Dretke v. Haley - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in No. 02-1824, Dretke against Haley will be announced by Justice O’Connor.

Argument of Justice O’connor

Mr. O’connor: This habeas corpus case comes to us on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

That Court held that the respondent, Michael Wayne Haley, was not barred from asserting his procedurally defaulted challenge to the State Courts in position of a recidivous sentencing enhancement, because he was actually innocent of defactual predicate giving rise to the enhancement.

We vacate that judgment and remand for further proceedings.

The respondent’s sentence for theft was enhanced under Texas’ habitual offender statute based on two prior felony convictions.

As it turns out, the evidence concerning the timing of one of his prior convictions was insufficient to support the particular enhancement.

Respondent did not object to that insufficiency until state postconviction proceedings.

The State Court dismissed the objection on procedural grounds and denied the accompany ineffective of assistance of counsel claim.

Although the insufficiency claim was procedurally defaulted then when the respondent filed for a federal habeas corpus, the District Court heard it nonetheless on the grounds that respondent was actually innocent of one of the factual predicates giving rise to the sentence enhancement.

The District Court granted relief on the insufficiency claim.

It did not reach the ineffective assistance of counsel question and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed.

Normally, claims of error in a criminal trial which are not timely made in State Court cannot later be made by the defendant in a federal habeas proceeding.

We have recognized a narrow exception to the procedural default rule where a habeas applicant can demonstrate actual innocence of the substantive offense or in the capital sentencing context of the aggravating circumstances rendering him eligible for the death penalty.

We do not decide today whether this exception extends to the noncapital sentencing context and instead hold that a Federal Court on habeas faced with allegations of actual innocence must first address all nondefaulted claims for comparable relief on other grounds as for cause to excuse the procedural default, and this avoidance principle was implicit in our earlier actual innocence cases.

Now here, the respondent has, as the state conceives, a significant ineffective assistance of counsel claim that the District Court should have considered before reaching the actual innocence question.

Doing so would have avoided the difficult constitutional and other legal questions implicated by extending the actual innocence exception into the noncapital sentencing context.

The State has told us that it will not seek to reincarcerate the respondent during the pendancy of this ineffective assistance claim.

Justice Stevens has written a dissenting opinion in which Justices Souter and Kennedy joined; Justice Kennedy has also written a dissenting opinion.