Cite as: 518 U. S. 152 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
constitutional guarantee, as well as a statement of the facts that entitle the petitioner to relief. We considered whether a habeas petitioner was entitled to relief on the basis of a claim, which was not raised in the state courts or in his federal habeas petition, that the indictment procedure by which he was brought to trial violated equal protection. Id., at 271. In announcing that "the substance of a federal habeas corpus claim must first be presented to the state courts," id., at 278, we rejected the contention that the petitioner satisfied the exhaustion requirement of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b) by presenting the state courts only with the facts necessary to state a claim for relief. "The [state court] dealt with the arguments [the habeas petitioner] offered; we cannot fault that court for failing also to consider sua sponte whether the indictment procedure denied [the petitioner] equal protection of the laws." Id., at 277.
We have also indicated that it is not enough to make a general appeal to a constitutional guarantee as broad as due process to present the "substance" of such a claim to a state court. In Anderson v. Harless, 459 U. S. 4 (1982), the habeas petitioner was granted relief on the ground that it violated due process for a jury instruction to obviate the requirement that the prosecutor prove all the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 7 (citing Sand-strom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510 (1979)). The only manner in which the habeas petitioner had cited federal authority was by referring to a state-court decision in which "the defendant . . . asserted a broad federal due process right to jury instructions that properly explain state law." 459 U. S., at 7 (internal quotation marks omitted). Our review of the record satisfied us that the Sandstrom claim "was never presented to, or considered by, the [state] courts," but we found it especially significant that the "broad federal due process right" that the habeas petition might have been read to incorporate did not include "the more particular analysis developed in cases such as Sandstrom." 459 U. S., at 7.
163
Page: Index Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007