848
Opinion of the Court
to ignore a state law or rule providing that a given procedure is not available. We hold today only that the creation of a discretionary review system does not, without more, make review in the Illinois Supreme Court unavailable.
Boerckel's amended federal habeas petition raised three claims that he had pressed before the Appellate Court of Illinois, but that he had not included in his petition for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. There is no dispute that this state court remedy—a petition for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court—is no longer available to Boerckel; the time for filing such a petition has long passed. See Ill. Sup. Ct. Rule 315(b). Thus, Boerckel's failure to present three of his federal habeas claims to the Illinois Supreme Court in a timely fashion has resulted in a procedural default of those claims. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S., at 731-732; Engle v. Isaac, 456 U. S. 107, 125- 126, n. 28 (1982).
We do not disagree with Justice Stevens' general description of the law of exhaustion and procedural default. Specifically, we do not disagree with his description of the interplay of these two doctrines. Post, at 853-854 (dissenting opinion). As Justice Stevens notes, a prisoner could evade the exhaustion requirement—and thereby undercut the values that it serves—by "letting the time run" on state remedies. Post, at 853. To avoid this result, and thus "protect the integrity" of the federal exhaustion rule, ibid., we ask not only whether a prisoner has exhausted his state remedies, but also whether he has properly exhausted those remedies, i. e., whether he has fairly presented his claims to the state courts, see post, at 854. Our disagreement with Justice Stevens in this case turns on our differing answers to this last question: Whether a prisoner who fails to present his claims in a petition for discretionary review to a state court of last resort has properly presented his claims to the state courts. Because we answer this question "no," we conclude that Boerckel has procedurally defaulted his claims.
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