PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
ORLANDO BRAD JONES,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v. No. 07-6705
SUSSEX I STATE PRISON,
Respondent-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Richmond.
Robert E. Payne, Senior District Judge.
(3:04-cv-00183-REP)
Argued: December 2, 2009
Decided: January 15, 2010
Before MICHAEL, MOTZ, and KING, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Motz wrote the opin-
ion, in which Judge Michael and Judge King joined.
COUNSEL
ARGUED: John Granville Douglass, UNIVERSITY OF
RICHMOND, School of Law, Richmond, Virginia, for
Appellant. Steven Andrew Witmer, OFFICE OF THE
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA, Richmond, Vir-
ginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: William C. Mims, Attorney
2 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
General, Karen Misbach, Assistant Attorney General,
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA,
Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee.
OPINION
DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ, Circuit Judge:
Orlando Brad Jones petitions for a writ of habeas corpus
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (2006), alleging that the Com-
monwealth of Virginia violated his Fifth Amendment rights
by punishing him twice for the same offense. The deferential
review of state court judgments mandated by the Antiterro-
rism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA") requires us
to affirm the district court’s denial of habeas relief.
I.
To better understand this case’s procedural history and the
parties’ arguments, we must briefly set forth the nature of
Jones’s atypical constitutional claim. He contends that the
Commonwealth violated his rights under the Double Jeopardy
Clause of the Fifth Amendment not by subjecting him to mul-
tiple prosecutions for the same offense but by subjecting him
to "multiple punishments for the same offense." See North
Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717 (1969) (emphasis
added).
When the government convicts a defendant for two crimes
based on identical conduct, the Fifth Amendment requires that
the sentencing court "determine whether the legislature . . .
intended that each violation be a separate offense." Garrett v.
United States, 471 U.S. 773, 778 (1985). If the legislature did
intend each violation to be a separate offense, then the Double
Jeopardy Clause provides no protection against multiple pun-
ishments. But if the legislature did not intend to punish the
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 3
same conduct twice, the Double Jeopardy Clause bars two or
more punishments for the same offense, and thus "prevent[s]
the sentencing court from prescribing greater punishment than
the legislature intended." Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U.S. 359,
366 (1983).
"When the claim is made in relation to state offenses, fed-
eral courts are essentially bound by state court interpretations
of state legislative intent on this score." Thomas v. Warden,
683 F.2d 83, 85 (4th Cir. 1982). That is because, when the
charged offenses violate state law, the double jeopardy analy-
sis hinges entirely on the state-law question of what quantum
of punishment the state legislature intended. See Sanderson v.
Rice, 777 F.2d 902, 904 (4th Cir. 1985) ("The Supreme Court
has placed the state legislative definition of the crime at the
heart of double jeopardy analysis."). Once a state court has
answered that state-law question, "[t]here is no separate fed-
eral constitutional standard requiring that certain actions be
defined as single or as multiple crimes." Id.
In Brown v. Commonwealth, 337 S.E.2d 711 (Va. 1985), a
double jeopardy case, the Supreme Court of Virginia consid-
ered the intent of the Virginia General Assembly when a
defendant is "accused of abduction by detention and another
crime involving restraint of the victim, both growing out of a
continuing course of conduct." Id. at 713. The Brown court
held that the General Assembly intended to subject such a
defendant to "separate penalties for separate offenses only
when the detention committed in the act of abduction is sepa-
rate and apart from, and not merely incidental to, the restraint
employed in the commission of the other crime." Id. at 713-
14. This rule has since come to be known as the "incidental
detention doctrine." See, e.g., Walker v. Commonwealth, 636
S.E.2d 476, 478 (Va. 2006).
With this understanding of the double jeopardy and state
law principles at issue in this case, we turn to the facts.
4 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
II.
On December 12, 2001, Jones donned a mask and, together
with his cousin, robbed at gunpoint a McDonald’s restaurant
in Hampton, Virginia. The Commonwealth charged Jones
with robbery, Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-58 (2009); abduction, id.
§ 18.2-48; wearing a mask in public, id. § 18.2-422; and two
counts of using a firearm while committing a felony, id.
§ 18.2-53.1, one each for the robbery and abduction. The
abduction-related charges stemmed from evidence that during
the robbery—which lasted just ninety seconds—Jones
directed McDonald’s floor supervisor Anthony Williams to
travel about twenty feet from the front cash register to the
back cash register to retrieve money stored there. Jones pled
not guilty to all five charges.
At the conclusion of the Commonwealth’s case, defense
counsel moved to dismiss the two abduction charges on the
ground that "the abduction must be separate and apart from
and not merely incidental to the restraint employed in the
commission of the [robbery]." The trial court denied the
motion on the merits, finding that two distinct robberies had
taken place, one for each cash register. The trial court rea-
soned that, because the Commonwealth charged Jones only
with the first robbery, and the abduction charge was incidental
only to the second robbery, the Commonwealth did not vio-
late double jeopardy principles because the abduction was not
incidental to the charged robbery.
On September 24, 2002, the jury convicted Jones on all
counts. The trial judge, following the jury’s recommendation,
sentenced Jones to thirty-four years in prison: five years for
the robbery, three for using a firearm during the robbery, one
for wearing a mask in public, twenty for the abduction, and
five for using a firearm during the abduction. Thus, the
abduction-related convictions accounted for twenty-five years
of Jones’s thirty-four year sentence.
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 5
Jones timely filed petitions for appeal, first in the Court of
Appeals of Virginia and then in the Supreme Court of Vir-
ginia. In his supporting (identical) briefs to each court, Jones
asserted the following as an assignment of error:
The Trial Court erred in concluding that the abduc-
tion (and related firearm charge) could be sustained
without a scintilla of evidence in the record to show
intimidation or force in the movement of the victim
from one cash register to the other cash register in
the course of this robbery.
In the argument sections for this claim, Jones cited to Brown
and described the claim in terms very similar to those used in
that case: "The alleged abduction is not the type of case that
the legislature envisioned as a separate offense from a crime
such as this robbery, for it is intrinsic in the very act of this
robbery." Compare Brown, 337 S.E.2d at 713 ("[I]n the enact-
ment of the abduction statute the General Assembly did not
intend to make the kind of restraint which is an intrinsic ele-
ment of . . . robbery . . . a criminal act, punishable as a sepa-
rate offense."). Jones did not explicitly refer to the Double
Jeopardy Clause or the Constitution of the United States.
On July 16, 2003, the Court of Appeals of Virginia denied
Jones’s appeal without mentioning double jeopardy, the Con-
stitution, or Brown. Instead, the court focused on the suffi-
ciency of the evidence supporting the abduction charges. On
December 2, 2003, the Supreme Court of Virginia summarily
denied Jones’s petition for appeal.
Jones, now proceeding pro se, filed with the state Supreme
Court a petition for state habeas relief. This time, he explicitly
alleged that his "conviction is in contravention of the Double
Jeopardy Clause in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States." The court denied Jones’s state habeas
petition, finding his double jeopardy claim procedurally
barred under Slayton v. Parrigan, 205 S.E.2d 680, 682 (Va.
6 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
1974), because Jones could have raised his double jeopardy
claim on direct appeal, but assertedly did not do so.
On March 19, 2004, Jones—still pro se—timely filed this
§ 2254 petition in the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Virginia, raising several grounds for relief.
The district court granted the Commonwealth’s motion to dis-
miss all but Jones’s double jeopardy claim, and appointed
counsel to represent Jones in the proceedings. In its subse-
quent briefing as to that claim, the Commonwealth argued
that the claim was (1) procedurally defaulted because it was
not properly presented to and thus exhausted before the state
courts; (2) not cognizable on federal habeas because it
involved only a state-law question of "state legislative intent";
and in any event (3) meritless under Virginia’s incidental
detention doctrine. Although the Commonwealth did not cite
to the deferential AEDPA standard of review in its brief to the
district court, it drew upon that standard, arguing that, should
the district court reach the merits of Jones’s claim, "Jones
would bear the burden of showing not merely that the state
court’s application of law was wrong, but that it was unrea-
sonably wrong."
On March 30, 2007, the district court denied Jones’s peti-
tion. The court refused to find Jones’s double jeopardy claim
procedurally barred, but held that punishing Jones for both
robbery and abduction did not violate double jeopardy under
Virginia’s incidental detention doctrine. The court did not
mention the AEDPA standard of review.
The district court subsequently granted Jones a certificate
of appealability as to this issue, and Jones timely noted this
appeal. We review a district court’s denial of a § 2254 habeas
petition "de novo, applying the same standard that the district
court was required to apply." Longworth v. Ozmint, 377 F.3d
437, 443 (4th Cir. 2004). In opposing Jones’s petition, the
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 7
Commonwealth presents three arguments—exhaustion, proce-
dural default, and the merits—which we address in turn.1
III.
The Commonwealth initially maintains that Jones failed to
present (and so exhaust) his double jeopardy claim to the state
appellate courts on direct appeal. The Commonwealth argues
that Jones did not "exhaust[ ] the remedies available in the
courts of the State," 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A), because he
neglected to expressly invoke the Double Jeopardy Clause
before the Virginia appellate courts, and instead litigated only
"a state law claim concerning the sufficiency of the evidence
of the abduction and firearm counts." Resp. Br. 13. This argu-
ment fails.
Of course, it is true that "[b]efore seeking a federal writ of
habeas corpus, a state prisoner must exhaust available state
remedies, thereby giving the State the opportunity to pass
upon and correct alleged violations of its prisoners’ federal
rights." Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 29 (2004) (citation
and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Breard v. Pru-
ett, 134 F.3d 615, 619 (4th Cir. 1998). To provide the state
with this opportunity, "the prisoner must ‘fairly present’ his
claim in each appropriate state court . . . , thereby alerting that
court to the federal nature of the claim." Reese, 541 U.S. at
29; see also Matthews v. Evatt, 105 F.3d 907, 911 (4th Cir.
1997). The habeas petitioner must raise his claim before every
available state court, including those courts—like the
Supreme Court of Virginia—whose review is discretionary.
O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 847 (1999).
Moreover, the burden of demonstrating fair presentment
1
On federal habeas as elsewhere, procedural questions "should ordinar-
ily be considered first," before on-the-merits review. See Lambrix v.
Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 524 (1997); Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S.
722, 730-31 (1991).
8 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
lies with the habeas petitioner, who must "do more than scat-
ter some makeshift needles in the haystack of the state court
record." Mallory v. Smith, 27 F.3d 991, 995 (4th Cir. 1994)
(internal quotation marks omitted). However, "it is not neces-
sary to cite book and verse on the federal constitution so long
as the constitutional substance of the claim is evident," West
v. Wright, 931 F.2d 262, 266 (4th Cir. 1991) (internal quota-
tion marks omitted), rev’d on other grounds, 505 U.S. 277
(1992), such that "both the operative facts and the controlling
legal principles [are] presented to the state court." Baker v.
Corcoran, 220 F.3d 276, 289 (4th Cir. 2000) (internal quota-
tion marks omitted).
Thus the Supreme Court has held that a "litigant wishing to
raise a federal issue can easily indicate the federal law basis
for his claim in a state-court petition or brief, for example, by
citing in conjunction with the claim . . . a case deciding such
a claim on federal grounds." Reese, 541 U.S. at 32 (emphasis
added). The Court drew no distinction between citation to a
state—as opposed to a federal—case, so long as the cited case
rested its holding on federal law. Id.; see Peterson v. Lampert,
319 F.3d 1153, 1158 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc) ("[F]or pur-
poses of exhaustion, a citation to a state case analyzing a fed-
eral constitutional issue serves the same purpose as a citation
to a federal case analyzing such an issue."). Accordingly, our
sister circuits have uniformly concluded that citation to such
a state case, as a general matter, provides fair presentment of
a federal constitutional claim. See, e.g., Jackson v. Edwards,
404 F.3d 612, 618 (2d Cir. 2005); Peterson, 319 F.3d at 1158;
McCandless v. Vaughn, 172 F.3d 255, 261 (3d Cir. 1999);
Barrett v. Acevedo, 169 F.3d 1155, 1161-62 (8th Cir. 1999);
Hannah v. Conley, 49 F.3d 1193, 1196 (6th Cir. 1995);
Scarpa v. Dubois, 38 F.3d 1, 6-7 (1st Cir. 1994). See also
Ellsworth v. Levenhagen, 248 F.3d 634, 639 (7th Cir. 2001)
(finding that petitioner’s citation to a state case "alerted the
state court to his Sixth Amendment claim" and thus fairly
presented the claim).
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 9
For example, in Daye v. Attorney General of New York,
696 F.2d 186 (2d Cir. 1982) (en banc), a nearly unanimous en
banc Second Circuit held that the petitioner had exhausted his
claim when he cited to "two state cases in which [the state’s]
highest court had analyzed similar contentions in [federal]
constitutional terms" and where his claim was "within the
ambit of a long line of cases" establishing this constitutional
right. Id. at 195. The Daye court explained: "[I]f the courts of
the state in question have themselves previously treated that
fact pattern as appropriate for constitutional analysis, it would
be unreasonable to suppose that they are not alert to constitu-
tional considerations." Id. at 194; see also Ellsworth, 248 F.3d
at 639.
Here, as in Daye and Ellsworth, Jones cited to a state case
—Brown v. Commonwealth—that deals exclusively with fed-
eral double jeopardy law, and the Supreme Court of Virginia
has since expressly recognized that its "ruling in Brown
regarding incidental detention only applies when . . . the guar-
antee of double jeopardy may be implicated." Walker, 636
S.E.2d at 479 (emphasis added). Jones also alerted the state
courts to the federal nature of his claim when he used clear
double jeopardy language, inspired by Brown, in his briefs.
Further, Jones presented a fact pattern—multiple punishments
for abduction and a closely related crime—that Virginia
courts have regularly considered appropriate for double jeop-
ardy analysis. See, e.g., Brown, 337 S.E.2d 711; Jerman v.
Dir., Dep’t of Corr., 593 S.E.2d 255, 259-60 (Va. 2004);
Powell v. Commonwealth, 552 S.E.2d 344, 360-61 (Va.
2001).
Finally, the Commonwealth itself recognized and addressed
the double jeopardy issue in its opposing brief before the state
Supreme Court, evidencing Jones’s fair presentment of that
claim. See Smith v. Digmon, 434 U.S. 332, 333 (1978) (per
curiam) (finding that state’s opposition in its brief to petition-
er’s constitutional claim in state court supported conclusion
that petitioner had fairly presented that claim); Daye, 696
10 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
F.2d at 192 n.5 ("Even if not alerted by the defendant, the
state court might be alerted by the briefs filed by the state in
opposition.").2
In an attempt to circumvent this more than ample authority
supporting Jones’s contention that citation to Brown fairly
presented his double jeopardy claim, the Commonwealth
offers a technical argument. Virginia contends that Jones’s
failure to include Brown or double jeopardy language specifi-
cally in his assignments of error on direct appeal—despite his
clear focus on Brown in the argument sections of his appellate
briefs -– precludes us from holding that he fairly presented
that claim. The Commonwealth directs our attention to the
Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia, which provide that
"[o]nly errors assigned in the petition for appeal will be
noticed by this Court." Va. Sup. Ct. R. 5:17(c). However, the
Commonwealth cites no authority for the proposition that a
petitioner exhausts for federal habeas purposes only "as-
signed" errors. In fact, as the district court noted, although we
of course defer to appropriate state procedural rules in deter-
mining if a petitioner has exhausted a claim, we have previ-
ously disregarded a Virginia defendant’s failure to identify a
claim in his assignments of error, finding the claim fairly
presented by the argument section of his brief. Compare Kasi
v. Angelone, 300 F.3d 487, 508-09 (4th Cir. 2002) with Pet’r
2
This case is, therefore, a far cry from instances in which the Supreme
Court or this court has found that the petitioner failed to fairly present his
federal claim to the state courts. Compare Reese, 541 U.S. at 33 ("The
petition provides no citation of any case that might have alerted the court
to the alleged federal nature of the claim."); Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S.
364, 366 (1995) (per curiam) (finding failure to exhaust where petitioner
presented only state-law claims); Anderson v. Harless, 459 U.S. 4, 7
(1982) (per curiam) (finding failure to exhaust where petitioner cited only
to a state case that adjudicated only state law); Baker, 220 F.3d at 289
(finding failure to exhaust where petitioner asserted in state court that an
erroneous jury instruction had "no basis in Maryland law," and did not
refer to federal law at all, even through state case citations); Mallory, 27
F.3d at 995 (finding no exhaustion where petitioner "never specified as
grounds for relief" his ineffective assistance claim).
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 11
Br. in Kasi v. Commonwealth, 508 S.E.2d 57 (Va. 1998),
available at 1998 WL 34375490, at *vii, *xi, *44 (stating in
assignment of error only that trial court erred in conducting
voir dire, with no reference to federal law).
Moreover, even assuming that a petitioner only exhausts
"assigned" errors, Jones’s assignment of a sufficiency of evi-
dence error fairly presented his double jeopardy claim. This
is so because the Supreme Court of Virginia has regularly
treated sufficiency of the evidence and double jeopardy inter-
changeably in this context. See Powell, 552 S.E.2d at 360-61
(analyzing Brown claim under the heading, "Sufficiency of
the Evidence"); Jerman, 593 S.E.2d at 259-60 (finding that
"the evidence was sufficient" for an abduction conviction
because the abduction evidence was separate from the evi-
dence supporting defendant’s assault conviction). When a
state’s highest court has previously considered two iterations
of a federal constitutional claim interchangeably, a habeas
petitioner’s invocation of either fairly presents that claim. We
decline to punish Jones for following the state Supreme
Court’s lead.
This is one of those "instances in which the ultimate ques-
tion for disposition, will be the same despite variations in the
legal theory or factual allegations urged in its support."
Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 277 (1971) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted). Even the Commonwealth
inadvertently concedes as much. See Resp. Br. 7 ("[I]f the evi-
dence was sufficient to support both the abduction charge and
the robbery charge, then there was not a single offense and his
convictions do not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause.").
For these reasons, we must reject the Commonwealth’s
contention that Jones failed to exhaust his double jeopardy
claim. As the district court held, he has done so and thus com-
plied with 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A).
12 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
IV.
Even if Jones properly exhausted his double jeopardy
claim, the Commonwealth argues that he procedurally
defaulted the claim, thereby foreclosing federal habeas
review. The Commonwealth points to the Supreme Court of
Virginia’s state habeas opinion, in which that court, invoking
Slayton v. Parrigan, concluded that Jones had not raised his
double jeopardy claim on direct appeal. Slayton holds that a
state prisoner may not obtain state habeas relief by raising a
non-jurisdictional claim of error in state habeas proceedings
that he could have but did not raise at trial and on direct
appeal. 205 S.E.2d at 682 ("A petition for a writ of habeas
corpus may not be employed as a substitute for an appeal or
a writ of error."). Jones contends that Slayton, as applied in
this context, is not adequate to bar federal habeas review
because Virginia courts do not apply Slayton "‘consistently to
cases that are procedurally analogous’" to Jones’s case. Pet’r
Reply Br. 10 (quoting Brown v. Lee, 319 F.3d 162, 169 (4th
Cir. 2003)).3
"If a state court clearly and expressly bases its dismissal of
a habeas petitioner’s claim on a state procedural rule, and that
procedural rule provides an independent and adequate ground
for the dismissal, the habeas petitioner has procedurally
defaulted his federal habeas claim." Breard, 134 F.3d at 619
(citing Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 731-32 (1991)).
"A state rule is ‘adequate’ if it is firmly established and regu-
3
We recognize that the conclusion of the Supreme Court of Virginia on
state habeas that Jones did not raise a Brown claim on direct appeal lies
in some tension with our holding above that Jones did fairly present that
claim, for federal habeas purposes, to the state courts. Even so, we must
defer to the state court’s application of Slayton to bar Jones’s claim on
state habeas. We do, however, retain the obligation to assess the adequacy
of the Slayton rule for federal habeas purposes. See Brown v. Lee, 319
F.3d at 169 ("The assessment of whether a particular state procedure is
‘independent and adequate,’ so as to bar consideration of the merits of a
federal constitutional claim, is a question of federal, not state, law.").
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 13
larly or consistently applied by the state court . . . ." Brown
v. Lee, 319 F.3d at 169 (citing Johnson v. Mississippi, 486
U.S. 578, 587 (1988)). In making this adequacy determina-
tion, we ask "whether the particular procedural bar is applied
consistently to cases that are procedurally analogous—here,
cases in which the particular claim raised could have been
raised previously but was not." McCarver v. Lee, 221 F.3d
583, 589 (4th Cir. 2000).
Because procedural default constitutes an affirmative
defense in habeas cases, the burden rests with a state to prove
the adequacy of the relied-on procedural bar. See Yeatts v.
Angelone, 166 F.3d 255, 261 (4th Cir. 1999) ("[T]he issue of
procedural default generally is an affirmative defense that the
state must plead in order to press the defense thereafter."); see
also Scott v. Schriro, 567 F.3d 573, 580 (9th Cir. 2009) (plac-
ing the burden on the state to show adequacy); Pike v.
Guarino, 492 F.3d 61, 73 (1st Cir. 2007) ("The habeas
respondent (here, the Commonwealth) bears the burden ‘not
only of asserting that a default occurred, but also of persuad-
ing the court that the factual and legal prerequisites of a
default . . . are present.’" (alteration in original) (quoting 2
Randy Hertz & James S. Liebman, Federal Habeas Corpus
Practice and Procedure § 26.2a, at 1265 n.5 (5th ed. 2005))).
We have held on several occasions that the Slayton rule
generally provides an adequate bar to federal habeas review.
See, e.g., Wright v. Angelone, 151 F.3d 151, 159-60 (4th Cir.
1998).4 However, "the fact that a state procedural rule is ade-
quate in general does not answer the question of whether the
rule is adequate as applied in a particular case." Reid v. True,
349 F.3d 788, 805 (4th Cir. 2003). Here, the Commonwealth
does not cite any case in which Virginia courts have applied
4
Jones does not assert that Slayton is "discretionary" and thus inade-
quate as a matter of law to bar federal habeas review; the Supreme Court
recently rejected this contention. See Beard v. Kindler, __ S. Ct. __, __,
2009 WL 4573277, at *5 (2009).
14 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
Slayton to bar a double jeopardy claim on collateral review
because the Double Jeopardy Clause was not specifically
mentioned as a ground for reversal on direct appeal.
In fact, as the district court correctly observed, the Supreme
Court of Virginia "has indulged a more lenient pleading stan-
dard where the alleged error pertains to the incidental deten-
tion doctrine." In at least two cases, the state Supreme Court
on direct appeal—despite the defendant’s failure to explicitly
mention double jeopardy, federal law, or even Brown in his
assignments of error—ruled on the merits of the defendant’s
Brown claim. See Powell, 552 S.E.2d at 360-61 (addressing
claim on the merits when assignment of error stated only that
"[t]he trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion to strike
the Commonwealth’s evidence of guilt"); Cardwell v. Com-
monwealth, 450 S.E.2d 146, 152-53 (Va. 1994) (addressing
claim on the merits when assignment of error stated only that
"[t]he trial court erred in not striking the Commonwealth’s
evidence of capital murder committed during the course of an
abduction, the abduction itself and the firearm charge related
thereto").
These cases provide strong evidence that Virginia courts do
not "regularly or consistently" require defendants, in order to
receive on-the-merits review of Brown claims, to refer to the
Constitution of the United States or other federal law. In the
absence of any showing of consistency by the Common-
wealth, these cases demonstrate Slayton’s inadequacy in this
context. Because the Commonwealth has not met its burden,
we cannot find Jones’s double jeopardy claim procedurally
defaulted.
V.
The Commonwealth next argues that Jones cannot obtain
habeas relief on his double jeopardy claim under either
AEDPA or the common-law principles that predate that stat-
ute.
JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON 15
AEDPA provides as follows:
An application for a writ of habeas corpus . . . shall
not be granted with respect to any claim that was
adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings
unless the adjudication of the claim—
(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or
involved an unreasonable application of, clearly
established Federal law, as determined by the
Supreme Court of the United States . . . .
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).5 Therefore, if Virginia adjudicated
Jones’s double jeopardy claim, we cannot grant habeas relief
unless the state court decision "was contrary to, or involved
an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal
law, as determined by" Supreme Court precedent. Id.
Jones conceded in his brief and again at oral argument (and
the Commonwealth agrees) that the Virginia trial court adju-
dicated his double jeopardy claim on the merits. Some of our
sister circuits have found trial-court adjudication sufficient to
trigger the deferential review set forth in AEDPA. See, e.g.,
Thomas v. Horn, 570 F.3d 105, 115 (3d Cir. 2009) ("[A]n
‘adjudication on the merits’ can occur at any level of state
court."); Salazar v. Dretke, 419 F.3d 384, 397-98 (5th Cir.
2005). We need not reach that question because in this case
the Virginia appellate courts also adjudicated Jones’s consti-
tutional claim on the merits. The Court of Appeals held that
the evidence was sufficient to convict Jones of abduction
because Jones "directed Williams"—through Jones’s "words
and actions combined with his threatening use of the firearm"
—to "go to the back of the restaurant and retrieve the money
5
The Commonwealth did not explicitly raise AEDPA before the district
court, but it did clearly raise the AEDPA standard before the district court
by asserting that to prevail Jones must show that the state court’s determi-
nation was "not merely . . . wrong, but . . . unreasonably wrong."
16 JONES v. SUSSEX I STATE PRISON
from the register located there." Because the appellate court
concluded that Jones did not just rob Williams but also con-
trolled Williams’s movement with force and intimidation, the
court resolved the double jeopardy contention. The Supreme
Court of Virginia summarily affirmed that holding. See Weeks
v. Angelone, 176 F.3d 249, 259 (4th Cir. 1999), aff’d, 528
U.S. 225 (2000) (holding that a summary disposition of a
defendant’s claim on direct appeal constitutes an adjudication
on the merits).
Applying AEDPA, we must deny Jones’s petition because
the state courts’ adjudication of his double jeopardy claim
was not "contrary to," or an "unreasonable application of,
clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme
Court of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Because
the Court of Appeals of Virginia determined that Jones
instructed Williams and constricted his freedom of movement
with force and intimidation, the appellate court did not unrea-
sonably determine that Jones’s abduction of Williams was a
distinct offense under Virginia law warranting separate pun-
ishment. Garrett, 471 U.S. at 778; Hunter, 459 U.S. at 366.6
VI.
The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
6
Jones may well be correct that the state trial court’s "two robberies"
theory constituted an erroneous application of Virginia’s incidental deten-
tion doctrine. See Jordan v. Commonwealth, 347 S.E.2d 152, 156 (Va. Ct.
App. 1986). While we lament the fact that Virginia appellate courts have
not addressed the state trial court’s possible error, AEDPA prohibits us
from remedying errors of law that do not contravene a Supreme Court
holding. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).