Cindy Lee Galvan v. The Alaska Department of Corrections

Citations: 397 F.3d 1198; 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 2034; 2005 WL 293501Docket: 03-35083

Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; February 9, 2005; Federal Appellate Court

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Cindy Lee Galvan, the petitioner, appealed to the Ninth Circuit concerning her habeas corpus petition related to a murder conviction stemming from a series of violent crimes committed in Alaska and Colorado. In 1989, after fleeing Colorado where she and her boyfriend had committed a murder, Galvan and her boyfriend murdered a man in Juneau, Alaska, during a robbery. She was sentenced to a harsher penalty than the standard for second-degree murder due to her perceived dangerousness, which was informed by her criminal history, including prior violent acts in Colorado. 

Initially charged with first-degree murder, Galvan entered a plea agreement for second-degree murder. However, she has since claimed that her attorneys, including two distinguished lawyers, provided ineffective assistance during the plea process. Despite these claims, her efforts to set aside her plea have been consistently unsuccessful, with findings in the Alaska Superior Court indicating her lack of credibility. Galvan sought post-conviction relief on various grounds, none of which were relevant to her federal habeas petition. The Alaska Supreme Court reviewed her case but did not address the ineffective assistance claim related to her plea.

Galvan sought post-conviction relief in Alaska, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel led her to plead guilty to second degree murder. The Alaska Superior Court denied her petition, prompting an appeal to the Alaska Court of Appeals. In her brief, she asserted her right to counsel under federal and state constitutions, but her arguments relied solely on Alaska law, focusing on the inadequacies of legal precedents regarding the right to counsel. The Court of Appeals reviewed evidence, noting that despite her lawyer's advice to cooperate with authorities, Galvan continued communicating with her boyfriend and discussing harming a witness. The appeal decision did not address federal constitutional claims.

Galvan petitioned the Alaska Supreme Court, which is crucial for exhausting her federal claims. In her well-prepared petition, she argued that her trial lawyer provided overly optimistic sentencing advice, failed to inform her about potential restrictions on parole eligibility, and misled her, causing delays in her plea withdrawal. Most citations in her petition were to Alaska cases, with only one federal case referenced, which was used to distinguish her situation from a precedent involving a defendant's subjective beliefs about parole eligibility.

The Alaska Supreme Court denied her petition, leading Galvan to file a federal habeas corpus petition, asserting violations of her rights to effective counsel and due process due to her lawyer's representation and her involuntary plea. The district court dismissed her federal petition for failure to exhaust state remedies, and Galvan is appealing this decision.

Congress mandates that a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus shall not be granted if the petitioner has not exhausted state court remedies where an effective corrective process is available. This exhaustion requirement is intended to promote comity by allowing state courts to resolve federal constitutional claims before they reach federal courts. Galvan asserts that she indicated her partial reliance on federal constitutional law to the Alaska Court of Appeals; however, this does not equate to proper exhaustion. To meet the exhaustion requirement, she needed to present her claims in a petition to the Alaska Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has clarified that a state prisoner must present claims to the state supreme court in a discretionary review petition to satisfy exhaustion. In Baldwin v. Reese, it was established that a prisoner must directly alert the state supreme court to the federal nature of the claim rather than relying on intermediate appellate court opinions. Because Galvan did not assert her federal constitutional rights in her petition to the Alaska Supreme Court, her actions in the Alaska Court of Appeals are irrelevant. The absence of a Sixth Amendment claim in her supreme court petition suggests a strategic choice not to exhaust her federal claim. Galvan's argument that the Alaska case Risher v. State aligns with federal ineffective assistance standards is unconvincing for several reasons: she did not cite Risher in her supreme court petition, and merely citing a state case discussing federal precedents does not adequately notify the state supreme court of a federal rights violation. This principle was reinforced in the en banc decision of Peterson v. Lampert, which emphasized that context matters and that strategic choices by counsel could lead to omissions in claims.

The Alaska Supreme Court's consideration of Galvan's case suggested that her reference to Risher did not indicate a claim of violation of her federal Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. Risher established a state-specific standard for ineffective assistance of counsel that predates the federal Strickland v. Washington standard and differs significantly from it. Risher's precedent, which draws from various legal sources, articulates a more lenient standard for petitioners regarding prejudice, requiring only a demonstration of a reasonable doubt that incompetence affected the outcome, whereas Strickland requires a showing of a reasonable probability that the result would have been different but for counsel's errors. This indicates that Galvan's citation to Risher strongly implied her claim was based on the Alaska Constitution rather than federal law. 

Additionally, Galvan's choice to focus on state law may have been strategic, as Alaska law provides more robust protections for defendants than federal standards. The Alaska Supreme Court, while capable of recognizing federal constitutional issues, inferred from Galvan's brief—due to the absence of any mention of the Sixth Amendment or Strickland—that her claim was solely under state law. Courts typically refrain from addressing issues not explicitly raised by the parties, maintaining that both sides must have a fair opportunity to respond to the claims presented.

Petitioner Galvan's reference to federal law in her Alaska Supreme Court petition was insufficient to establish a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment. While she cited a Fourth Circuit case, Strader, to support her argument regarding her attorney's performance relative to Alaska's minimum standards, she failed to explicitly state that her claim was grounded in a federal constitutional violation. The court emphasized that the context of her citation was focused on Alaska constitutional law, weakening her argument for exhausting her federal claim. The ruling reiterated that claims must be clearly presented at each state court level to alert the courts to their federal nature. Merely making a general reference to ineffective assistance without specificity does not satisfy the requirement to "fairly present" a federal constitutional claim. Consequently, Galvan did not adequately convey her federal claim to the state court, failing to meet the necessary criteria for exhaustion.

The document affirms a decision, referencing several key cases and statutes that influence the legal context. Notable citations include Galvan v. State (1992), Risher v. State (1974), Strader v. Garrison (1979), and several U.S. Supreme Court cases such as O'Sullivan v. Boerckel (1999) and Baldwin v. Reese (2004). The excerpt discusses procedural nuances regarding the presentation of federal issues in state courts, emphasizing that a counseled petitioner may strategically omit federal claims to persuade a state supreme court to exercise its discretion in review. It also refers to the Strickland v. Washington (1984) standard for evaluating ineffective assistance of counsel, highlighting critical points about the right to a jury trial for children in Alaska, constitutional protections for personal use of marijuana, privacy in conversations, and the maintenance of a two-prong probable cause test in Alaska. The text reinforces that litigants can effectively raise federal issues by clearly referencing federal law or precedents in their state court filings.