William D. O'sullivan v. Darren Boerckel (526 U.S. 838)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 7, 1999 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 526 U.S. 838 · 119 S. Ct. 1728
- Decided
- June 7, 1999
- Term
- October Term 1998
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. Federal habeas relief is available to state prisoners only after they have exhausted their claims in state court. 28 U.S. C. §§ 2254(b)(1), (c) (1994 ed. and Supp. III). In this case, we are asked to decide whether a state prisoner must present his claims to a state supreme court in a petition for discretionary review in order to satisfy the exhaustion requirement We conclude that he must. I In 1977, respondent Darren Boerckel was tried in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Illinois, for the rape, burglary, and aggravated battery of an 87-year-old woman. The central evidence against him at trial was his written confession to the crimes, a confession admitted over Boerekel’s objection. The jury convicted Boerckel on all three charges, and he was sentenced to serve 20 to 60 years’ imprisonment on the rape charge, and shorter terms on the other two charges, with all sentences to be served concurrently. Boerckel of Illinois, raising several issues. He argued, among other things, that his confession should have been suppressed because the confession was the fruit of an illegal arrest, because the confession was coerced, and because he had not knowingly and intelligently waived his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). Boerckel also claimed that prosecutorial misconduct denied him a fair trial, that he had…
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