Campbell v. Burris

• Decision Date: 14 February 2008
• Docket Number: No. 05-5156.,05-5156.
• Citation: 515 F.3d 172
• Parties: Jarnar L. CAMPBELL, Appellant v. * Acting Warden Elizabeth BURRIS; Office of the Attorney General of the State of Delaware. * (Substituted Pursuant to F.R.A.P. 43(c)).
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

515 F.3d 172

Jarnar L. CAMPBELL, Appellant v. * Acting Warden Elizabeth BURRIS; Office of the Attorney General of the State of Delaware.

* (Substituted Pursuant to F.R.A.P. 43(c)).

No. 05-5156.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued October 23, 2007.

Opinion Filed: February 14, 2008.

George A. Bibikos, (Argued), David R. Fine, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, Harrisburg, PA, Attorneys for Appellant.

Thomas E. Brown, (Argued), Deputy Attorney General, Delaware Department of Justice, Wilmington, DE, Attorney for Appellee.

Before: FISHER, STAPLETON and COWEN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

STAPLETON, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Jamar Campbell was convicted by a jury in 2001 of possession of crack cocaine with intent to deliver and possession of cocaine within three hundred feet of a park. He appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court of Delaware, which affirmed. After unsuccessfully seeking post-conviction relief in the Superior and Supreme Courts of Delaware, Campbell, acting pro se, filed this habeas proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the District Court. His petition and accompanying memorandum of law alleged ineffective assistance of counsel on a number of grounds and an assortment of six other violations of his federal constitutional rights.¹ The District Court concluded that all of Campbell's claims other than his ineffective assistance of counsel claims were unreviewable because the Delaware Supreme Court had rejected them pursuant to Delaware Supreme Court Rule 8, which provided an independent and adequate state law ground supporting that Court's judgment. Therefore, the Court reviewed those claims only for "cause and prejudice" or a "miscarriage of justice." See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 749-50, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). With respect to Campbell's ineffective assistance of counsel claims, the District Court held (1) that Campbell had failed to exhaust three of them in the state courts and had not shown cause and prejudice or a miscarriage of justice, and (2) that the Delaware Supreme Court's rejection of the remainder was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

This Court granted Campbell's application for a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1) with respect to the following issues: "(1) is Delaware Supreme Court Rule 8 an independent and adequate state ground that precludes federal habeas review . . . (2) did the District Court properly discern all of the ineffective assistance of counsel claims that Campbell presented to the state court, . . . and (3) was the Delaware Supreme Court's application of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 697, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) unreasonable." App. at 21a-22a. We also granted his application for appointment of counsel. We conclude (1) that Delaware Supreme Court Rule 8 provides an independent and adequate state law ground for the Delaware Supreme Court's judgment, (2) that any error of the District Court in rejecting three of Campbell's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel as unexhausted was harmless, and (3) that the Delaware Supreme Court's application of Strickland was not unreasonable.

I. Delaware Supreme Court Rule 8

Delaware Supreme Court Rule 8 provides:

Only questions fairly presented to the trial court may be presented for review;, provided, however, that when the interests of justice so require, the Court may consider and determine any question not so presented.

DEL.SUPR. CT. R. 8.

On Campbell's direct appeal, the Supreme Court of Delaware expressly invoked Rule 8 in the disposition of all of Campbell's claims other than his ineffective assistance of counsel claims. After ruling that Campbell's ineffective assistance claims would have to be pursued in a post-conviction relief proceeding, the Court turned to the first of the remaining six claims and ruled as follows:

We review this claim, as well as the rest of Campbell's claims, for plain error, since he raises them for the first time in this appeal. SUPR. CT. R.8; Wainwright v. State, 504 A.2d 1096 1100 (Del.1986). Plain error is error that is "so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the fairness and integrity of the trial process". Id.

Campbell v. State, 801 A.2d 10 (Del.2002). The Court held that all six of these claims failed to pass the "plain error" test.

As this ruling and the citation to Wainwright indicate, the "interest of justice exception" to Rule 8 has been interpreted in the context of criminal litigation to call for what the Delaware Supreme Court terms a "plain error" analysis. Wainwright explains this concept as follows:

Under the plain error standard of review, the error complained of must be so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the fairness and integrity of the trial process. Dutton v. State, Del.Supr., 452 A.2d 127, 146 (1982). Furthermore, the doctrine of plain error is limited to material defects which are apparent on the face of the record; which are basic, serious and fundamental in their character, and which clearly deprive an accused of a substantial right or which clearly show manifest injustice.

Wainwright, 504 A.2d at 1100.

As the Delaware Supreme Court's opinions in Wainwright and this case indicate, this "plain error" rule is a state law rule and is applied without reference to federal case law. See Dutton v. State, 452 A.2d 127, 146 (Del.1982).

A federal habeas court may not address the merits of a procedurally-defaulted claim if the state court opinion includes a plain statement indicating that the judgment rests on a state law ground that is both "independent" of the merits of the federal claim and an "adequate" support for the court's decision. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). As we have explained:

[a] state rule provides an independent and adequate basis for precluding federal review of a claim if the "rule speaks in unmistakable terms[,] all state appellate courts refused to review the petitioner's claim on the merits[, and] the state courts' refusal [was] consistent with other decisions," that is, the procedural rule was "consistently and regularly applied." Doctor v. Walters, 96 F.3d 675, 683-84 (3d Cir.1996).

Albrecht v. Horn, 485 F.3d 103, 115 (3d Cir.2007). The question before us is whether the Delaware Supreme Court's application of its Rule 8 in Campbell's case was "independent" of the merits of his federal claims and "adequate" support for its judgment.²

A. Independence

When, as here, a state court expressly relies on a state procedural rule of preclusion as a basis for its decision, the independence issue turns on whether the state law alone provides everything necessary to support the court's judgment. Even when the state court decision rests on alternative holdings, one based on federal law and the other based on a state procedural rule of preclusion, for example, the court's reliance on federal law does not deprive the state rule of its independence if the state rule is sufficient alone to support the judgment. Caruso v. Zelinsky, 689 F.2d 435, 440 (3d Cir.1982).³

While the Delaware Supreme Court when applying Rule 8 in this context of criminal litigation must, of course, be cognizant of the nature of the alleged federal constitutional violation, federal law is not essential to support its judgment. The Court is applying state, not federal, law and it can apply that state law without resolving the merits of the federal constitutional issue. Delaware case law establishes that the issue of whether the alleged error in the context of this particular case was "apparent on the face of the record" and "so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the fairness and integrity of the trial process" are issues governed by Delaware law. And those issues may be resolved by assuming arguendo the merit of the federal claim. In these respects, the situation before us is much like that before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Willis v. Aiken, 8 F.3d 556 (7th Cir.1993). The Court there posed the issue before it in the following manner:

The Indiana postconviction appellate court addressed federal constitutional concerns in analyzing the appropriateness of the jury instruction. As we have just noted, however, it did so in the context of determining whether waiver of the issue through failure to object ought to be forgiven because the instruction constituted "fundamental error." We must now determine whether, in this procedural context, the Indiana appellate court's judgment can be said to rest on an independent and adequate state law ground or whether the determination of "no fundamental error" is so "interwoven," Coleman, 501 U.S. at 735, 111 S.Ct. at 2557, with the federal claim as to justify federal review without a demonstration of cause and prejudice.

Willis, 8 F.3d at 562.

The Willis Court's ensuing description of the case law dealing with the Indiana "fundamental error" doctrine is an accurate description of the Delaware "plain error" jurisprudence under Rule 8:

These cases demonstrate that the principle of fundamental error in Indiana law involves an assessment not only of the substantive rights at stake but also of their impact on the particular trial. While there have been occasions in which Indiana courts have looked to a federal court's assessment of federal rights to "corroborate" its own assessment, see Winston v. State, 165 Ind.App. 369, 332 N.E.2d 229, 233 (1975), there is no discernible pattern of dependency on federal court assessment of a particular error as "fundamental." Rather, the term, as employed in the Indiana cases, appears to be a term of art employed on a fact-specific basis for the purpose of determining whether to excuse noncompliance with the requirement that a timely objection be made on the record....