Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) restricts the circumstances under which a federal habeas court may grant relief to a state prisoner whose claim has already been “adjudicated on the merits in State court.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). Specifically, if a claim has been “adjudicated on the merits in State court,” a federal habeas court may not grant relief unless “the adjudication of the claim—
“(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or
“(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” Ibid.
Because the requirements of § 2254(d) are difficult to meet, it is important whether a federal claim was “adjudicated on the merits in State court,” and this case requires us to ascertain the meaning of the adjudication-on-the-merits requirement. This issue arises when a defendant convicted in state court attempts to raise a federal claim, either on direct appeal or in a collateral state proceeding, and a state court rules against the defendant and issues an opinion that addresses some issues but does not expressly address the federal claim in question. If this defendant then raises the same claim in a federal habeas proceeding, should the federal
We believe that the answer to this question follows logically from our decision in Harrington v. Richter,
Applying this rule in the present case, we hold that the federal claim at issue here (a Sixth Amendment jury trial claim) must be presumed to have been adjudicated on the merits by the California courts, that this presumption was not adequately rebutted, that the restrictive standard of review set out in § 2254(d)(2) consequently applies, and that under that standard respondent is not entitled to habeas relief. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
A
In October 1993, respondent Tara Williams took two of her friends for a drive in southern California with the objective of committing a robbery. They stopped at a liquor store in Long Beach, and while Williams waited in the getaway car, her friends stole money from the cash register and fatally shot the store’s owner. Williams then drove one of her
At trial, Williams admitted that she had served as the getaway driver but claimed that she did not know that her friends were going to rob the liquor store at the particular time in question. Instead, she contended that the three friends had agreed only that they would “case” the store and would possibly return later that evening to rоb it. The State countered that, regardless of whether Williams knew precisely when and where the robbery was to take place, she had agreed to help commit a robbery and that this was sufficient to provide the predicate for felony murder under California law.
After deliberating for about three hours, the jury foreman sent the judge two notes. The first note asked the following question:
“ Ts it legally permissible for a juror to interpret. . . the jury instructions to mean that the conspiracy should involve a plan to commit a specific robbery rather than a general plan to commit robberies in the future?’” Tr. 1247.
The second note stated:
“I wish to inform you that we have one juror who . . . has expressed an intention to disregard the law . . . and ... has expressed concern relative to the severity of the charge (first degree murder).” Id., at 1246.
The judge told the jury that the answer to the question in the first note was “no.” Id., at 1249. Then, over Williams’ objection, the judge briefly questioned the foreman outside the presence of the rest of the jury about the second note. The foreman said that he thought the judge’s answer to the first note might resolve the problem, and the judge instructed the jury to resume its deliberations.
The next morning, once again over Williams’ objection, the judge decided to inquire further about the foreman’s second
B
On appeal to the California Court of Appeal, Williams argued, among other things, that the discharge of Juror 6 violated both thе Sixth Amendment and the California Penal Code, which allows a California trial judge to dismiss a juror who “upon ... good cause shown to the court is found to be unable to perform his or her duty.” Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 1089 (West 2004). Although Williams’ brief challenged the questioning and dismissal of Juror 6 on both state and federal grounds, it did not clearly distinguish between these two lines of authority.
In a written opinion affirming Williams’ conviction, the California Court of Appeal devoted several pages to discussing the propriety of the trial judge’s decision to dismiss the juror. People v. Taylor, No. B137365 (Mar. 27, 2001). The court held that Juror 6 had been properly dismissed for bias and quoted this Court’s definition of “impartiality” in United States v. Wood,
Williams petitioned the California Supreme Court for review, and while her petition was pending, that court decided People v. Cleveland,
On remand, the California Court of Appeal issued a revised opinion holding that the trial court had not abused its discretion by questioning the jury and dismissing Juror 6. Williams argued that Juror 6—like the holdout juror in Cleveland—was dismissed because he was uncooperative with other jurors whо did not share his view of the evidence. But the California Court of Appeal disagreed, explaining that Williams’ argument “not only misstate[d] the evidence,” but also “ignore[d] the trial court’s explanation that it was discharging Juror No. 6 because he had shown himself to be biased, not because he was failing to deliberate or engaging in juror nullification.” People v. Taylor, No. B137365 (Jan. 18, 2002), App. to Pet. for Cert. 105a. As in its earlier opinion, the California Court of Appeal quoted our definition of juror bias in Wood, but the court did not expressly acknowledge that Williams had invoked a federal basis for her argument. Despite that omission, however, Williams did not seek rehearing or otherwise suggest that the court had overlooked her federal claim. Instead, she filed another petition for reviеw in the California Supreme Court, but this time that court denied relief in a one-sentence order. People v. Taylor, No. S104661 (Apr. 10, 2002), App. to Pet. for Cert. 85a.
The Ninth Circuit reversed. Unlike the District Court, the Ninth Circuit declined to apply the deferential standard of review contained in § 2254(d). The Ninth Circuit took this approach beсause it thought it “obvious” that the State Court of Appeal had “overlooked or disregarded” Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim.
A
As noted above, AEDPA sharply limits the circumstances in which a federal court may issue a writ of habeas corpus tо a state prisoner whose claim was “adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). In Richter,
Our reasoning in Richter points clearly to the answer to the question presented in the case at hand. Although Rich-. ter itself concerned a state-court order that did not address any of the defendant’s claims, we see no reason why the Richter presumption should not also apply when a state-court opinion addresses some but not all of a defendant's claims. There would be a reason for drawing a distinction between these two situations if opinions issued by state appellate courts always separately addressed every single claim that is mentioned in a defendant’s papers. If there were such a uniform practice, then federal habeas courts could assume that any unaddressed federal claim was simply overlooked.
No such assumption is warranted, however, because it is not the uniform practice of busy state courts to discuss separately every single claim to which a defendant makes even a passing reference. On the contrary, there are several situations in which state courts frequеntly take a different course.
First, there are circumstances in which a line of state precedent is viewed as fully incorporating a related federal constitutional right. In California, for example, the state con
Second, a state court may not regard a fleeting reference to a provision of the Federal Constitution or federal precedent as sufficient to raise a separate federal claim. Federal courts of appeals refuse to take cognizance of arguments that are made in passing without proper development. See, e. g., United States v. Cloud,
Third, there are instаnces in which a state court may simply regard a claim as too insubstantial to merit discussion. Indeed, the California Court of Appeal has expressly stated that it has no obligation to address claims that lack arguable merit. See People v. Rojas,
In sum, because it is by no means uncommon for a state court to fail to address separately a federal claim that the court has not simply overlooked, we see no sound reаson for
B
Not satisfied with a strong but rebuttable presumption, petitioner urges us to make the presumption irrebuttable. Specifically, petitioner contends that a state court must be regarded as having adjudicated a federal claim on the merits if the state court addressed “the substance of [an] asserted trial error.” Brief for Petitioner 27. Suppose, for example, that a defendant claimed in state court that something that occurred at trial violated both a provision of the Federal Constitution and a related provision of state law, and suppose further that the state court, in denying relief, made no reference to federal law. According to petitioner’s argument, a federal habeas court would be required to proceed on the assumption that the federal claim was adjudicated on the merits.
This argument goes too far. To be sure, if the state-law rule subsumes the federal standard—that is, if it is at least as protective as the federal standard—then the federal claim may be regarded as having been adjudicated on the merits. See Early v. Packer,
The language of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d) makes it clear that this provision applies only when a federal claim was “adjudicated on the merits in State court.” A judgment is normally said to have been rendered “on the merits” only if it was “delivered after the court . . . heard and evaluated the evidence and the parties’ substantive arguments.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1199 (9th ed. 2009) (emphasis added). And as used in this context, the word “merits” is defined as “[t]he intrinsic rights and wrongs of a case as determined by matters of substance, in distinction from matters of form.” Webster’s New International Dictionary 1540 (2d ed. 1954) (emphasis added); see also, e. g., 9 Oxford English Dictionary 634 (2d ed. 1989) {“the intrinsic ‘rights and wrongs’ of the matter, in contradistinction to extraneous points such as the competence of the tribunal or the like” (emphasis added)); Random House Dictionary of the English Language 897 (1967) (“the intrinsic right and wrong of a matter, as a law case, unobscured by procedural details, technicalities, personal feelings, etc.” (emphasis added)). If a federal claim is
Nor does petitioner’s preferred approach follow inexorably from AEDPA’s deferential architecture. Even while leaving “primary responsibility” for adjudicating federal claims to the States, Woodford v. Visciotti,
We are not persuaded that applying a rebuttable presumption in this context will be unduly burdensome for federal courts. Before Richter, every Court of Appeals to consider the issue allowed a prisoner to argue that a state court had overlooked his federal claim.
Applying the presumption of merits adjudication to the facts of this case, we hold thаt the Ninth Circuit erred by finding that the California Court of Appeal overlooked Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim. Several facts make this conclusion inescapable.
Most important is the state court’s discussion of Cleveland,
The Ninth Circuit’s conclusion to the contrary rested on the fact that Cleveland refused to follow Symington, Brown, and Thomas.
Regardless of whether a California court would consider Williams’ § 1089 and Sixth Amendment claims to be perfectly coextensive, the fact that these claims are so similar makes it unlikely that the California Court of Appeal decided one while overlooking the other. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any panel of appellate judges reading Cleveland and passing on the propriety of dismissing a holdout juror under § 1089 without realizing that such situations also bear on the federal constitutional right to a fair trial. The California
Williams’ litigation strategy supports the same result. Throughout her state proceedings, Williams treated her state and federal claims as interchangeable, and it is hardly surprising that the state courts did so as well. See Brief for Appellant in No. B137365 (Cal. App.), App. 29 (citing § 1089 precedent and concluding that Williams “was accordingly denied her Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury”). After the California Court of Appeal rendered its decision, Williams neither petitioned that court for rehearing nor argued in the subsequent state and federal proceedings that the stаte court had failed to adjudicate her Sixth Amendment claim on the merits. The possibility that the California Court of Appeal had simply overlooked Williams’ Sixth Amendment claim apparently did not occur to anyone until that issue was raised by two judges during the oral argument in the Ninth Circuit. See
We think it exceedingly unlikely that the California Court of Appeal overlooked Williams’ federal claim, and the Ninth Circuit’s judgment to the contrary is reversed. The case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
Consistent with our decision in Ylst v. Nunnemaker,
See, e. g., Judicial Council of California, 2011 Court Statistics Report, Statewide Caseload Trends, 2000-2001 Through 2009-2010, p. 15 (observing that in fiscal year 2009-2010, the 105-judge California Court of Appeal produced opinions in 10,270 cases), online at http://www.courts.ca.gov/ documents/201 lCourtStatisticsReport.pdf (all Internet materials as visited Jan. 24, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file); In re Certification of Need for Additional Judges,
For example, when a defendant does so little to raise his claim that he fails to “'fairly present’” it in “each appropriate state court,” Baldwin v. Reese,
See, e.g., Lyell v. Renico,
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the Court’s rejection of the proposition that a judgment denying a federal claim is irrebuttably presumed to have been “adjudicated on the merits” within the meaning
In the Court’s view, a habeas petitioner receives de novo review if he can prove that the state court, although addressing his state claim, overlooked his federal claim. A nonex-haustive list of factors, we are told, may bear on the analysis: state-court opinion-writing practices, ante, at 298-299; state-law precedents and whether and how they incorporate federal law, ante, at 298; substantiality of the federal claim, ante, at 299-300; citations to federal cases in state-court opinions (or citations to state cases that contain citations to federal cases), ante, at 304-305; the degree of similarity between the federal and state claim, ante, at 305-306; a petitioner’s “litigation strategy,” ante, at 306; and other clues that may possibly illuminate the inner thought processes of a state-court judge. Only after conducting its own detective work does the Court conclude that the federal claim was not overlooked in this case.
This complex exercise is unnecessary. A judgment that denies relief necessarily denies—and thus adjudicates—all the claims a petitioner has raised. See 1 H. Black, Law of Judgments § 1, p. 2 (2d ed. 1902) (“[T]he judgment necessаrily affirms, or else denies, that [an alleged] duty or ... liability rests upon the person against whom the aid of the law is invoked”); id., § 24, at 37. The judgment itself gives conclusive expression that the claims have been considered and
The Court maintains that “[i]f a federal claim is rejected as a result of sheer inadvertence, it has not been evaluated based on the intrinsic right and wrong of the matter,” ante, at 302-303. Perhaps not, but it nonetheless may have been rejected “on the merits.” That phrase does not suggest a line between a considered rejection of a claim and an unconsidered, inadequately considered, or inadvertent rejection. Rather, it refers to a “determination that there exist or do not exist grounds entitling a petitioner” to relief under his claim, as contrasted with a “denial for such reasons as failure to exhaust, procedural default, or statute-of-limitations bar.” Gonzalez v. Crosby,
We apply a presumption of merits determination in that sense not just with respect to § 2254(d) but for other purposes as well. We have long applied it, fоr example, in determining whether a claim is barred by res judicata:
“Ordinarily, such a question is answered by a mere inspection of the decree—the presumption being that a dismissal in equity, without qualifying words, is a final decision on the merits. That presumption of finality...*309 disappears whenever the record shows that the court did not pass upon the merits but dismissed the bill because of a want of jurisdiction, for want of parties, because the suit was brought prematurely, because the plaintiff had a right to file a subsequent bill on the same subject-matter, or on any other ground not going to the merits.” Swift v. McPherson,232 U. S. 51 , 55-56 (1914) (emphasis added).
See also Hubbell v. United States,
We also apply a presumption of merits determination in the sense I have described for purposes of 28 U. S. C. § 1257, which imposes a federal-question requirement as a condition of this Court’s appellаte jurisdiction. Michigan v. Long,
Given this background, there is no reason to believe that AEDPA established a new and peculiar regime in which the federal habeas court must make one assessment of whether the federal question has been decided “on the merits” for
But, it will be argued, how can a court “defer” to a state-court determination that was in fact never made? Must not one first be sure it exists before one can accord it respect? The answer is no; according respect only to determinations that have for sure been made is demonstrably not the scheme that AEDPA envisions. Federal habeas courts defer to state determinations that may in fact never have been made whenever they find a summary, unexplained rejection of a federal claim to be sustainable (e. g., not contrary to clearly established federal law as determined by this Court). The validating basis that the federal habeas court posits need not have been the one that the statе court actually relied upon; the state court may well have applied a theory that was flat-out wrong, and may not have made the subsidiary determinations (including factual assessments) necessary to support the correct theory. That does not matter. For what is accorded deference is not the state court’s reasoning but the state court’s judgment, which is presumed to be supported by whatever valid support was available. See Harrington, supra, at 102 (“Under § 2254(d), a habeas court must determine what arguments or theories supported or, as here, could have supported, the state court’s decision”). Indeed, the deference with regard to the basis of decision is much more “blind” than the deference I assert is necessary in thе present case. I demand a state-court statement (contained in the unqualified terms of its judgment) that it has rejected the federal claim; I simply refuse to question the veracity of that statement. By contrast, no statement is ever even required that the state court relied upon the theory of federal law that the habeas court finds validating.
Resolution of this case is direct: Respondent’s claim was “adjudicated on the merits,” because the state court rendered a judgment rejecting all her claims, and the judgment gave no indication (such as a statement that it was “without prejudice”) that it was based on a procedural or other non-merits ground.
The Court’s novel resolution of the “on the merits” question produces a clear enough answer in this case. The weight of the evidence demonstrated that it was “exceedingly unlikely” that the state court overlooked the federal сlaim. Ante, at 306. But such ready resolution will not be commonplace. Consider another case, where the federal and state claims are not related, where there is no relevant state precedent referring to federal law, where state law might be interpreted as less defendant-friendly than the federal standard, or where a confluence of such factors exists. The answer to whether the federal claim has been “evaluated based on the intrinsic right and wrong of the matter” is anybody’s guess. One thing, however, is certain: The Court’s case-by-case approach will guarantee protracted litigation over whether a state-court judge was aware of a claim on the day he rejected it.
The Court tells us not to worry about a flood of litigation, bеcause the Courts of Appeals have previously allowed argu
This newly-sponsored enterprise of probing the judicial mind is inaрpropriately intrusive upon state-court processes. Are federal habeas courts now to consider evidence relevant to the internal deliberations of the state judiciary? Can a petitioner introduce testimony showing that state-court judges—because of time constraints, heavy caseloads, or other reasons—fail to read the briefs but leave that to their assistants, whose recommendations they rarely reject? Or testimony showing that, typically, only one judge on the state-court appellate panel reads the briefs and considers all the claims, and the others simply join the drafted order? Has there been an “adjudication on the merits” then? Future litigation will supply the answers.
For these reasons, I do not join the opinion of the Court and concur only in the judgment.