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Name: Shumway v. Payne
Opinion Date: 08/25/2000
Citation: 223 Fed.3d 982
Summary

Petitioner’s due process claims were procedurally barred because her statement of the issue presented and her citation to a Kansas decision were insufficient to put the Washington Supreme Court on notice of her federal claim of error arising from the trial court’s redaction of her statement to the police, and her codefendant-mother’s statement to the police. Issues concerning Washington state law of procedural default were not summarized. On federal habeas review, the fact that the jury instruction given here may have split the mental state and the act among the two defendants could not have had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence” on the jury’s verdict because it was not an incorrect statement of Washington law. Moreover, petitioner here admitted grinding Dilantin pills to poison her grandmother’s soup and to holding a pillow down over her grandmother’s face. Petitioner did not qualify for the “actual innocence” exception to the procedural default rule where she merely submitted a psychologist’s report casting doubt on whether petitioner had the ability to resist her mother’s actions.