Paul Edward Blaylock v. C. J. Fitzharris, Superintendent

Blaylock is a California state prisoner. Claiming that certain of his federal constitutional rights had been infringed, he filed a petition for habeas corpus in the District Court. The District Court, without conducting an evidentiary hearing, denied the petition upon the grounds that Blaylock had failed to exhaust available state court remedies and that he had deliberately bypassed the California courts.

Blaylock’s state court conviction was for the offense of manslaughter, and he did not take a timely appeal from that conviction. Subsequently, he sought unsuccessfully to take an untimely appeal to the California appellate courts, and he was also unsuccessful in obtaining relief by way of habeas corpus in the California courts.

We have concluded that Blaylock did in fact exhaust his available state court collateral remedies, and here, the appel-lee does not argue to the contrary.

The District Court apparently arrived at its conclusion that Blaylock had deliberately bypassed the state courts because he failed promptly to take a direct appeal from the state court judgment of conviction. On the deliberate bypass issue, the Supreme Court has set forth the appropriate standard as…