Court Opinion

ID: 9477376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:22:06.552028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:51.078454
License: Public Domain

SELYA, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I write separately because, in my view, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) did not waive petitioner’s procedural default. Accordingly, inasmuch as Dou-cette has been unable to demonstrate either “cause” or “prejudice”, a federal court sitting in habeas jurisdiction is barred from considering his claimed Sandstrom error. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 86-87, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2506-07, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977); Puleio v. Vose, 830 F.2d 1197, 1199 (1st Cir.1987), petition for cert. filed (Jan. 23, 1988).
My disagreement with the majority is less one of principle than of application. I am in substantial agreement with the majority’s overall methodology for ascertaining whether or not “waiver” has tran*544spired. See ante at 539-540. But my use of essentially the same divining rod leads me to an opposite conclusion.
It is evident to me that, despite the passing references to Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979), the SJC’s consideration of the alleged instructional error in Doucette’s case “went not to the federal question of ... constitutional sufficiency, but to the state law question of whether a ‘substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice' was present.” Gibson v. Butterworth, 693 F.2d 16, 17 (1st Cir.1982) (emphasis in original). I say this based not only on my own reading of the case, but based upon no less an authority than the SJC itself, which phrased the issue before it as the need to “determine whether the alleged errors create a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice.” Commonwealth v. Doucette, 391 Mass. 443, 450, 462 N.E.2d 1084 (1984). Where, as here, a state tribunal tells us that it purports to answer a state law question in state law terms, we should be loath to shrug off that statement without compelling reasons.
Moreover, the other straws in the wind signal that the SJC was faithful to its announced intention of deciding this point as one of state law. It explicitly refused to overlook the absence of any contemporaneous objection, id., but treated the same, as state law dictated, as “relevant” to the section 33E miscarriage inquiry. Id. (citing Commonwealth v. Tavares, 385 Mass. 140, 148, 430 N.E.2d 1198, cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1137, 102 S.Ct. 2967, 73 L.Ed.2d 1366 (1982)). It cited, and relied upon, mainly Massachusetts cases in its discussion of the point. Commonwealth v. Doucette, 891 Mass. at 450-52, 462 N.E.2d 1084. Moreover, in passing upon the question, the SJC addressed a number of considerations unrelated to the constitutional question. For instance, the SJC considered the “interests of justice,” Commonwealth v. Doucette, 391 Mass, at 460, 462 N.E.2d 1084, and the gravity of the instructional defects in their ensemble. Id. at 450, 462 N.E.2d 1084; id. at 458, 462 N.E.2d 1084 (“taken as a whole the judge’s instructions were adequate and did not create a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice”). These were matters wholly impertinent to a federal law inquiry, but necessary to a state law inquiry. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Grace, 381 Mass. 753, 758, 412 N.E.2d 354 (1980) (discussing factors relevant to section 33E review).
In short, as the majority concedes, “[n]ot every passing reference to substance dispels the onus of noncompliance with a contemporaneous objection rule.” Puleio v. Vose, 830 F.2d at 1200. We have “repeatedly held ... that SJC review under the discretionary state miscarriage of justice standard will not suffice, in and of itself, to bypass the Commonwealth’s contemporaneous objection rule.” Id. See also McCown v. Callahan, 726 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 839, 105 S.Ct. 139, 83 L.Ed.2d 78 (1984); Gibson v. Butterworth, 693 F.2d at 17. There are, in my judgment, insufficient incremental considerations here to warrant us in concluding that the SJC, contrary to what it has plainly suggested, reached the gist of the federal constitutional question.
In the end, I join unshrinkingly in the result reached by the majority, for I think that Judge Breyer’s erudite discussion of the substantive law, ante at 541-544, is punctiliously correct. But it was unnecessary for the panel, I believe, to reach the matters discussed in Part II of the majority opinion. If we are to continue “to accord appropriate respect to the sovereignty of the states in our federal system,” Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140, 164, 99 S.Ct. 2213, 2223, 60 L.Ed.2d 777 (1979), then we must refrain from overreaching to find a waiver upon so tenebrous a showing.