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Federal Habeas Corpus And Ineffective Representation Of Counsel: The Supreme Court Has Work To Do, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The availability of federal habeas corpus relief for state criminal defendants has always borne a complex relationship to state rules barring defendants from litigating constitutional claims in state court because of procedural defaults in raising those claims. The Warren Court's landmark attempt to resolve this relationship was the 1963 decision in Fay v. Noia, which asserted that a state procedural forfeiture rule could not bar federal habeas review of a constitutional claim unless the defendant had "deliberately bypassed" the procedural opportunity to raise the claim; the Court defined "deliberate bypass" in terms of a defendant's intentional and voluntary relinquishment of …