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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 23', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 255', '§ 255', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2254', '§ 2255', '§ 2255', '§ 2255']

UNITED STATES V. FRADY, 456 U. S. 152 - Volume 456 - 1982 - Full Text - US Supreme Court Center - USSC Cases - Nolo
US Supreme Court Center > Volume 456 > UNITED STATES V. FRADY, 456 U. S. 152 (1982) > Full Text
Nevertheless, by a vote of 5-4, the court set aside Frady's death sentence. The five judges in the majority were unable to agree on a rationale for that result. Four of the five believed the procedures used to instruct and poll the jury on the death penalty were too ambiguous to sustain a sentence of death. [Footnote 3] The fifth and deciding vote was cast by a judge who
Frady initiated the present action by filing a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 [Footnote 5] seeking the vacation of his sentence because the jury instructions used at his trial in 1963 were defective. Specifically, Frady argued that the Court of Appeals, in cases decided after his trial and appeal, had disapproved instructions identical to those used in his case. As determined by these later rulings, [Footnote 6] the judge at Frady's trial
Moreover, the Court of Appeals would have erred had it done so. There is no reason to believe that Congress intended the result Frady suggests, and he does not attempt the impossible task of showing that it did. Furthermore, Frady's suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding, equal protection principles do not require that a motion filed pursuant to § 2255 by a prisoner convicted in the Federal District Court in 1963 be treated as though it had been filed pursuant to D.C.Code § 23-110 after 1970. In fact, even those tried in federal court contemporaneously with those tried for the same offense in the local court need not always be treated identically. As we noted in Swain v. Pressley, 430 U. S. 372, 430 U. S. 379-380, n. 12 (1977), for example, persons
Rule 52(b) was intended to afford a means for the prompt redress of miscarriages of justice. [Footnote 13] By its terms, recourse may be had to the Rule only on appeal from a trial infected with error so "plain" the trial judge and prosecutor were derelict in countenancing it, even absent the defendant's timely assistance in detecting it. The Rule thus reflects a careful balancing of our need to encourage all trial participants to seek a fair and accurate trial the first time around against our insistence that obvious injustice be promptly redressed. [Footnote 14]
In sum, the lower court's use of the "plain error standard" to review Frady's § 2255 motion was contrary to long-established law from which we find no reason to depart. We reaffirm the well-settled principle that, to obtain collateral relief, a prisoner must clear a significantly higher hurdle than would exist on direct appeal. [Footnote 15]
We believe the proper standard for review of Frady's motion is the "cause and actual prejudice" standard enunciated in Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233 (1973), and later confirmed and extended in Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536 (1976), and Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977). Under this standard, to obtain collateral relief based on trial
hired by George Bennett to do away with his brother." Frady I, supra, at 97, 348 F.2d at 103 (Miller, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). They brought gloves to the scene of the murder which they discarded during their flight from the police, and the murder weapon bore no fingerprints. Finally, there was the unspeakable brutality of the killing itself.
Id. at 809, reprinted at App. 30. Plainly, a rational jury that believed Frady had formed a "plan to kill . . . a positive design to kill" with "reflection and consideration amounting to deliberation," could not also have believed that he acted in "sudden passion . . . aroused by adequate provocation . . . causing him to lose his self-control." We conclude that, whatever it may wrongly have believed malice to be, Frady's jury would not have found passion and provocation, especially since Frady presented no evidence whatever of mitigating circumstances, but instead defended by disclaiming any involvement with the killing. [Footnote 19] Surely there is no substantial likelihood the erroneous malice instructions prejudiced Frady's chances with the jury.
Like JUSTICE BRENNAN, I believe that the plain error rule of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) has some applicability in a § 2255 proceeding. In my view, recognizing a federal court's discretion to redress plain error on collateral review neither nullifies the cause and prejudice requirement articulated in Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977), nor disserves the policies underlying that requirement.
The cause and prejudice standard of Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, is premised on the notion that contemporaneous objection rules are entitled to respect -- in the interests of preserving comity and effecting the administrative goals such rules are designed to serve. See 433 U.S. at 433 U. S. 88-90. As the Court concedes, considerations of comity are not at issue here. See ante at 456 U. S. 166. The second objective of the cause and prejudice requirement -- to enforce contemporaneous objection rules and, in particular, to ensure finality -- is, in
This approach does not, as the Court charges, "affor[d] federal prisoners a preferred status when they seek postconviction relief." Ante at 456 U. S. 166. The Court has long recognized that the Wainwright v. Sykes standard need not be met where a State has declined to enforce its own contemporaneous objection rule. See, e.g., Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 442 U. S. 148-154 (1979); Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. at 433 U. S. 87; Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536, 425 U. S. 542, n. 5 (1976). Similarly, the cause and prejudice standard should not be a barrier to relief when the plain error exception to the federal contemporaneous objection requirement is applicable. The federal contemporaneous objection rules may differ from those of the States, and the applicability of the Wainwright v. Sykes standard therefore may vary according to the contours of the particular jurisdiction's contemporaneous objection requirement. But that variance does not improperly distinguish between federal and state prisoners, just as respecting any differences between the contemporaneous objection rules of two States creates no impermissible
I have frequently dissented from this Court's progressive emasculation of collateral review of criminal convictions. E.g., Engle v. Isaac, ante p. 456 U. S. 107; Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539, 449 U. S. 552 (1981); Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 433 U. S. 99 (1977); Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 428 U. S. 502 (1976); see also Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233, 411 U. S. 245 (1973) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). Today the Court takes a further step down this unfortunate path by declaring the plain error standard of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure inapplicable to petitions for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. In so doing, the Court does not pause to consider the nature of the plain error Rule. Nor does the Court consider the criminal character of a proceeding under § 2255, as distinguished from
The Court correctly points out, ante at 456 U. S. 163, n. 13, that Rule 52(b) [Footnote 2/1] was merely a restatement of existing law. The role of the plain error doctrine has always been to empower courts, especially in criminal cases, to correct errors that seriously affect the "fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings." United States v. Atkinson, 297 U. S. 157, 297 U. S. 160 (1936). Significantly, although some of the Rules of Criminal Procedure appear under headings such as "Preliminary Proceedings," "Trial," or "Appeal," Rule 52(b) is one of the "General Provisions" of the Rules, applicable to all stages of all criminal proceedings in federal courts. See Fed.Rule Crim.Proc. 1.
The Rule does not undermine our interest in the finality of criminal convictions. Rule 52(b) permits, rather than directs, the courts to notice plain error; the power to recognize plain error is one that the courts are admonished to exercise cautiously, see United States v. Diez, 515 F.2d 892, 896 (CA5 1975), and resort to only in "exceptional circumstances," Atkinson, supra, at 297 U. S. 160. Yet it is this power that the Court holds Congress intended to deny federal courts reviewing actions brought under § 2255. But the text and history of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, § 255, and the special Rules governing § 255 actions, make clear that the Court errs. [Footnote 2/2]
The Court's assumption that Rule 52(b) is inapplicable to proceedings under § 2255 is built upon dictum in Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U. S. 145, 431 U. S. 154 (1977), which suggests that the plain error Rule is inapplicable in a habeas corpus action under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Even if I were to agree, and I do not, that the plain error doctrine has no role in § 2254 actions, I could not accept the Court's analysis because it fails to consider the explicit congressional distinction between § 2254, [Footnote 2/3] a civil collateral review procedure for state prisoners, and § 2255, [Footnote 2/4] a criminal collateral review procedure for federal prisoners.
The Court suggests that to apply the plain error Rule in § 2255 proceedings and not in § 2254 habeas actions would grant federal prisoners a "preferred" status. Ante at 456 U. S. 166. To the contrary, to bar federal judges from recognizing plain errors on collateral review is to bind the federal prisoners more tightly than their state counterparts to this Court's procedural barriers. State court judges may have power to recognize plain error in collateral review of state court convictions, see, e.g., Nelson v. State, 208 So.2d 506, 509 (Fla.App.1968); People v. Weathers, 83 Ill.App.3d 451, 453, 404 N.E.2d 1011, 1012 (1980); Wright v. State, 33 Md.App. 68, 70, 363 A.2d 520, 522 (1976); Riggs v. State, 50 Ore.App.
I might add that this is not the first instance in which the Court has obscured the distinction between § 2254 and § 2255. In Francis v. Henderson, supra, and then in Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, the Court ignored the distinction between § 2255 and § 2254 in order to apply a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure to the purely civil § 2254 proceeding. Now, ironically, the Court again obscures the distinction, this time to avoid application of a Criminal Procedure Rule to a criminal § 2255 proceeding. With each obfuscation of the distinction between § 2254 and § 2255, the Court has erected a new "procedural hurdl[e]," see Engle v. Issac, ante at 456 U. S. 136 (STEVENS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), for prisoners seeking collateral review of their convictions. Indeed,
The "cause and prejudice" standard originated in Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233 (1973). In Davis, the Court applied Rule 12(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure [Footnote 2/8] to hold that a federal prisoner seeking collateral review under § 2255 had waived his objection to the composition of the grand jury. Relying on the exception for "cause shown" in Rule 12(b)(2), and Shotwell Manufacturing Co. v. United States, 371 U. S. 341 (1963) (a case of direct appeal from a federal conviction in which the Court construed the cause exception to Rule 12(b)(2) as encompassing an inquiry into prejudice), the Court divined a rule for § 2255 challenges to the composition of the grand jury: such claims were cognizable only if the prisoner showed both "cause" and "prejudice." Davis v. United States, supra, at 411 U. S. 243-245
Francis and Wainwright held applicable to a civil proceeding an inapplicable Rule of Criminal Procedure in order to defeat substantial claims of state prisoners. Today the Court excludes the applicability in a criminal proceeding of a Rule of Criminal Procedure plainly intended by Congress to be available to federal prisoners. Any consistency in these decisions lies in their announcement that, even in the teeth of clear congressional direction to the contrary, this Court will strain to subordinate a prisoner's interest in substantial justice to a supposed government interest in finality.