Can reasonable jurists debate whether habeas petitioners asserting procedurally defaulted fair cross-section claims must show actual prejudice or that the trial was fundamentally unfair to obtain federal review?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED FOR REVIEW This case involves the intersection of structural errors and procedural-default doctrine. Typically, when a state court declines to adjudicate a claim for failure to follow a procedural rule, federal habeas petitioners must show cause and prejudice before the federal court can review the merits of the claim. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991). But when the defaulted claim is structural, petitioners will struggle to obtain federal review of the claim because structural errors “affect[] the framework within which the trial proceeds,” and therefore “defy analysis by harmless-error standards.” Arizona v. Fulimante, 499 U.S. 279, 309-10 (1991) (internal quotation marks omitted). Although some structural errors do not always render the criminal proceedings fundamentally unfair, others do. See Weaver v. Massachusetts, 137 S. Ct. 1899, 1908 (2017). This petition presents two issues warranting this Court’s review: (1) Can reasonable jurists debate whether habeas petitioners asserting procedurally defaulted fair cross-section claims must show actual prejudice or that the trial was fundamentally unfair to obtain federal review? (2) Can habeas petitioners asserting a procedurally defaulted fair cross-section claim demonstrate prejudice by showing that the error rendered their trials fundamentally unfair? ii