Whether attorney abandonment in state PCR proceedings excuses a petitioner's failure to develop factual basis of a claim under 28 U.S.C § 2254(e)(2)

In Maples v. Thomas, 565 U.S. 266 (2012), the Court announced that abandonment of a state post -conviction relief (“PCR”) petitioner by his counsel, without communicating that counsel had withdrawn so that their client could seek new counsel or proceed pro se to preserve appeal rights necessary to exhaust a federal claim, served to excuse the procedural default of a claim of ineffective assistance of capital trial counsel that occurred where the PCR court denied relief but the petitioner, without knowledge of that denial, failed to timely appeal. I. Whether attorney abandonment in state PCR proceedings as articulated in Maples, with its focus on the severance of the agency relationship, necessarily forgives a petitioner’s “fail[ure] to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings” under 28 U.S.C § 2254(e)(2) and permits the federal courts to admit evidence not previously admitted in state court without running afoul of the proscription on the admission of such evidence under § 2254(e)(2) and Shinn v. Ramirez , 596 U.S. 366 (2022). II. Whether the Ninth Circuit erred in failing to consider whether to remand with instructions to stay the federal proceeding to allow state court exhaustion of Lee’s claim of ineffective assistance of capital trial counsel premised on defaulted facts, which included organic brain damage in the form of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effect from Lee’s in utero exposure to alcohol, where Lee explicitly invoked the Court’s admonition in Ramirez that “[w] hen a claim is unexhausted, the prisoner might have an opportunity to return to state court to adjudicate the claim.” 596 U.S. at 379.