Cite as: 526 U. S. 838 (1999)
Stevens, J., dissenting
conclusion that he has waived a claim. But the exhaustion inquiry focuses entirely on the availability of state procedures at the time when the federal court is asked to entertain a habeas petition. Our decision in Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U. S. 86 (1923), which was cited with approval in Hawk, 321 U. S., at 118, illustrates this principle. In that case, the Arkansas Supreme Court had rejected the petitioner's jury discrimination claim because he had asserted it in a motion for new trial that "came too late." 261 U. S., at 93. But, in holding that the Federal District Court should have entertained the claim, we obviously found that the state court's refusal to hear the claim on procedural grounds did not mean that the claim had not been exhausted. When we implicitly overruled Moore several years later in Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722 (1991), we did so only on waiver grounds. We explicitly noted that "[a] habeas petitioner who has defaulted his federal claims in state court meets the technical requirements for exhaustion; there are no state remedies any longer 'available' to him." Id., at 732.
Neither party argues that respondent currently has any state remedies available to him. The Court recognizes this circumstance, see ante, at 848, but still purports to analyze whether respondent has "exhausted [his] claims in state court." Ante, at 839, 842. Since I do not believe that this case raises an exhaustion issue, I turn to the subject of waiver.
II
In order to protect the integrity of our exhaustion rule, we have also crafted a separate waiver rule, or—as it is now commonly known—the procedural default doctrine. The purpose of this doctrine is to ensure that state prisoners not only become ineligible for state relief before raising their claims in federal court, but also that they give state courts a sufficient opportunity to decide those claims before doing so. If we allowed state prisoners to obtain federal review simply by letting the time run on adequate and accessible
853
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