Court Opinion

ID: 9476698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:02:41.948602+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:27.452810
License: Public Domain

MESKILL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the decision reached by the majority but dissent from its conclusion that Granberry v. Greer, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 1671, 95 L.Ed.2d 119 (1987), requires the district court to review the merits of certain claims of a habeas corpus petitioner that have not been exhausted in *957the state courts. Even though judicial effi-. ciency might be enhanced in some instances by district court review and summary denial of obviously meritless petitions containing unexhausted claims, Granberry and the cases it reaffirms generally require dismissal without prejudice for non-exhaustion. These cases permit federal habeas courts to rule on the merits of unexhausted claims only “ ‘in rare cases where exceptional circumstances of peculiar urgency are shown to exist.’ ” Granberry, — U.S. at-, 107 S.Ct. at 1675 (quoting Ex parte Hawk, 321 U.S. 114, 117, 64 S.Ct. 448, 88 L.Ed. 572 (1944)). See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 684, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2062, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) (exhaustion rule while “strictly enforced,” is not jurisdictional; Court of Appeals found exceptional circumstance, id. at 679, 104 S.Ct. at 2060); Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 519, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 1204, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982) (“Requiring dismissal of petitions containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims will ... reduce the temptation to consider unexhausted claims.”); id. at 542, 102 S.Ct. at 1215-16 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“[ujnder the Court’s analysis, any unexhausted claim asserted in a habeas corpus petition — no matter how frivolous — is sufficient to command the district judge to postpone relief on a meritorious exhausted claim”); Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519, 520-22, 72 S.Ct. 509, 510-11, 96 L.Ed. 541 (1952) (district court may deviate from exhaustion rule if it finds “special circumstances” after review of facts). In this case, however, neither the prosecution nor Plunkett has described an exceptional circumstance of peculiar urgency, either to the district court or to us.
There was an exceptional circumstance in Granberry which sets that case apart from this one. In Granberry, the lack of exhaustion was neither raised in nor detected by the district court, which dismissed the petition on its merits. Instead, the unexhausted claim arrived in the Court of Appeals in the company of a full district court record on the merits. It is clear that the Granberry Court ascribed a heightened measure of urgency to the interest in judicial efficiency in what it termed an “exceptional” case, where a complete record on the merits of the habeas corpus petition had already been generated. See — U.S. at-, 107 S.Ct. at 1673-76. Although the existence of a complete record on the merits may be a product of the prosecution’s waiver of the non-exhaustion defense, it is the complete record, not the waiver, that makes the case exceptional. Cf. id. at-n. 6, 107 S.Ct. at 1674 n. 6 (waivers might be used by prosecution to gain unfair tactical advantage). In such cases there is much to be gained by appellate review of clearly meritorious or clearly non-meritorious claims. See id. at -, 107 S.Ct. at 1675-76. In our case, however, requiring the district court to weigh the competing interests before ruling on exhaustion will add an entirely new and unwarranted layer of procedural review to an already overburdened court system. The mandatory nature of such a review works at cross purposes to the majority’s search for judicial economy.
This is not to say that the district court could not dismiss on its merits a plainly frivolous habeas petition. The rules governing habeas corpus petitions explicitly permit summary dismissal before reaching the exhaustion question. 28 U.S.C. § 2254 Rules 4 & 5 (1982); Granberry, — U.S. at-n. 7, 107 S.Ct. at 1675 n. 7. In my view, Granberry did not extend to the district court any more discretion than it already had under the rules.
. Because there is no “exceptional circumstance” here, under Frisbie v. Collins the district court was entirely correct in summarily dismissing the unexhausted claim and with it the exhausted claim under Rose v. Lundy. I agree with Judge Telesca that “a prosecutor ‘may not waive the exhaustion defense, and that such a purported waiver of the defense has no effect upon the [district court’s] general obligation to dismiss habeas petitions where state remedies are not exhausted,’ ” Plunkett v. Johnson, No. Civ-85-1104T, slip op. at 2 (W.D.N.Y. Oct. 9, 1986) (quoting Barracano v. Lord, 620 F.Supp. 1284, 1286 (E.D.N.Y.1985)), and would affirm on that basis.