Cite as: 513 U. S. 364 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
(1989); Hutchins v. Wainwright, 715 F. 2d 512, 518-519 (CA11 1983), cert. denied, 465 U. S. 1071 (1984).
The new rule the Court announces today is hypertechnical and unwise. It will prolong litigation without serving any valid purpose. The example of a challenge to a coerced confession cited in Picard, 404 U. S., at 277, illustrates the point. If a prisoner presents all his evidence to a state court, and if the standard for judging the voluntariness of a confession under state law is the same as under federal law, the state court has had a fair opportunity to pass on the claim regardless of whether the prisoner relies on both the State and Federal Constitutions or just the former. If the state courts have considered and rejected such a claim on state-law grounds, nothing is to be gained by requiring the prisoner to present the same claim under a different label to the same courts that have already found it insufficient. The cost of needless litigation is, however, significant both to the judicial system, see Harless, 459 U. S., at 8 (Stevens, J., dissenting), and to persons like respondent who are imprisoned despite their meritorious federal claims.
In the case before us today, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit carefully analyzed the exhaustion issue. On the merits, respondent presented the Court of Appeals with a federal due process claim, the crux of which was that the testimony of Thomas Hackett, a witness for the prosecution, was so inflammatory and irrelevant as to render his trial fundamentally unfair. Cf. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, 75 (1991) (severely prejudicial evidentiary errors may violate due process). Respondent had challenged the admission of Hackett's testimony on direct appeal in state court. 33 F. 3d 1037, 1040 (CA9 1994). To be sure, he had cited only state law. Ibid. As carefully explained by the Court of Appeals, however, the standards for addressing respondent's state-law claims were virtually identical to those applied in
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