F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
SEP 18 1997
TENTH CIRCUIT
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
LEO ORTEGA,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v. No. 96-2104
(District of New Mexico)
JOHN SHANKS, Warden; (D.C. No. CIV-95-832-LH)
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE
STATE OF NEW MEXICO,
Respondents-Appellees.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before SEYMOUR, Chief Judge, PORFILIO, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
After examining the briefs and the appellate record, this three-judge panel
has unanimously determined that oral argument would not be of material
assistance in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a); 10th
Cir. R. 34.1.9. The cause is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument.
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata and collateral estoppel. The court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
Leo Ortega appeals the dismissal without prejudice of his pro se petition
for habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The United States District Court
for the District of New Mexico, adopting the Magistrate Judge’s Report and
Recommendation, dismissed the petition based on the finding that Ortega had
failed to exhaust all of his claims in state court. This court exercises jurisdiction
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and § 2253. Under the Supreme Court’s recent
decision in Lindh v. Murphy, the certificate of appealability requirement set out in
the current version of 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) does not apply to cases prior to April
24, 1996, the effective date of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death-Penalty
Act. 117 S.Ct. 2059, 2063 (1997). Applying the law in effect at the time Ortega
filed his petition, this court grants Ortega’s certificate of probable case, reaches
the merits, and AFFIRMS.
On July 6, 1989, Ortega was convicted of two counts of criminal sexual
penetration in the third degree and sentenced to twenty-two years incarceration.
On July 27, 1995, Ortega filed the present petition for writ of habeas corpus in the
United States District Court for the District of New Mexico. Ortega raised before
the district court the same five claims which he raises before this court: 1)
ineffective assistance of counsel; 2) trial court error in failing to strike certain
jurors for cause; 3) trial court error in allowing a state expert to use manipulated
statistics regarding sperm samples; 4) trial court error in allowing prejudicial and
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cumulative witness identification of Ortega’s tattoos; and 5) insufficiency of
evidence to convict. Many of these issues contain sub-issues which this court
does not enumerate.
Because the district court correctly found that Ortega’s petition was mixed,
containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims, we affirm the district court’s
dismissal without prejudice. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 510-11 (1982)
(requiring courts to dismiss without prejudice petitions containing both exhausted
and unexhausted claims absent a showing of unusual circumstances); Hernandez
v. Starbuck, 69 F.3d 1089, 1094 (10th Cir. 1995).
“In order to satisfy the exhaustion requirement, a federal habeas corpus
petitioner must show that a state appellate court has had the opportunity to rule on
the same claim presented in federal court or . . . that he had no available state
avenue of redress.” Miranda v. Cooper, 967 F.2d 392, 400 (10th Cir.) (citation
omitted), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 924 (1992). Ortega, without explanation or
support, makes the assertion that he raised “these same five appellate issues” at
every course of the proceedings below. Although Ortega appealed some of these
issues in New Mexico courts, he did not appeal all of them.
Specifically, Ortega’s federal constitutional claims based on the trial
court’s failure to strike juror Carlos Valencia was not presented to New Mexico
state courts either on direct appeal or by petition for writ of habeas corpus.
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Ortega’s claims that the victim was coached by police to identify Ortega’s tattoos
at trial and that the identification was cumulative were not presented on direct
appeal to the New Mexico Court of Appeals. Ortega’s ineffective assistance of
counsel claims were also not exhausted, as the matter is still pending in state
district court.
Ortega presented the district court with a mixed petition and the district
court thus appropriately held “the petition must be dismissed without prejudice to
afford [Ortega] the opportunity to exhaust his claims through a state post-
conviction proceeding.”
For the foregoing reasons, this court AFFIRMS the ruling of the United
States District Court for the District of New Mexico.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Michael R. Murphy
Circuit Judge
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