Murray v. Carrier (1985)
- Docket
- 84-1554
- Decided
- 1985-01-01
Summary
Question: Should a claim that would otherwise be prohibited by state court procedural rules barring claims not raised in an initial appeal be permitted if a defendant can prove that the omission was due entirely to an attorney's mistake (rather than to a tactical decision)? Conclusion: No. In a decision authored by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that merely proving that an omission resulted from an attorney's mistake rather than from a tactical decision does not exempt a defendant from state court procedural rules. Justice O'Connor wrote, "We see little reason why counsel's failure to detect a colorable constitutional claim should be treated differently from a deliberate but equally prejudicial failure by counsel to raise such a claim. The fact that the latter error can be characterized as a misjudgment, while the former is more easily described as an oversight, is much too tenuous a distinction to justify a regime of evidentiary hearings into counsel's state of mind in failing to raise a claim on appeal."