Castille v. Peoples

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Following a jury trial in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, respondent Michael Peoples, who had been arrested for robbing a man and then setting him on fire, was convicted of “arson-endangering persons,” aggravated assault, and robbery. The Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed his conviction on direct appeal. Commonwealth v. Peoples, 319 Pa. Super. 621 , 466 A. 2d 720 (1983). Respondent then filed a pro se petition for allocatur and appointment of counsel with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Under Pennsylvania law, such allocatur review “is not a matter of right, but of sound judicial discretion, and an appeal will be allowed only when there are special and important reasons therefor.” Pa. Rule App. Proc. 1114. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted the request for counsel without reaching the merits of the claims presented. Shortly thereafter, respondent, represented by appointed counsel, submitted a second petition for allocatur, raising some, but not all, of the claims he had raised pro se. On November 4, 1985, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied the second petition without opinion.

On July 28, 1986, respondent filed a petition for federal ha-beas relief in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, asserting: (1) that the prosecutor violated state law, and thereby due process, by cross-

After reviewing the procedural history of each claim, the District Court denied relief and dismissed the petition for failure to exhaust state remedies. Upon respondent’s appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed and remanded for a hearing on the merits. Peoples v. Fulcomer, 838 F. 2d 462 (1987) (judgment order). The court found that claims (2) and (4) had first been raised in one or the other of the unsuccessful petitions for allocatur, but, without considering whether respondent could obtain review of these claims on state collateral review, held that such presentation sufficiently exhausted state remedies. Specifically, the Court of Appeals held that claims raised by respondent in either his pro se petition for allocatur or his later counseled petition for allocatur were exhausted by virtue of their inclusion in such petitions. It believed this result dictated by Chaussard v. Fulcomer, 816 F. 2d 925 (1987), an earlier Third Circuit opinion, which had read our case law to provide that “the exhaustion rule is satisfied when the state courts have had an ‘opportunity to pass upon and correct’ alleged violations of a prisoner’s federal constitutional rights.” Id., at 928 , quoting Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 , 438 (1963). The Chaussard panel concluded that the discretionary nature of allocatur review by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court “does not affect the fact that [the] petition for allocatur . . . gave the highest Pennsylvania state court the opportunity to cor

The Third Circuit’s analysis in the present case derives from the manner in which we applied the holding of Brown in Smith v. Digmon, 434 U. S. 332 (1978) (per curiam), where, on direct review, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals had failed to address explicitly a claim that had been properly presented. Chaussard, supra, at 928-929 . Finding for the petitioner, we stated in Digmon that “[i]t is too obvious to merit extended discussion that whether the exhaustion requirement of 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (b) has been satisfied cannot turn upon whether a state appellate court chooses to ignore in its opinion a federal constitutional claim squarely raised in petitioner’s brief in the state court, and, indeed, in this case, vigorously opposed in the State’s brief.” Digmon, supra, at

Although we have- rejected a narrow interpretation of § 2254(c), we have not blue-penciled the provision from the text of the statute. It is reasonable to infer an exception where the State has actually passed upon the claim, as in Brown; and where the claim has been presented as of right but ignored (and therefore impliedly rejected), as in Digmon. In both those contexts, it is fair to assume that further state proceedings would be useless. Such an assumption is not appropriate, however — and the inference of an exception to the requirement of § 2254(c) is therefore not justified — where the claim has been presented for the first and only time in a procedural context in which its merits will not be considered unless “there are special and important reasons therefor,” Pa. Rule App. Proc. 1114. Raising the claim in such a fashion does not, for the relevant purpose, constitute “fair presentation.” See Ex parte Hawk, 321 U. S. 114 (1944) (application to Nebraska Supreme Court for original writ of habeas corpus does not exhaust state remedies); Pitchess v. Davis, 421 U. S. 482 (1975) (per curiam) (motions to the California Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court for a pretrial writ of prohibition do not exhaust state remedies).

It follows from what we have said that it was error for the Court of Appeals to rest a conclusion of exhaustion upon respondent’s presentation of his claims in petitions for allo-catur. The requisite exhaustion may nonetheless exist, of course, if it is clear that respondent’s claims are now procedurally barred under Pennsylvania law. See, e. g., Engle v.

It is so ordered.