’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. I write separately to highlight a major inconsistency in our cases that discuss the standard of review for state court habeas decisions whose grounds are unclear. In what one experienced district court judge has referred to as a “congeries of holdings,” e.g., Taus v. Senkowski 293 F.Supp.2d 238, 245 (E.D.N.Y.2003) (Wein-stein, J.), we have wrestled with the level of deference due when the state court adjudicating habeas claims states that the “remaining contentions are either unpre-served for appellate review or are without merit.” In Fama v. Commissioner of Correctional Services, 235 F.3d 804, 810-11 (2d Cir.2000), we held that such language failed to establish that the claims raised were procedurally barred and that therefore they were amenable to federal habeas review. Fama, however, did not address the question of whether the heightened deference granted under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) to state court adjudications on the merits applied in such situations. See id. (reviewing and rejecting petitioner’s claims on the merits without discussing § 2254(d)).11 In other words, Fama held that claims adjudicated on an “either un-preserved ... or without merit” basis were presumed to be preserved. This holding carried with it the implicit suggestion that such claims were presumed to have been adjudicated on the merits. However, Fama was silent as to whether a state court decision that was presumed to be on the merits should be given the deference that AEDPA mandates for claims that are actually adjudicated on the merits. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
We discussed the interplay between “either/or” adjudications and AEDPA deference more directly in two subsequent decisions. In Ryan v. Miller, 303 F.3d 231, 245-46 (2d Cir.2002), we noted that under Fama, adjudications made on an “either/or” basis were presumed to be preserved. We noted, furthermore, that in the particular context of Ryan’s petition, neither party disputed that his claims were preserved and nothing in the state court decision indicated “that the claims were decided on anything but substantive grounds.” Id. at 246 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Accordingly, we treated the state court adjudication as one “on [the] merits” and, pursuant to § 2254(d), applied AEDPA deference. Id.
In Miranda v. Bennett, 322 F.3d 171 (2d Cir.2003), however, we took a different view of the matter. There the state court had held that the “remaining contentions are unpreserved for appellate review, without merit, or do not require reversal.” Id. at 179.12 Under Fama, we should presumably have treated the claim as not procedurally barred and thus as decided on its merits. But instead, upon reviewing the *71Appellate Division’s opinion and the State’s Memorandum to the district court, we concluded that “the record does not make it clear that either claim was rejected for lack of merit.” Id. In other words, while the state court’s language indicated that the grounds of decision were either A or B, and while Fama required that we presume that the grounds of decision were not A, in Miranda we were unwilling to presume that the grounds of decision were in fact B (on the merits). We therefore declined to apply AEDPA deference. Id.
As a matter of logic, Miranda’s holding makes little sense. The state court says its decision is based on either A (claim unpreserved) or B (fails on the merits). Fama creates a presumption that where the record provides no further indication of whether it was A or B, then the habeas court should presume it is not A (the claim is not unpreserved). Logic compels the conclusion that the state court must have decided the claim on the basis of B (the claim fails on the merits). But this is precisely the conclusion that Miranda rejects. In short, the pmpose of the Fama presumption is to allow courts to assume B; Miranda undermines that purpose by holding that courts cannot assume B either.13 In other words, according to Miranda, a state court’s conclusion of A or B equals neither A nor B.
But Miranda is not just logically inconsistent with Fama; it is also substantively at odds with Fama’s approach to habeas review. Fama and Ryan recognized a choice in the “either/or” situation: either treat the claim as unpreserved or as preserved and on the merits. In refusing to treat such claims as unpreserved and thus procedurally defaulted, Fama and Ryan allowed petitioners to avoid the near insurmountable obstacles to federal review that face procedurally defaulted claims. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 730, 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 2554, 2564-65, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991) (federal habeas review not available for procedurally defaulted claims unless petitioners shows (1) cause and prejudice, or (2) fundamental miscarriage of justice). In no sense did these two decisions suggest that the alternative was to bypass AEDPA deference altogether in favor of pre-AEDPA review. Indeed, Ryan explicitly held that where the state court employs “either/or” language, “[tjhere is no reason to doubt that AEDPA applies ... because the only alternative to finding the claim adjudicated on the merits would be finding the claim procedurally barred, in which case we would not have entertained [it] (absent a showing of cause and prejudice).” Ryan, 303 F.3d at 246. In light of that holding, and in light of the principles of comity and federalism that underlie habeas jurisprudence, see Coleman, 501 U.S. at 730-32, 750-51, 111 S.Ct. 2546, I find Miranda’s adoption of a pre-AEDPA, non-deferential standard of review to be unwarranted.
Doubtless cases arise in which habeas claims may be reviewed without AEDPA deference, for example, either because the claim has not been decided on the merits and the state court’s ground for dismissal is not sufficiently “independent” and “adequate,” see, e.g., James v. Kentucky, 466 U.S. 341, 348-49, 104 S.Ct. 1830, 1835, 80 L.Ed.2d 346 (1984) (procedural rule not *72firmly established or regularly followed was not independent and adequate ground); NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 457-58, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 1169-70, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958) (novel state procedural bar not independent and adequate ground), or because a properly preserved claim, recognized as such, was misconstrued by the state court and hence not decided “on the merits,” see, e.g., Chadwick v. Janecka, 312 F.3d 597 (3d Cir.2002) (no adjudication on merits under § 2254(d) where state court misunderstood nature of properly preserved federal claim); Appel v. Horn, 250 F.3d 203, 209-12 (3d Cir.2001) (same). But these situations are not presented here.
I therefore believe that Miranda was wrongly decided and should not be the law of this circuit. However, because the result in this case is the same whether or not AEDPA deference is accorded to the state court decision, I concur in the result reached by the majority.

. Because § 2254(d) is a provision of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (“AEDPA”), we commonly refer to the standard mandated therein as "AEDPA deference.”

. This formulation ostensibly poses three alternatives: “[Petitioner’s] remaining contentions are unpreserved for appellate review, without merit, or do not require reversal.” People v. Miranda, 243 A.D.2d 584, 585, 665 N.Y.S.2d 507, 508 (1997) (emphasis added). But the third option suggests a decision on the merits; it implies that petitioner's claims may have had merit, but nevertheless failed to raise issues significant enough to require reversal. For the purposes of this discussion, this third option is treated as merged with the “without merit” category.

. The seeming incongruence of Fama and Miranda has not gone unnoticed. In Shih Wei Su v. Filion, 335 F.3d 119, 125 (2d Cir.2003), we found it unnecessary to resolve the tension between the two cases, since the state conceded that there had been an adjudication on the merits, thus allowing us to apply AED-PA deference without dispute. The Shih Wei Su court, however, did reflect on Fama, Ryan, and Miranda, and noted that "our cases seem to contemplate situations in which, because of uncertainty as to what the state courts have held, no procedural bar exists and yet no AEDPA deference is required." Id. at 126 n. 3.