In Mauk v. Lanier, No. 06-12137 (Apr. 23, 2007), the Court affirmed, on failure to exhaust grounds, the denial of habeas relief to Georgia prisoner who argued that the Georgia appellate court which affirmed his Georgia conviction ran afoul of his Sixth Amendment right to jury trial when it determined that the outdoor area in which Mauk committed an act of sodomy was not a "private place" and therefore ran afoul of the Georgia statute which criminalized sodomy in a "public place."
Without reaching the merits of Mauk’s Sixth Amendment argument, the Court found that Mauk had not exhausted this argument in the Georgia courts. The Court remanded the case with instructions to dismiss the petition without prejudice, in order to give Mauk an opportunity to exhaust his argument in the Georgia state courts.
