Opinion ID: 108017
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: adequacy of the state ground

Text: The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, both before and after this Court's earlier remand, refused to consider the federal questions presented to it because it found that petitioners had failed to give opposing counsel reasonable written notice of the time and place of tendering the transcript and a reasonable opportunity to examine the original or a true copy of it, in violation of Rule 5:1, § 3 (f), of the local rules of court. [5] The majority here suggests that the State's procedural requirement, though not a novel one fashioned . . . for the first time in this case, nevertheless had not been so consistently applied . . . as to amount to a self-denial of the power to entertain the federal claim. The majority then goes on to conclude that because the State's procedural rule is more properly deemed discretionary than jurisdictional, review should not be barred here. I agree with the majority's conclusion that there is no adequate state ground shown, but I find myself unable to subscribe to the majority's reasoning, which appears to me unclear and confusing. I am not certain what the majority means in its apparent distinction between rules that it deems discretionary and those that it deems jurisdictional. Perhaps the majority wishes to suggest that the dismissals of petitioners' writs of error by the Supreme Court of Appeals were simply ad hoc discretionary refusals to accept plenary review of the lower court's decisions, analogous to this Court's denial of certiorari. If this were all the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals had done, review of a federal question properly raised below would of course not be barred here. The mere discretionary refusal of the highest state court to grant review of a lower court decision does not provide an adequate state ground. In such circumstances, the decision of the lower court, rather than the order of the highest court refusing review, becomes the judgment of the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had for purposes of 28 U. S. C. § 1257, our jurisdictional statute. [6] But this case clearly does not present this kind of discretionary refusal of a state appellate court to accept review. Although the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals may well have the discretion to refuse review [7] in a particular case without giving reasons or reconciling its refusal with earlier decisions, the dismissal below was not simply an ad hoc exercise of the power not to review every case presented. Instead the state court dismissed the petitions for review for a stated reason, namely, a lack of jurisdiction to entertain the appeals because of the failure of counsel for the Sullivans and the Freemans to meet the requirements of Rule 5:1, § 3 (f). When a state appellate court's refusal to consider the merits of a case is based on the failure to conform to a state rule of practice, review by this Court is barred unless this Court is able to find that application of the state rule of practice to the case at hand does not constitute an adequate state ground. This is so quite irrespective of whether the state appellate court had the power to refuse review for no reason at all. [8] The majority might have another meaning in mind when it describes the State's procedural rule as discretionary. It may be suggesting that reasonable written notice, and reasonable opportunity to examine are such flexible standards that the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has the discretion to decide a close case either of two ways without creating an obvious conflict with earlier decisions. If this is what the majority means by discretionary rule, then I must register my disagreement. This kind of discretion is nothing more than the judicial formulation of law, for a court has an obligation to be reasonably consistent and to explain the decision, including the reason for according different treatment to the instant case. [9] Surely a state ground is no less adequate simply because it involves a standard that requires a judgment of what is reasonable, and because the result may turn on a close analysis of the facts of a particular case in light of competing policy considerations. Although the majority's loose use of the word discretionary may suggest that any decision made pursuant to a broad standard cannot provide an adequate state ground, I think examination of the earlier opinions of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, several of which are cited by the majority, provides the proper foundation for the result reached by the majority, under the principle of NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449 (1958). The finding of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals of a violation of Rule 5:1, § 3 (f), in this case was in my view based on a standard of reasonableness much stricter than that which could have been fairly extracted from the earlier Virginia cases applying the rule [10] and its predecessor statute. [11] In other words, although Rule 5:1, § 3 (f), itself may not be novel, the standard implicitly governing the rule's application to the facts here was. I think it fair to conclude that in light of these earlier decisions, and the principle set forth in Bacigalupo v. Fleming, 199 Va. 827, 835, 102 S. E. 2d 321, 326 (1958), [12] the petitioners here might have justifiably thought that review in the Supreme Court of Appeals would not be barred by the rule, notwithstanding Snead v. Commonwealth, 200 Va. 850, 108 S. E. 2d 399 (1959), the one case cited below by the Virginia court, relied on here by respondent and yet somehow ignored by the majority. [13] Because [n]ovelty in procedural requirements cannot be permitted to thwart review in this Court applied for by those who, in justified reliance upon prior decisions, seek vindication in state courts of their federal . . . rights, NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S., at 457-458, I conclude that the decision below does not rest on an adequate state ground.