United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit: Docket No. 96-3722

142 F.
3d 517
Bruce HAYES, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.
Philip COOMBE, Jr., Acting Commissioner of the Department
of
Correctional Services, Daniel A. Senkowski,
Warden, Clinton Correctional Facility,
Respondents-Appellees.
Docket No. 96-3722.
United States Court of Appeals,

Second Circuit
Argued March 25, 1998.
Decided April 9, 1998.
Laurie S. Hershey, Garden City, NY, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Mary C. Farrington, for Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney, New
York County (Eleanor J. Ostrow, of counsel), New York City, for
Respondents-Appellees.
Before: FEINBERG, CALABRESI, and BRIGHT,* Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
Petitioner appeals the district court's decision to dismiss his petition for a writ
of habeas corpus.
The district court held that one of petitioner's claims was procedurally forfeited
(because petitioner failed to make a contemporaneous objection at trial) and
that the procedural default was adopted by the state appellate court as an
independent and adequate ground for affirming the conviction.
Whether the claim was procedurally forfeited turns upon an analysis of the
state court's opinion rejecting the claim. While an independent and adequate
state ground for rejecting a federal claim (e.g., a state procedural rule) will bar a
federal court from hearing the claim in a habeas corpus action, such an
independent ground must be relied upon clearly and unambiguously in the state
court's opinion. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 735, 111 S.Ct. 2546,
2557, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991) ("In habeas, if the decision of the last state court
to which the petitioner presented his federal claims fairly appeared to rest
primarily on resolution of those claims, or to be interwoven with those claims,
and did not clearly and expressly rely on an independent and adequate state
ground, a federal court may address the petition."). This "clear statement rule"
has been described by the Supreme Court both as jurisdictional, see Michigan v.
Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1039, 1042, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 3475, 3477, 77 L.Ed.2d
1201 (1983) (in cases pertaining to the Supreme Court's direct appellate
jurisdiction over state courts), and as a prudential gatekeeping measure, see
Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 265, 109 S.Ct. 1038, 1044-45, 103 L.Ed.2d 308
(1989) (in habeas corpus cases).
4
Accordingly, in Coleman, the High Court found that no federal question was
preserved when the sole ground on which the state had moved to dismiss
petitioner's claim was an adequate state procedural bar and the state court had
granted the dismissal without comment. See Coleman, 501 U.S. at 732-40, 111
S.Ct. at 2555-60. Similarly, in Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 111 S.Ct.
2590, 115 L.Ed.2d 706 (1991), a companion case to Coleman, the Supreme
Court held that when a lower state court spoke clearly, all unexplained
affirmances of that opinion by higher state tribunals must ordinarily be read to
confirm the unambiguous holding of the lower court. See id. at 801-03, 111
S.Ct. at 2593-95. And in Quirama v. Michele, 983 F.2d 12 (2d Cir.1993), we
held that a state court's silent rejection of an appeal creates a presumption
against habeas review even if the government had previously argued both
substantive and procedural grounds to the state court. See id. at 14.
In the instant appeal, the state appellate court wrote: "We have considered
defendant's remaining claims, including those raised in his supplemental brief,
and find them either unpreserved or without merit." People v. Hayes, 184
A.D.2d 335, 336, 585 N.Y.S.2d 207, 208 (1st Dep't 1992) (emphasis added).
Whether this language in a state court's affirmance is too ambiguous to preclude
federal court review on the independent ground of procedural default has yet to
be determined in this circuit. But the district court, relying on Quirama, and
extending its scope, held petitioner's claims to be procedurally defaulted.
Quirama involved a silent state court affirmance in the face of alternative

substantive and procedural arguments, whereas the instant case concerns a
written opinion that defendant's claims were "either unpreserved or without
merit," Hayes, 184 A.D.2d at 336, 585 N.Y.S.2d at 208, i.e., a holding that is
itself facially ambiguous.1 Thus, in concluding that the claim was governed by
the state procedural default, the district court did something that our court, to
our knowledge, has not done since the Long/Harris rule was created. Some of
our recent cases, moreover, could be read as negatively disposed to such an
expansion of Quirama. See, e.g., Tankleff v. Senkowski, 135 F.3d 235 (2d
Cir.1998); Jones v. Vacco, 126 F.3d 408 (2d Cir.1997).2
7
But the exact scope of Quirama and its continued vitality need not be resolved
today. Because we agree with the government that petitioner's claim is patently
devoid of merit, we may affirm the dismissal of his petition without addressing
the procedural complications that have been raised by the appellee. And we
may do so even if these complications are jurisdictional in nature. See
Browning-Ferris Indus. v. Muszynski, 899 F.2d 151, 159 (2d Cir.1990)
(articulating the doctrine of hypothetical jurisdiction).3
All of the other claims raised by the petitioner, including a new one he presents
for the first time on appeal (regarding the cumulative effect of his individual
claims for relief), are without merit. 4
For these reasons, the judgment of the district court dismissing the petition is
10
AFFIRMED.
The Honorable Myron H. Bright, Circuit Judge of the United States Court of
Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation
Coleman itself could be taken to distinguish between silent state court

affirmances and those that are facially ambiguous, for it emphasized the
absence of any "mention of federal law in the [state court's] dismissal order."
Coleman, 501 U.S. at 740, 111 S.Ct. at 2559
In Jones we noted that "[t]he Appellate Division did not explicitly address
Jones' [substantive federal claim]," Jones, 126 F.3d at 412, but that it had
"considered defendant's remaining contentions and found them to be without
merit," id. at 415, and we added that "when, as here, an opinion is available[,]
[w]e are bound by the grounds stated in the opinion," id. In Tankleff, we
rejected a procedural default argument in the face of a lower state court opinion
that reached the merits and an Appellate Division affirmance that used
language almost identical to that employed in the instant appeal. See Tankleff,
135 F.3d at 247. While the holdings in both Jones and Tankleff could also be
explained as relying on one of the presumptions in Ylst, since in both Jones and
Tankleff the ambiguous affirmance followed on a clear lower court ruling on
the merits, neither Jones nor Tankleff made any reference to Ylst. Nor,
However, did either case cite or discuss Quirama
3
Similarly, we may avoid the derivative question of whether either cause and
prejudice or a complete miscarriage of justice might have excused the putative
procedural default
Because we find the remaining claims to be meritless, we also need not address
the district court's analysis of whether another one of petitioner's claims was
"fairly presented" to the state court for purposes of the exhaustion requirement
set forth in Daye v. Attorney General, 696 F.2d 186, 191 (2d Cir.1982) (in banc
)

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit: Docket No. 96-3722

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United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit: Docket No. 96-3722

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142 F.

Bruce HAYES, Petitioner-Appellant,

United States Court of Appeals,

Laurie S. Hershey, Garden City, NY, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Quirama involved a silent state court affirmance in the face of alternative

Coleman itself could be taken to distinguish between silent state court

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