Court Opinion

ID: 9446052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:44:53.606118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:30.362438
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
PER CURIAM.
Relator, through a petition for rehearing, has requested that we clarify our earlier opinion in this case in two respects.
Relator’s first request concerns the following sentence in our opinion: “Unless the judge below shall find in the record thus before him material which he deems to constitute ‘vital flaws’ and ‘unusual circumstances’ within the meaning of Brown v. Allen, we hold that he should make the necessary constitutional determinations exclusively on the basis of the historical facts as found by the State trial court.” He argues that this holding is contrary to Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, at page 478, 73 S.Ct. 397, at page 418, 97 L.Ed. 469, where Justice Reed indicated that in one of the constituent cases there under consideration “[t]he District Court heard all additional evidence the petitioner offered. This was in its discretion.” We think that by “additional” evidence, the opinion meant evidence material on the constitutional issue which the state trial court had excluded or as to which it had made no finding. To hold that by this dictum the Supreme Court meant to sanction unlimited discretion in the federal court on habeas corpus to take all evidence that the relator had already presented or could have presented in his trial, would be inconsistent with the rationale of Brown v. Allen.
Relator’s second request is that we clarify our opinion so as to indicate that we did not wholly preclude the Judge below from finding a vital flaw in the state proceedings. Relator specifically refers to our sentence stating: “We can say that in our opinion nothing in this state record of appeal discloses such a ‘vital flaw’ in the State court proceedings or any such ‘unusual circumstances,’ as those terms are used in Brown v. Allen, as would warrant the federal court in holding a hearing de novo on the issue of the admissibility of the confessions.” As the sentence shows, we limited our observation to the “state record on appeal.” Nothing was said to insulate so much of the state trial record as was not included in the record of appeal from examination for possible flaws.
In no respect do we deviate from our original opinion.
Petition denied.