Phillip J. Harmon v. Charles Ryan, Warden

The roots of this appeal lie in Arizona v. Shattuck, 140 Ariz. 582 , 684 P.2d 154 (1984). In Shattuck , the Arizona Supreme Court was presented with the question of what an appointed counsel’s obligations are under Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 , 87 S.Ct. 1396 , 18 L.Ed.2d 493 (1967), with regard to seeking discretionary review in the state supreme court of issues he believes are frivolous. The Court noted that the Arizona judicial “system is strained to the point that we cannot afford the luxury of repeated review of trivia or issues of small merit.” 684 P.2d at 157 . It then held that appointed counsel had no obligation to seek review beyond that of right in the state intermediate appellate courts, stating that “[o]nce the defendant has been given the appeal to which he has a right, state remedies have been exhausted.” Id. Although Shattuck involved the scope of exhaustion necessary under Anders , its reasoning was much broader; after Shat-tuck, a reasonable defendant would have believed that he need not seek direct review in the Arizona Supreme Court in order to exhaust his state remedies for purposes of federal habeas review. The Arizona Supreme Court confirmed that such…