Court Opinion

ID: 9577899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:39:16.658299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:28.201582
License: Public Domain

Thompson, C. J.,
concurring:
On appeal from the conviction, I dissented from the majority of the court. Walker v. State, 78 Nev. 463, 474, 376 P.2d 137, 142 (1962). It was then my view that the conviction should be set aside and a new trial accorded Walker, since multiple substantial errors had resulted in a denial of due process under the federal and state constitutions. The passing of time has not caused me to come to a different conclusion, and I concur fully with the opinion of Mr. Justice Zenoff.
The “law of the case” doctrine which seems to be the basis of the present dissent of Mr. Justice Collins, is, I think, wholly inappropriate to the matter at hand. A state supreme court is not the final arbiter of federal constitutional rights. In this area, federal supervision of state criminal justice has existed throughout our history. See: Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, § 25, 1 Stat. 85, providing for direct review by the Supreme Court of state decisions that turn on a question arising under the federal constitution; Judiciary Act of 1867, ch. 28, § 1, 14 Stat. 385, providing for the review of state convictions by federal habeas corpus. Mr. Justice Frankfurter wrote in Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443 (1953): “Insofar as this jurisdiction enables federal district courts to entertain claims that state supreme courts had denied rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, it is not a case of a lower court sitting in judgment on a higher court. It is merely one aspect of respecting the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution whereby Federal *159law is higher than State law. It is for the Congress to designate the member in the hierarchy of the federal judiciary to express the higher law. The fact that Congress has authorized district courts to be the organ of higher law rather than a Court of Appeals, or exclusively this Court, does not mean that it allows a lower court to overrule a higher court. It merely expresses the choice of Congress how the superior authority of federal law should be asserted.”
It, therefore, is apparent that the prior opinion of this Court in Walker v. State, supra, cannot have the overriding significance given it by Mr. Justice Collins, since the court of appeals for the ninth circuit has strongly indicated its disapproval of that decision. See: United States v. Fogliani, 343 F.2d 43, 48 (9 Cir. 1965). That court wrote: “No present purpose would be served by extended and detailed discussion of the second ground of appellant’s petition, that in which it is urged that an accumulation of errors in the state trial proceedings resulted in a trial so substantially unfair as to violate federal requirements of due process. Conceding that the contention presents an issue worthy of serious consideration, our meeting now would overlook the possibility of its elimination by future developments in orderly and proper procedure.” The case was then remanded to the state district court for further proceedings. I read the quoted language to mean that the State of Nevada should have the first opportunity to correct the constitutional infirmity of Walker’s conviction, and if we choose not to do so, the federal court, on a later application, will.