## Facts

- Aaron Henry was tried in Mississippi state court for disturbing the peace based on alleged indecent proposals and offensive contact toward an 18-year-old hitchhiker.
- The jury was instructed that it could not convict on the complainant’s uncorroborated testimony alone.
- To corroborate the complainant’s description of Henry’s car, the State called a police officer who searched the car after Henry’s arrest.
- Henry’s wife provided the keys and gave the officer permission to search.
- The officer testified that the cigarette lighter did not work and that the right-hand ashtray was filled with red chewing-gum wrappers, matching the complainant’s detailed description.
- Defense counsel did not object when the officer’s testimony was introduced.
- Counsel later moved for a directed verdict, arguing in part that the testimony was the fruit of an unconstitutional search; the motion was denied, and Henry was convicted.

## Issues

1. Whether Mississippi’s contemporaneous-objection rule was an independent and adequate state ground that barred review of Henry’s federal claim challenging the admission of evidence allegedly obtained by an unconstitutional search.
2. Whether Henry, personally or through counsel, “knowingly” forgone the opportunity to raise the federal claim at trial, constituting a waiver under the standard associated with deliberate bypass of state procedures.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Mississippi Supreme Court’s judgment and remanded.
- The Court did not decide whether the contemporaneous-objection rule was an adequate state ground on these facts.
- The Court held the record suggested, but did not establish, that the failure to object could have been a knowing choice (including a possible trial tactic).
- The Court directed further proceedings to determine whether there was a knowing and voluntary waiver of the federal claim consistent with federal standards.

## Legal Principles

- A state procedural default bars federal review only if the state ground is independent and adequate; adequacy depends on whether applying the rule in the particular case serves legitimate state interests in orderly procedure.
- When the trial court has actually considered the constitutional issue through another procedural vehicle (such as a motion for directed verdict), rigid enforcement of a contemporaneous-objection requirement may be questioned as an adequacy matter.
- Loss of a federal constitutional claim through procedural default requires a waiver that is knowing, understanding, and voluntary; mere attorney error does not automatically establish such a waiver.
- When waiver is uncertain on the record, state courts should ordinarily determine waiver in the first instance before federal courts treat the claim as forfeited.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court set aside the affirmance of Henry’s conviction and required state-court factfinding on whether his failure to object to allegedly illegally obtained evidence was a knowing waiver, leaving unresolved whether Mississippi’s contemporaneous-objection rule otherwise supplied an adequate procedural bar to federal review.


Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U.S. 443 (1965)