Whether state courts violate the federal constitution's right to due process by applying state procedural rules to prevent substantial claims of federal constitutional violations from being heard?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In this capital case, Petitioner Larry Gapen followed the rules and orders of the courts at every step. Yet even as his trial and sentencing proceedings were shot through with serious constitutional errors, the Ohio state courts repeatedly stymied his efforts to obtain, present, and litigate evidence of these improprieties. Indeed, Gapen ultimately unearthed an array of constitutional violations connected to juror misconduct and other errors, including evidence that extrinsic evidence was presented to the jury during deliberations, and that at least one juror had injected the extra-judicial code of law known as lex talionis into the jury’s deliberations. Under that extrinsic law and evidence, the juror refused to give any consideration or effect to Gapen’s mitigation evidence. In addition, other highly inflammatory and prejudicial evidence, previously deemed inadmissible, was nevertheless sent to the jury during deliberations. Further, at least some jurors were implicitly or explicitly biased, but failed to honestly disclose their biases on their juror questionnaires and during voir dire. All of this extrinsic evidence and extraneous influence on the jury was presented against Gapen at a critical stage of trial but outside the presence of counsel and without the full panoply of other constitutional protections guaranteed by the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The trial court was informed about the evidentiary errors and juror misconduct by at least two jurors, but the court never notified Gapen’s counsel. il It was not until Gapen was already in federal habeas corpus proceedings that he was able to obtain the formal court process necessary to uncover and litigate these constitutional violations. As this Court has directed, Gapen then returned to Ohio state court to present his evidence and claims. But the state courts slammed the door in his face, blaming him for the procedural roadblocks the courts themselves had previously erected, thereby multiplying the federal constitutional injury to Gapen. This Court’s precedent, and decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, stand in tension with the Ohio state court’s ruling preventing Gapen from presenting the merits of his federal constitutional claims. The Questions Presented are as follows: When state courts prevent a capital defendant from obtaining the formal process necessary to substantiate severe constitutional violations in his trial and sentencing proceedings, do the state courts run afoul of this Court’s precedents when they subsequently decline to enforce federal constitutional rights by faulting the defendant for not obtaining the evidence earlier? Whether state courts violate the federal constitution’s right to due process by applying state procedural rules to prevent substantial claims of federal constitutional violations from being heard? Whether state courts violate the federal constitution’s right to due process by applying state procedure rules in a way that conflicts with precedent from this Court and the federal courts of appeals, where the state courts apply those rules to preclude protection of a defendant’s federal constitutional rights? iil