Court Opinion

ID: 9430625
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:13.681793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:25.276320
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Blackmun joins, concurring in the judgment.
The heart of this case is a prisoner’s claim that he was denied access to material that might have established his innocence. The significance of such a claim can easily be lost in a procedural maze of enormous complexity.
The nature of the prisoner’s claim, and its importance, would be especially easy to overlook in this case because the case involves at least four possible procedural errors. A Virginia trial judge may have erroneously denied respondent’s counsel access to statements that the victim had made to the police. The Virginia Supreme Court did not address this issue because, although respondent’s counsel included it in the assignment of errors in his “notice of appeal,” he omitted it from his “petition for appeal.” In a subsequent federal habeas corpus proceeding, the District Court held that the *498procedural default in the state appellate court effected a waiver of any right to federal relief and therefore dismissed the petition without examining the victim’s statements. The Court of Appeals, however, concluded that there was no waiver if counsel’s omission was the consequence of inadvertence and ordered a remand for a hearing to determine whether the lawyer had made a deliberate decision to omit the error from the petition for appeal. We granted certio-rari to review that decision.
This Court now reverses, holding that there is no need for a hearing on counsel’s motivation and that, instead, the District Court should determine whether there is merit to the habeas corpus application by making an examination of the victim’s statements. I concur in its judgment remanding the case for further proceedings on the substance of the claim, and dispensing with the procedural hearing ordered by the Court of Appeals; I disagree, however, with much of what the Court has written about “cause and prejudice,” as well as with its announcement of a new standard to govern the District Court’s ultimate disposition of the case.
f — I
The character of respondent’s constitutional claim should be central to an evaluation of his habeas corpus petition. Before and during his trial on charges of rape and abduction, his counsel made timely motions for discovery of the statements made by the victim to the police. By denying those motions, the trial court significantly curtailed the defendant’s ability to cross-examine the prosecution’s most important witness, and may well have violated the defendant’s right to review “evidence favorable to an accused upon request . . . where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment.” Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83, 87 (1963). That right is unquestionably protected by the Due Process Clause. Ibid. See also United States v. Bagley, 473 U. S. 667 (1985); United States v. Agurs, 427 U. S. 97 (1976). Indeed, the *499Court has repeatedly emphasized the fundamental importance of that federal right.1
The constitutional claim advanced by respondent calls into question the accuracy of the determination of his guilt. On the record before us, however, we cannot determine whether or not he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Respondent argues that the trial court’s analysis was severely flawed.2 Even if the trial judge applied the correct standard, the conclusion that there was no “exculpatory” material in the victim’s statements does not foreclose the possibility that inconsistencies between the statements and the direct testimony would have enabled an effective cross-examination to demonstrate that respondent is actually innocent.3 On the other hand, it is possible that other evidence of guilt in the record is so overwhelming that the trial judge’s decision was clearly not prejudicial to the defendant. The important point is that we cannot evaluate the possibility that respondent may be the victim of a fundamental miscarriage of justice without any knowledge about the contents of the victim’s statements.
*500In deciding whether the District Court should have examined these statements before dismissing respondent’s habeas corpus petition, it is useful to recall the historic importance of the Great Writ. “The writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.” Harris v. Nelson, 394 U. S. 286, 290-291 (1969). Its well-known history bears repetition. The writ emerged in England several centuries ago,4 and was given explicit protection in our Constitution.5 The first Judiciary Act provided federal habeas corpus for federal prisoners.6 In 1867, Congress provided the writ of habeas corpus for state prisoners; the Act gave federal courts “power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the Constitution, or any treaty or law of the United States.”7 The current statute confers similar power, 28 U. S. C. § 2241(c)(3), and provides: “The court shall . . . dispose of the matter as law and justice require.” 28 U. S. C. §2243.
As the statute suggests, the central mission of the Great Writ should be the substance of “justice,” not the form of procedures. As Justice Frankfurter explained in his separate opinion in Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 498 (1953):
“The meritorious claims are few, but our procedures must ensure that those few claims are not stifled by undiscriminating generalities. The complexities of our federalism and the workings of a scheme of government involving the interplay of two governments, one of which is subject to limitations enforceable by the other, are not to be escaped by simple, rigid rules which, by avoiding some abuses, generate others.”
*501In Hensley v. Municipal Court, 411 U. S. 345, 349-350 (1973), the Court similarly emphasized this approach, stating:
“Our recent decisions have reasoned from the premise that habeas corpus is not ‘a static, narrow, formalistic remedy,’ Jones v. Cunningham, [371 U. S. 236,] 243 [(1963)], but one which must retain the ‘ability to cut through barriers of form and procedural mazes. ’ Harris v. Nelson, 394 U. S. 286, 291 (1969). See Frank v. Mangum, 237 U. S. 309, 346 (1915) (Holmes, J., dissenting). ‘The very nature of the writ demands that it be administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected.’ Harris v. Nelson, supra, at 291.
“Thus, we have consistently rejected interpretations of the habeas corpus statute that would suffocate the writ in stifling formalisms or hobble its effectiveness with the manacles of arcane and scholastic procedural requirements.”
Accordingly, the statutory mandate to “dispose of the matter as law and justice require” clearly requires at least some consideration of the character of the constitutional claim.8
I — I I — i
In my opinion, the “cause and prejudice” formula that the Court explicates in such detail today is not dispositive when the fundamental fairness of a prisoner’s conviction is at issue. That formula is of recent vintage, particularly in comparison to the writ for which it is invoked. It is, at most, part of a broader inquiry into the demands of justice.
*502The Court cites Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977) as authority for its “cause and prejudice” standard. The actual source of the standard, however, is Rule 12(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. For Wainwright relied on cases construing that Rule in announcing the standard. See id., at 84-85.
Rule 12(b)(2) specifies the procedure for asserting defenses and objections based on defects in the institution of a federal prosecution. Until part of the Rule was shifted to Rule 12(f), Rule 12(b)(2) expressly provided that the failure to follow the specified procedure in presenting any such defense or objection “constitutes waiver thereof”; the Rule included a proviso authorizing the court to grant relief from the waiver “for cause shown.”9 Under the terms of the Rule, the inquiry into “cause” was not made to ascertain whether a waiver occurred; rather, its function was to determine whether a waiver should be excused.
The term “prejudice” was not used in Rule 12(b)(2). In construing the rule in Shotwell Mfg. Co. v. United States, 371 U. S. 341 (1963), however, the Court decided that a consideration of the prejudice to the defendant, or the absence thereof, was an appropriate component of the inquiry into whether there was “cause” for excusing the waiver that had resulted from the failure to follow the Rule.10 Thus, under *503the reasoning of the Shotwell case — as well as the text of the Rule itself — “cause” and “prejudice” were not separate obstacles that a defendant was required to overcome to avoid a waiver. Rather, the cause component explicitly included an inquiry into “prejudice” — into the nature of the claim and its effect.
In Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233 (1973), the Court held that “the sort of express waiver provision contained in Rule 12(b)(2) which specifically provides for the waiver of a particular kind of constitutional claim if it be not timely asserted,” id., at 239-240, bars a challenge, absent “cause,” to the composition of the grand jury not only on direct federal review, but also in a federal habeas challenge to a federal conviction. Thus, in Davis, as in Shotwell, the Court simply enforced a federal rule that contained an express waiver provision. Notably, in Davis, the Court again considered both cause and prejudice as part of a single inquiry. 411 U. S., at 243-245.
The Davis holding, in turn, provided the basis for the Court’s decision in Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536 (1976). In that case, the Court reviewed a Louisiana rule similar to the Federal Rule at issue in Davis and a similar constitutional claim. Relying on Davis, the Court held that the state prisoner, having failed to make a timely challenge to the grand jury that indicted him, could not challenge his state conviction in a federal habeas corpus proceeding without making a showing of both “cause” for the failure and “actual prejudice.” The Court cited the Davis cause-and-prejudice *504analysis in determining that prejudice had not been established. 425 U. S., at 542, and n. 6.
Davis and Francis then provided the basis for the conclusion in Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, that the failure to make a contemporaneous objection to the admission of evidence at trial will ordinarily bar a postconviction attack on the use of such evidence absent an appropriate showing of cause and prejudice. However, the Court’s opinion in Wainwright v. Sykes carefully avoided any rigid definition of the terms “cause” and “prejudice” — terms which under Rule 12 had been used to identify two components of a single inquiry to determine whether an express waiver should be excused. Indeed, in Wainwright, the Court made very clear that, although “cause and prejudice” structured a court’s inquiry, they were not rigid procedural rules that prevented the writ’s fundamental mission — serving justice — from being realized: “The ‘cause-and-prejudice’ exception of the Francis rule will afford an adequate guarantee, we think, that the rule will not prevent a federal habeas court from adjudicating for the first time the federal constitutional claim of a defendant who in the absence of such an adjudication will be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.” 433 U. S., at 90-91. In Wainwright itself, the Court inquired into both cause and prejudice; the prejudice inquiry, of course, required some inquiry into the nature of the claim and its effect on the trial. Id., at 91.
In a recent exposition of the “cause and prejudice” standard, moreover, the Court again emphasized that “cause and prejudice” must be considered within an overall inquiry into justice. In Engle v. Isaac, 456 U. S. 107 (1982), the Court closed its opinion with the assurance that it would not allow its judge-made “cause” and “actual prejudice” standard to become so rigid that it would foreclose a claim of this kind:
“The terms ‘cause’ and ‘actual prejudice’ are not rigid concepts; they take their meaning from the principles of comity and finality discussed above. In appropriate *505cases those principles must yield to the imperative of correcting a fundamentally unjust incarceration. Since we are confident that victims of a fundamental miscarriage of justice will meet the cause-and-prejudice standard, see Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S., at 91; id., at 94-97 (Stevens, J., concurring), we decline to adopt the more vague inquiry suggested by the words ‘plain error.’” Id., at 135.11
In order to be faithful to that promise, we must recognize that cause and prejudice are merely components of a broader inquiry which, in this case, cannot be performed without an examination of the victim’s statements.12
*506I — I I — I hH
An inquiry into the requirements of justice requires a consideration, not only of the nature and strength of the constitutional claim, but also of the nature and strength of the state procedural rule that has not been observed. In its opinion today, the Court relies heavily on cases in which the defendant failed to make a contemporaneous objection to an error that occurred during a trial. Most of the reasons for finding a waiver in that setting simply do not apply to the appellate process. Of special importance is the fact that the state interest in enforcing its contemporaneous-objection rule is supported, not merely by the concern with finality that characterizes state appellate rules, but also by the concern with making the trial the “main event” in which the issue of guilt or innocence can be fairly resolved.13
This Court has not often considered procedural defaults that have occurred at the appellate, rather than trial, level. *507In my view, it is not a coincidence that three of the most forceful and incisive analyses of the relationship between federal habeas corpus and state procedural defaults have emerged in the few cases involving appellate defaults. For, with an appellate default, the state interest in procedural rigor is weaker than at trial, and the transcendence of the Great Writ is correspondingly clearer. The opinions to which I refer are the dissenting opinions in Daniels v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443 (1953), and the Court’s opinions in Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963), and Reed v. Ross, 468 U. S. 1 (1984).
In Daniels, one of the three cases that gave rise to the opinions in Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443 (1953), two petitioners challenged their convictions and death sentences on the ground that the trial judge had erroneously denied their timely objection to the admission of allegedly coerced confessions and to the alleged discrimination against blacks in the selection of both grand and petit jurors. See id., at 453. After the trial court entered judgment and pronounced its sentence, the petitioners filed a notice of appeal and were granted 60 days in which to serve a statement of the case on opposing counsel. As a result of the negligence or inadvertence of petitioners’ counsel, the statement was not served on the prosecutor until the 61st day and petitioners’ right to appeal was lost. The State Supreme Court declined to exercise its discretion to review the merits of their appeal.
For reasons that are ambiguous at best,14 the Court held that the procedural default barred a subsequent federal ha-beas corpus petition unless the opportunity to appeal had *508been lost “because of lack of counsel, incapacity, or some interference by officials.” Id., at 485-486. Because the Daniels holding was repudiated in Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963), Justice Black’s penetrating dissent commands greater respect than Justice Reed’s ambiguous opinion for the Court.15 Justice Black wrote:
“Fourth. Daniels v. Allen, No. 20. Here also evidence establishes an unlawful exclusion of Negroes from juries because of race. The State Supreme Court refused to review this evidence on state procedural grounds. Absence of state court review on this ground is now held to cut off review in federal habeas corpus proceedings. But in the two preceding cases where the State Supreme Court did review the evidence, this Court has also reviewed it. I find it difficult to agree with the soundness of a philosophy which prompts this Court to grant a second review where the state has granted one but to deny any review at all where the state has granted none.
“The Court thinks that to review this question and grant petitioners the protections guaranteed by the Constitution would ‘subvert the entire system of state criminal justice and destroy state energy in the detection and punishment of crime.’ I cannot agree. State systems are not so feeble. And the object of habeas corpus is to search records to prevent illegal imprisonments. To hold it unavailable under the circumstances here is to degrade it. I think Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U. S. 86, forbids this. In that case Negroes had been convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury selected under a *509practice of systematic exclusion of Negroes from juries. The State Supreme Court had refused to consider this discrimination on the ground that the objection to it had come too late. This Court had denied certiorari. Later a federal district court summarily dismissed a petition for habeas corpus alleging the foregoing and other very serious acts of trial unfairness, all of which had been urged upon this Court in the prior certiorari petition. This Court nevertheless held that the District Court had committed error in refusing to examine the facts alleged. I read Moore v. Dempsey, supra, as standing for the principle that it is never too late for courts in habeas corpus proceedings to look straight through procedural screens in order to prevent forfeiture of life or liberty in flagrant defiance of the Constitution. Cf. United States v. Kennedy, 157 F. 2d 811, 813. Perhaps there is no more exalted judicial function. I am willing to agree that it should not be exercised in cases like these except under special circumstances or in extraordinary situations. But I cannot join in any opinion that attempts to confine the Great Writ within rigid formalistic boundaries.” Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S., at 552-554.
With respect to the specific argument that the Court should not permit federal habeas corpus to be used as a substitute for a state appeal, Justice Frankfurter similarly responded:
“The basic reason for closing both the federal and State courts to the petitioners on such serious claims and under these circumstances is the jejune abstraction that habeas corpus cannot be used for an appeal. Judge Soper dealt with the deceptiveness of this formula by quoting what Judge Learned Hand had found to be the truth in regard to this generality thirty years ago:
“We shall not discuss at length the occasions which will justify resort to the writ, where the objection has been *510open on appeal. After a somewhat extensive review of the authorities twenty-four years ago, I concluded that the law was in great confusion; and the decisions since then have scarcely tended to sharpen the lines. We can find no more definite rule than that the writ is available, not only to determine points of jurisdiction, stricti juris, and constitutional questions; but whenever else resort to it is necessary to prevent a complete miscarriage of justice.’ Kulick v. Kennedy, 157 F. 2d 811, 813.” Id., at 558 (dissenting opinion).
Thus, in their Daniels dissents, both Justice Black and Justice Frankfurter vigorously disagreed with the Court’s view that the petitioners’ appellate default — their failure to file a timely appeal — barred review of a meritorious constitutional claim.
As noted, the view of the Daniels Court on the propriety of federal habeas proceedings after a procedural default was repudiated in Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963), a case which also concerned an appellate default. Noia had made a timely objection to the admissibility of his confession in his trial on a charge of felony murder, but he allowed the time for a direct appeal to lapse without seeking review by a New York appellate court. In response to his subsequent application for a federal writ of habeas corpus, the State admitted that his conviction rested on a confession that had been obtained from him in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but contended that his failure to appeal foreclosed any relief in the federal courts. This Court rejected that contention. In a comprehensive opinion the Court restated three propositions of law that have not thereafter been questioned; the Noia opinion also, however, contained certain dicta that has been qualified by later opinions.
The propositions that Noia firmly established are these:. First, the power of the federal district court to issue the writ of habeas corpus survives an adverse decision by a state court, whether the state judgment is based on a review of the *511merits of the federal claim or on the applicant’s procedural default.16 Second, although a State’s interest in orderly appellate procedure justifies a denial of appellate review in the state system when the inadvertence or neglect of defense counsel causes a procedural default, that state interest is not sufficient to bar a federal remedy in appropriate cases.17 *512Third, as the converse of the second proposition, Noia also holds that the federal district court has discretion to deny relief based on state procedural defaults in appropriate cases.18 None of these propositions has been questioned in any subsequent case.
The dicta in the Noia opinion that has been questioned was an attempt to prescribe a rather rigid limitation on the district court’s discretion to deny habeas corpus relief based on the applicant’s procedural default. The opinion set forth a standard that seemingly required federal judges to excuse every procedural default unless the habeas applicant had personally approved of his lawyer’s deliberate decision to bypass an available state procedure.19 The breadth of that dicta was *513ultimately disavowed in Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S., at 87-88,20 but the Court has remained faithful to the specific holding in Noia — that appellate default in the state system need not bar federal habeas review — as well as to the basic principles announced in that opinion.
Finally, in Reed v. Ross, 468 U. S. 1 (1984), we again considered the consequences of an appellate procedural default. The defendant had not raised the constitutional error in his appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court. Relying on Fay v. Noia, we reaffirmed that the federal court has power to look beyond the state procedural default and entertain the state prisoner’s application for a writ of habeas corpus.21 In determining whether the power should be exercised, we found that the requirements of “cause” and “prejudice” that had been discussed in Wainwright v. Sykes had both been satisfied. The “cause” for the failure to object was the fact that counsel had not anticipated later decisions from this Court that supported the claim. We explained:
*514“[T]he cause requirement may be satisfied under certain circumstances when a procedural failure is not attributable to an intentional decision by counsel made in pursuit of his client’s interests. And the failure of counsel to raise a constitutional issue reasonably unknown to him is one situation in which the requirement is met.” Reed v. Ross, 468 U. S., at 14.
In the Reed opinion we carefully identified the valid state interest that is served by enforcing a procedural default that forecloses state appellate review of a federal constitutional claim, id., at 10-11; ante, at 490-491. But we squarely held that this interest is not sufficient to defeat a meritorious federal claim:
“It is true that finality will be disserved if the federal courts reopen a state prisoner’s case, even to review claims that were so novel when the cases were in state court that no one would have recognized them. This Court has never held, however, that finality, standing alone, provides a sufficient reason for federal courts to compromise their protection of constitutional rights under §225Jp.” 468 U. S., at 15 (emphasis added).
We thus concluded that the appellate default would not bar federal consideration of the constitutional claim.
Like the Daniels dissenters, then, in Fay and in Reed, against the backdrop of appellate defaults, the Court stressed that the State’s interest in finality does not preclude review of the federal constitutional claim in a federal habeas court. To be sure, these opinions suggested that the power to hear claims which had been defaulted on appeal should be used sparingly — in “special circumstances,” in the absence of “deliberate bypass,” upon a showing of “cause.” Even under such terms, however, our holding in Reed governs the case before us today. If the State’s interest in the finality of its judgment is not sufficient to defeat a meritorious federal claim that was not raised on appeal because the prisoner’s *515lawyer did not have the ability to anticipate a later development in the law, there is no reason why the same state interest should defeat a meritorious federal claim simply because the prisoner’s lawyer did not exercise due care in prosecuting an appeal. There is no more reason to saddle an innocent prisoner with counsel’s omission in one case than in the other.
I — I
Procedural default that is adequate to foreclose appellate review of a claim of constitutional error in a state criminal trial should ordinarily also bar collateral review of such a claim in a federal district court. But the history of the Court’s jurisprudence interpreting the Acts of Congress authorizing the issuance of the writ of habeas corpus unambiguously requires that we carefully preserve the exception which enables the federal writ to grant relief in cases of manifest injustice. That exception cannot be adequately defined by a simply stated rule. The procedural default is always an important factor to be carefully reviewed; as Justice Frankfurter explained: “All that has gone before is not to be ignored as irrelevant.” Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S., at 500. But it is equally clear that the prisoner must always have some opportunity to reopen his case if he can make a sufficient showing that he is the victim of a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Whether the inquiry is channeled by the use of the terms “cause” and “prejudice” — or by the statutory duty to “dispose of the matter as law and justice require,” 28 U. S. C. §2243 — it is clear to me that appellate procedural default should not foreclose habeas corpus review of a meritorious constitutional claim that may establish the prisoner’s innocence.
The Court is therefore entirely correct in its decision to remand the case for further proceedings on the substance of respondent’s claim. Ante, at 497. Because we did not grant certiorari to consider the proper standard that should govern the further proceedings in the District Court, and because we *516have not had the benefit of briefs or argument concerning that standard, I express no opinion on the Court’s suggestion that the absence of “cause” for his procedural default requires respondent to prove that the “constitutional violation has probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent,” ante, at 496, or on the relationship of that standard to the principles explicated in United States v. Bagley, 473 U. S. 667 (1985); United States v. Agurs, 427 U. S. 97 (1976); and Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963). There will be time enough to consider the proper standard after the District Court has examined the victim’s statements and made whatever findings may be appropriate to determine whether “law and justice require” the issuance of the Great Writ in this case.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment but not in the Court’s opinion.

See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S., at 87 (“The principle ... is not punishment of society for misdeeds of a prosecutor but avoidance of an unfair trial to the accused. Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted but when criminal trials are fair; our system of the administration of justice suffers when any accused is treated unfairly”); United States v. Bagley, 473 U. S., at 675 (“The Brady rule is based on the requirement of due process. Its purpose is ... to ensure that a miscarriage of justice does not occur”).

 See Carrier v. Hutto, 724 F. 2d 396, 399 (CA4 1983) (“Carrier urges that the standard which should have been employed by the court in delimiting discovery was whether the evidence specifically requested was ‘material ... to guilt,’ Brady, 373 U. S., at 87 . . . not whether it was exculpatory”).

 Indeed, a major element of respondent’s defense was precisely that the victim’s identification was mistaken. See Tr. 152-207 (cross-examination of victim); id., at 554-560 (defense closing argument’s discussion of problems with victim’s identification).

 See 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *129~*138.

 Art. I, §9, cl. 2.

 Act of Sept. 24, 1789, ch. 20, § 14, 1 Stat. 81-82.

 Judiciary Act of Feb. 5, 1867, ch. 28, 14 Stat. 385-386.

 See also Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 697 (1984) (“fundamental fairness is the central concern of the writ of habeas corpus”). Although a constitutional claim that may establish innocence is clearly the most compelling case for habeas review, it is by no means the only type of constitutional claim that implicates “fundamental fairness” and that compels review regardless of possible procedural defaults. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S. 509, 543-544 (1982) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

 In 1963, when the Court decided Shotwell Mfg. Co. v. United States, 371 U. S. 341, Rule 12(b)(2) provided in relevant part:
“Defenses and objections based on defects in the institution of the prosecution or in the indictment or information other than that it fails to show jurisdiction in the court or to charge an offense may be raised only by motion before trial. .. . Failure to present any such defense or objection as herein provided constitutes a waiver thereof, but the court for cause shown may grant relief from the waiver.” See 371 U. S., at 362.
Rule 12 has been amended since 1963 but it retains the provision for an express waiver subject to the proviso that “the court for cause shown may grant relief from the waiver.” See Rule 12(f).

 “Finally, both courts below have found that petitioners were not prejudiced in any way by the alleged illegalities in the selection of the ju*503ries. Nor do petitioners point to any resulting prejudice. In Ballard it was said (at p. 195) that ‘reversible error does not depend on a showing of prejudice in an individual case.’ However, where, as here, objection to the jury selection has not been timely raised under Rule 12(b)(2), it is entirely proper to take absence of prejudice into account in determining whether a sufficient showing has been made to warrant relief from the effect of that Rule.” 371 U. S., at 363 (footnote omitted).

In the concurring opinion cited by the Court, presumably with approval, I had written:
“The notion that a client must always consent to a tactical decision not to assert a constitutional objection to a proffer of evidence has always seemed unrealistic to me. Conversely, if the constitutional issue is sufficiently grave, even an express waiver by the defendant himself may sometimes be excused. Matters such as the competence of counsel, the procedural context in which the asserted waiver occurred, the character of the constitutional right at stake, and the overall fairness of the entire proceeding, may be more significant than the language of the test the Court purports to apply.” Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 94-96 (1977) (footnotes omitted; emphasis added).

 Inconsistently, in Engle v. Isaac, alongside its references to fundamental fairness, the Court also emphasized that a failure to show cause could bar review regardless of the character of the claim. See, e. g., 456 U. S., at 134, n. 43 (“Since we conclude that these respondents lacked cause for their default, we do not consider whether they also suffered actual prejudice. Respondents urge that their prejudice was so great that it should permit relief even in the absence of cause. Sykes, however, stated these criteria in the conjunctive and the facts of these cases do not persuade us to depart from that approach”); id,., at 129 (“The costs outlined above do not depend upon the type of claim raised by the prisoner. While the nature of a constitutional claim may affect the calculation of cause and prejudice, it does not alter the need to make that threshold showing”). The Court’s rigid invocation of the “cause” obstacle in ah opinion that also emphasized the demands of “fundamental fairness” illustrates the confusion that has accompanied the Court’s creation and imposition of the cause- *506and-prejudice standard. See also id., at 126 (“Today, as in prior centuries, the writ is a bulwark against convictions that violate ‘fundamental fairness’”) (quoting Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S., at 97 (Stevens, J., concurring)).

 See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S., at 90. Cf. Engle v. Isaac, 456 U. S., at 136, n. 1 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“The failure to object generally indicates that defense counsel felt that the trial error was not critical to his client’s case; presumably, therefore, the error did not render the trial fundamentally unfair”). Even in the trial context, however, the lack of objection should not be completely preclu-sive. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U. S., at 547-548, n. 17 (Stevens, J., dissenting):
“The failure of otherwise competent defense counsel to raise an objection at trial is often a reliable indication that the defendant was not denied fundamental fairness in the state-court proceedings. The person best qualified to recognize such error is normally a defendant’s own lawyer. Thus, in searching for fundamental unfairness in a trial record, I attach great importance to the character of the objection, if any, asserted by the defendant’s counsel. But if such error is manifest, I would not wrestle with terms such as ‘cause’ and ‘prejudice’ to determine whether habeas corpus relief should be granted.”

 Commenting on the holding in Daniels, Justice Harlan wrote:
“Language in Mr. Justice Reed’s opinion for the Court appeared to support the result alternatively in terms of waiver, failure to exhaust state remedies, and the existence of an adequate state ground. But while the explanation may have been ambiguous, the result was clear: habeas corpus would not lie for a prisoner who was detained pursuant to a state judgment which, in the view of the majority in Daniels, rested on a reasonable application of the State’s own procedural requirements.” Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 461-462 (1963) (dissenting opinion) (footnotes omitted).

 Indeed, even the dissenters in Fay v. Noia did not defend the specific analysis in Daniels. See 372 U. S., at 462 (Harlan, J., dissenting) (“I do not pause to reconsider here the question whether the state ground in Daniels was an adequate one; persuasive arguments can be made that it was not”).

 “We have reviewed the development of habeas corpus at some length because the question of the instant case has obvious importance to the proper accommodation of a great constitutional privilege and the requirements of the federal system. Our survey discloses nothing to suggest that the Federal District Court lacked the power to order Noia discharged because of a procedural forfeiture he may have incurred under state law. On the contrary, the nature of the writ at common law, the language and purpose of the Act of February 5, 1867, and the course of decisions in this Court extending over nearly a century are wholly irreconcilable with such a limitation. At the time the privilege of the writ was written into the Federal Constitution it was settled that the writ lay to test any restraint contrary to fundamental law, which in England stemmed ultimately from Magna Charta but in this country was embodied in the written Constitution. Congress in 1867 sought to provide a federal forum for state prisoners having constitutional defenses by extending the habeas corpus powers of the federal courts to their constitutional maximum. Obedient to this purpose, we have consistently held that federal court jurisdiction is conferred by the allegation of an unconstitutional restraint and is not defeated by anything that may occur in the state court proceedings. State procedural rules plainly must yield to this overriding federal policy.” 372 U. S., at 426-427.

 “A man under conviction for crime has an obvious inducement to do his very best to keep his state remedies open, and not stake his all on the outcome of a federal habeas proceeding which, in many respects, may be less advantageous to him than a state court proceeding. See Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 547-548. And if because of inadvertence or neglect he runs afoul of a state procedural requirement, and thereby forfeits his state remedies, appellate and collateral, as well as direct review thereof in this Court, those consequences should be sufficient to vindicate the State’s valid interest in orderly procedure. Whatever residuum of state interest there may be under such circumstances is manifestly insufficient in the face of the federal policy, drawn from the ancient principles of the writ of ha-beas corpus, embodied both in the Federal Constitution and in the habeas corpus provisions of the Judicial Code, and consistently upheld by this *512Court, of affording an effective remedy for restraints contrary to the Constitution.” Id., at 433-434.

 “Discretion is implicit in the statutory command that the judge, after granting the writ and holding a hearing of appropriate scope, ‘dispose of the matter as law and justice require,’ 28 U. S. C. §2243; and discretion was the flexible concept employed by the federal courts in developing the exhaustion rule. Furthermore, habeas corpus has traditionally been regarded as governed by equitable principles. United States ex rel. Smith v. Baldi, 344 U. S. 561, 573 (dissenting opinion). Among them is the principle that a suitor’s conduct in relation to the matter at hand may disentitle him to the relief he seeks. Narrowly circumscribed, in conformity to the historical role of the writ of habeas corpus as an effective and imperative remedy for detentions contrary to fundamental law, the principle is unexceptionable.” Id., at 438.

 “If a habeas applicant, after consultation with competent counsel or otherwise, understandingly and knowingly forewent the privilege of seeking to vindicate his federal claims in the state courts, whether for strategic, tactical, or any other reasons that can fairly be described as the deliberate by-passing of state procedures, then it is open to the federal court on ha-beas to deny him all relief if the state courts refused to entertain his federal claims on the merits — though of course only after the federal court has satisfied itself, by holding a hearing or by some other means, of the facts bearing upon the applicant’s default. Cf. Price v. Johnston, 334 U. S. 266, 291. At all events we wish it clearly understood that the standard here put forth depends on the considered choice of the petitioner. Cf. Camley v. Cochran, 369 U. S. 506, 513-517; Moore v. Michigan, 355 U. S. 155, *513162-165. A choice made by counsel not participated in by the petitioner does not automatically bar relief.” Id., at 439 (footnote omitted).

 “It is the sweeping language of Fay v. Noia, going far beyond the facts of the case eliciting it, which we today reject.” 433 U. S., at 87-88.
“We have no occasion today to consider the Fay rule as applied to the facts there confronting the Court. . . .
“The Court in Fay stated its knowing-and-deliberate-waiver rule in language which applied not only to the waiver of the right to appeal, but to failures to raise individual substantive objections in the state trial.” Id., at 88, n. 12.

 “Our decisions have uniformly acknowledged that federal courts are empowered under 28 U. S. C. § 2254 to look beyond a state procedural forfeiture and entertain a state prisoner’s contention that his constitutional rights have been violated. See, e. g., Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536, 538 (1976); Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 398-399 (1963). See generally W. Duker, A Constitutional History of Habeas Corpus 181-211 (1980). The more difficult question, and the one that lies at the heart of this case is: What standards should govern the exercise of the habeas court’s equitable discretion in the use of this power?” 468 U. S., at 9.