Opinion ID: 2211835
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: UNITED STATES v. MACCOLLOM : CONSIDERABLE ASSISTANCE

Text: As appellate judges, we do not have the blessing of requesting instructions from superior courts when we do not understand their decisions. Rather, we are left with only the Court's written opinion; and when a point is less than clear, we are left with more in the way of academic debate than clarification from above. A chance for restatement occurs only when the higher court has the opportunity and again feels the need to address a similar area of law. Therefore, those who have misunderstood Ross should be grateful for the opportunity presented the Supreme Court in United States v. MacCollom, 426 U.S. 317, 96 S.Ct. 2086, 48 L.Ed.2d 666 (1976). MacCollom dealt not with a question of the right to counsel, but rather with the right to a transcript. Although that issue might seem, after Griffin and Draper v. Washington, well settled, MacCollom dealt with an indigent prisoner seeking a transcript to prepare his petition for habeas corpus relief from a federal conviction. Under normal circumstances, a transcript would probably have been prepared in the course of that defendant's direct appeal, but he had apparently elected to allow his direct appeal rights to expire without taking any action. Thus, no transcript had been prepared. Because it dealt with a collateral rather than a direct appeal, such a question might seem to have little import for the instant case. Justice Rehnquist, in his lead opinion, [23] began with a review of the Court's decisions in Douglas and Ross. MacCollom was issued just two years after Ross, so it offers a fair barometer of how both the author and several members of the Court understood Ross when it was of recent vintage. Justice Rehnquist, in his analysis of the equal protection issue, had cause to revisit both Douglas and his opinion in Ross: In Douglas v. California, supra , the Court held that the State must provide counsel for an indigent on his first appeal of right. But in Ross v. Moffitt, supra , we declined to extend that holding to a discretionary second appeal from an intermediate appellate court to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. We think the distinction between these two holdings of the Court is of considerable assistance in resolving respondent's equal protection claim. Respondent in this case had an opportunity for direct appeal, and had he chosen to pursue it he would have been furnished a free transcript of the trial proceedings. But having forgone that right, and instead some years later having sought to obtain a free transcript in order to make the best case he could in a proceeding under [28 U.S.C.] ง 2255, respondent stands in a different position. [ MacCollom, supra at 324-325, 96 S.Ct. 2086.] Justice Rehnquist, and those joining his opinion, found the distinctions between the acceptable situation in Ross and the unacceptable one of Douglas, when compared to the facts of MacCollom, offered considerable assistance. These same distinctions have come to the fore in the Supreme Court's analysis in subsequent cases, a pattern that offers us guidance, but guidance for which the majority has no use.