Court Opinion

ID: 9470863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:17:59.614837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:08.494436
License: Public Domain

RANDALL,
Circuit Judge, dissenting:
The majority maintains that the Louisiana trial court’s statement, in its disposition of the petitioner’s application for state ha-beas corpus relief, that “[t]here is no merit in petitioner’s claims that erroneous jury charges were given on the day of trial,” at 593-594 “does not necessarily deal with the Sandstrom [v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979) ] question” on the merits. At 593-594. Satisfied that there is “no uncertainty in the Louisiana law about the requirement that a contemporaneous objection must be made to this instruction if any error is not to be waived,” the majority concludes that the petitioner is precluded from challenging the constitutionality of the trial court’s charge by Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). Because I believe that the trial court’s statement constitutes a clear decision on the merits of the petitioner’s habeas claim, I would hold that the federal courts are entitled to reach the merits of that claim as well. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
Without more, a person reading the statement that there is “no merit in the petitioner’s claims that erroneous jury charges were given” (emphasis added) would have to conclude that the trial court meant that the charge as given was not in error; i.e., that it was a correct statement of the law. If this were indeed the trial court’s meaning, then its decision would clearly have been made on the “merits” of the petitioner’s claim and we would not be barred from reviewing that claim by a state procedural rule that the state courts themselves had declined to apply. Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140, 154, 99 S.Ct. 2213, 2223, 60 L.Ed.2d 777 (1979); Bell v. Watkins, 692 F.2d 999, 1004, 1006 (5th Cir.1982); Miller v. Estelle, 677 F.2d 1080, 1084 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 103 S.Ct. 494, 74 L.Ed.2d 636 (1982). We have interpreted state court decisions as decisions on the merits on the basis of language far more ambiguous than that used by the trial court here. See Henry v. Wainwright, 686 F.2d 311, 313 (5th Cir.1982), petition for cert. filed, — U.S. —, 103 S.Ct. 783, 74 L.Ed.2d 991 (1983) (“no reversible error is made to appear”); Clark v. Blackburn, 632 F.2d 531, 533 n. 1 (5th Cir.1980) (no showing made to “warrant a finding that the trial judge’s ruling was in error”).
The “something more” in this case further supports the understanding of the state court’s statement as a decision on the merits. The petitioner did not raise his Sandstrom claim until he filed his application for state habeas corpus relief. Since the state did not file any papers in opposition to the petitioner’s application, no one ever argued to the state courts that the petitioner’s procedural default should bar review of his claim. The petitioner maintained that he was entitled to raise his claims “in spite of the absence of any contemporaneous objection because the errors complained of infected the entire proceedings so as to deny him due process of law and a fair trial.” (emphasis in original) (citations omitted). In Allen, supra, the Supreme Court concluded that the prosecutor’s failure to mention the procedural default to the state courts “surely suggested] that the [state] courts were not thinking in procedural terms when they decided the issue.” 442 U.S. at 152, 99 S.Ct. at 2222. While the petitioner here had apprised the state courts of his procedural default, the state’s failure to urge the procedural bar in state court suggests, as it did in Allen, that *595the state courts were not thinking in procedural terms when they made their decision.
Accordingly, I would hold that the petitioner’s challenge to the jury instructions is properly before this court and I would go on to consider whether those instructions constituted Sandstrom error. I therefore dissent from the majority’s refusal to reach the Sandstrom issue.