Should questionable application of the fair presentation and preservation doctrines allow a circuit court to neglect duties such as the duty to determine prejudice in the context of the entire record (i.e., consider the totality of the evidence), and determine whether errors had a pervasive effect?

QUESTION PRESENTED An utterly corrupt law enforcement officer tainted the guilt and sentencing stages of Mr. Goode’s trial. The courts have never fully evaluated Goode’s Brady-and-progeny claims, in part due to overly legalistic invocations of the fair presentation doctrine. As Justice Douglas noted in his dissent in Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 281 (1971), when courts get too caught up in the niceties of legal analysis in reference to the exhaustion of state remedies, they make a trap of the exhaustion doctrine. Twenty years later, Judge Ripple warned of the dangers of hypertechnicality, and how such legal niceties have “much bedeviled courts.” Verdin v. O'Leary, 972 F.2d 1467, 1474-75 (7th Cir. 1992). As demonstrated in Goode’s case, time has only worsened these problems; not only regarding fair presentation in state court, but also the preservation of habeas issues in federal court on appeal. It is time for the Court to clarify these doctrines and curb their over-invocation. In doing so, the following question warrants this Court's review: Should questionable application of the fair presentation and preservation doctrines allow a circuit court to neglect duties such as the duty to determine prejudice in the context of the entire record (i.e., consider the totality of the evidence), and determine whether errors had a pervasive effect? i