Daniel L. Sanders v. Leslie Ryder

Daniel Sanders was convicted of child molestation in Washington state court. After appealing unsuccessfully in state court, Sanders filed a federal habeas petition. The magistrate judge ruled that some of Sanders’s claims had not been exhausted in state court, and that the Washington courts’ rulings on the other claims were not contrary to and did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court. The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s ruling. Because we hold that Sanders ex hausted his federal ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim in state court, we reverse.

I. Background

Petitioner-appellant Daniel Sanders maintains that he is innocent of the charge of child molestation of which he was convicted and that he received a woefully unfair trial in Washington state court. During late May and early June of 1997, Sanders went to stay with Patti Kelley, his ex-girlfriend, so that he could spend some time with their fourteen-year-old son Gabe. Kelley also lived with her three-year-old son Tyler, who was not Sanders’s child. Both Sanders and Kelley were drug users. A few days into Sanders’s visit, Kelley went…