Court Opinion

ID: 9489327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:12:45.09855+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:27.965009
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I leave to Judge Batehelder’s excellent legal analysis the questions relating to the substantive merits of the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. I write separately to emphasize the extreme oddity of our resolution of this case, and the way in which the court uses the prisoner’s own tactical missteps to reach an outcome favorable to him.
Mr. O’Guinn was duly sentenced to death by a Tennessee jury more than eleven years ago. After having had all of his entreaties rejected on three separate trips through the Tennessee legal system (direct appeal in 1986, post-conviction relief in 1987-89, and second post-conviction relief in 1989-90), O’Guinn finally chose to file a habeas petition in federal court in October 1990. There is no indication that the investigative and discovery tools that developed the material allegedly supporting the Brady claim during the federal court proceedings did not also exist in the two state court proceedings that O’Guinn had pursued for the previous three years. After having the case under advisement for two and one-half years, the district court ruled in O’Guinn’s favor, indicating that not only was the death sentence invalid, but that a new trial was warranted. To this point, the prisoner, the state prosecutors (presumably representing the interests of the State of Tennessee), and the federal district court had not perceived (or had not chosen to raise) the problem that the federal habeas corpus petition contained an unexhausted Brady claim.
Petitioner was happy with his victory, and the attorneys representing the interests of the State of Tennessee, apparently hoping to succeed on the merits of their position, did not press for yet another round of proceedings in Tennessee courts, but appealed to this court. When a panel of this court decided the case in 1994, it reversed on the merits and directed that the writ be dismissed, thus placing O’Guinn on a direct track toward execution. It was only at this point (in fact, only after an en banc petition had been granted) that O’Guinn’s counsel drew another arrow from their quiver by raising the Brady *1431claims in a third state post-conviction petition (in effect, a fourth round of appeals in the Tennessee state courts).
At this point, however, O’Guinn did not pursue the logic of this position by requesting the dismissal of the federal habeas action that he had now been pursuing for more than five years. Thus, O’Guinn maintained the best of both worlds. If the en banc court could be persuaded to the substantive position held by the dissenting judge on the panel and by the district judge, then O’Guinn would succeed on the merits. If, however, it appeared that the merits argument was going against him, he might be able to prevail on the argument that there should not be any merits conclusion at all but that the whole process should go back to state court, thus returning the situation to where it had been at least six years earlier. Furthermore, if those state proceedings then concluded adversely to O’Guinn, he would be able to return to district court (presumably to the same district judge) and re-commence the proceedings where they had been in October 1990, save only that he would now be more than six years closer to a natural death.
I cannot imagine that Duckworth and Granberry, cited by the per curiam opinion for that proposition at page 5, supra, ever intended such a result. The per curiam correctly paraphrases Duckworth, and I agree, that the state “should be afforded [the] first opportunity to correct [a] constitutional violation.” In fact, O’Guinn graciously gave the Tennessee courts three such opportunities, but each time neglected to raise the Brady issue.
Both Duckworth and Granberry actually address instances where a defendant was trying to use the federal courts to end-run state courts. In Duckworth, a defendant was granted a writ of habeas corpus by the Seventh Circuit on a claim that had not been raised in either state court or the federal district court. The Supreme Court, upon the petition and argument of the State of Indiana, held that the prisoner should be required to exhaust this claim in state court. It especially noted that the exhaustion requirement “serves to minimize friction between our state and federal systems of justice by allowing the State an initial opportunity to pass upon and correct alleged violations of prisoners’ federal rights.” Duckworth, 454 U.S. at 3, 102 S.Ct. at 19.
Granberry indicated that this rule was not absolute. It considered the situation where a non-exhausted issue was raised in the district court, and the State of Illinois had not objected there, but did object before the court of appeals. The Supreme Court refused to make the exhaustion requirement an absolute bar to appellate consideration, regardless of the circumstances (a rule that would vindicate the per curiam opinion). Granberry, 481 U.S. at 133, 107 S.Ct. at 1674-75. It also refused to make the state’s failure to raise the issue below an absolute waiver (a rule that would, ironically, serve the asserted interests of the State of Tennessee in this case). Ibid. Instead, it directed the appeals court in such a situation to weigh the circumstances case by case, in the context of whether the State’s request for remand should be granted.
The Court did not face (indeed, did not contemplate the possibility of) our situation, where the prisoner is himself seeking remand for consideration of issues that he failed to raise in state court, while the State of Tennessee requests the appeals court to decide the very issues the defendant has brought to us.
While the Supreme Court did quote the language of earlier cases that say exhaustion is required unless there are “exceptional” or “unusual” circumstances, none of the quoted cases contemplate the exceptional case that we have, where the defendant, perhaps taking guidance from the dissent to the panel opinion, seeks an additional opportunity to exhaust claims that he has failed on at least three prior occasions to raise. Of course, now that such a stratagem has succeeded, such cases will very likely be anything but unusual or exceptional.
In Granberry, the official representatives of “comity and federalism” at the state level were seeking the state’s opportunity to address a claim. Here, those representatives do not wish to give O’Guinn the benefit of his “heads I win, tails you lose” approach. It *1432seems a very strange type of “comity5’ that allows the prisoner to use the truly breathtaking footwork at issue here to gain an additional six years of time in which nothing effective will have happened in the great flow chart of federal habeas death penalty jurisdiction. See Ronald J. Tabak and J. Mark Lane, Judicial Activism and Legislative “Reform” of Federal Habeas Corpus: A Critical Analysis of Recent Developments and Current Proposals, 55 Alb. L.Rev. 1, 9 (1991).
Finally, the per curiam opinion correctly states the Supreme Court’s holding in Gran-berry that declining to resolve an unexhaust-ed question may be particularly appropriate “if the case involves an important unresolved question of fact or state law or where there is an important state interest at stake ....” (Op. at 1412). In our case, however, the unresolved question is NOT one of state law. Any unresolved question is NOT a question of fact, save perhaps in the minds of the appellate judges supporting the concurring opinion. Finally, the important state interest at stake here would seem to be best represented by the state itself, which in Granberry sought remand, but which here seeks finality of decision.
Therefore, while I agree with the legal reasoning of Judge Batchelder, and of the majority of the original panel, I specifically dissent as well on the grounds that the per curiam opinion’s use of Granberry here is completely contrary to its language and intent.

. Police notes did corroborate the fact that a van hit a car at around 1:00 a.m. on that night.