Court Opinion

ID: 9463450
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:07:40.54565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:07.499503
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
In Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067, the Court answered negatively this question:
The question is whether state prisoners— who have been afforded the opportunity for full and fair consideration of their reliance upon the exclusionary rule with respect to seized evidence by the state courts at trial and on direct review — may invoke their claim again on federal habeas corpus review. The answer is to be found by weighing the utility of the exclusionary rule against the costs of extending it to collateral review of Fourth Amendment claims. [Id., at 489, 96 S.Ct. at 3049.]
Stone was decided after the district court entered its judgment in this case. The special circumstances of this case persuade me that Stone should not be applied retroactively here. The fourth amendment issue raised here is not the sort which Stone decided did not warrant application of the exclusionary rule on collateral review. The contention advanced on the merits is important and should be addressed, and federal review of Holmberg’s claim may well have been foreclosed due to Holmberg’s reliance on the Supreme Court’s previous rulings which clearly invited resort to federal habeas corpus preliminary to seeking certiorari review in the Supreme Court.
In the Powell case, the Court noted these circumstances. Powell was arrested by Nevada police for violation of a Henderson, Nevada, vagrancy ordinance. In a search incident to that arrest, the police discovered a weapon which expert testimony connected to a murder in California. Powell was convicted of murder in California after extradition to that state. Powell contended that his arrest was made under an unconstitutional ordinance and thus the subsequent seizure of the weapon violated his fourth amendment rights. The argument attacking the constitutionality of the Nevada ordinance was not reached by the California appellate court because “the error, if any, in admitting the [challenged] testimony * * *748was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id., at 470, 96 S.Ct. at 3040.
In Wolff v. Rice, decided with Stone v. Powell, the defendant Rice unsuccessfully attacked the validity of a search warrant under which police had seized incriminating evidence from Rice’s home. The Supreme Court of Nebraska affirmed Rice’s murder conviction, holding that the search of Rice’s home had been pursuant to a valid search warrant. Id., at 472, 96 S.Ct. at 3041.
In rejecting Powell’s and Rice’s attempts to invoke the exclusionary rule on federal habeas corpus, Justice Powell noted that
[t]he disparity in particular cases between the error committed by the police officer and the windfall afforded a guilty defendant by application of the rule is contrary to the idea of proportionality that is essential to the concept of justice. Thus, although the rule is thought to deter unlawful police activity in part through the nurturing of respect for Fourth Amendment values, if applied indiscriminately it may well have the opposite effect of generating disrespect for the law and administration of justice. These long-recognized costs of the rule persist when a criminal conviction is sought to be overturned on collateral review on the ground that a search-and-seizure claim was erroneously rejected by two or more tiers of state courts. [Id., at 490, 96 S.Ct. at 3050 (footnotes omitted).]
The majority opinion concluded:
In sum, we conclude that where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth Amendment claim, a state prisoner may not be granted federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial. In this context the contribution of the exclusionary rule, if any, to the effectuation of the Fourth Amendment is minimal, and the substantial societal costs of application of the rule persist with special force. [Id., at 494, 96 S.Ct. at 3052 (footnotes omitted).]
In Powell and Rice, the respective state courts passed on alleged violations of the fourth amendment arising from the particular factual contexts of those cases. Those courts were asked to review the actions of individual state officers to determine whether they had, through mistake or over-zealousness, violated the fourth amendment and, if so, what should be done about it. In cases such as those, where police officers and magistrates act on the particular facts before them, the decision in Stone v. Powell recognizes that no purpose is served by federal habeas review' of these search and seizure issues following appropriate consideration of these issues in state court.
This case, however, presents a different situation. According to a majority of the Nebraska Supreme Court, Neb.Rev.Stat. § 60-435 constitutionally authorizes a state patrolman to stop any motorist at random to check the driver’s license or the vehicle’s registration, even though there is no reason for the patrolman to believe that the particular motorist has done anything wrong. State v. Holmberg, 194 Neb. 337, 231 N.W.2d 672 (1975). As the federal district court aptly noted, the constitutional issue here is not whether, on a particular set of facts, a police officer through mistake or overzealousness invaded an individual’s fourth amendment rights for here the police officer acted pursuant to a general state policy enacted by statute. The police officer exercises no judgment when he decides to stop a motorist pursuant to this statute, so it makes no sense to talk about deterring any illegal behavior on his part. The real issue here is whether the State of Nebraska constitutionally may apply its statute so as to give highway patrolmen carte blanche authority to detain highway travellers at random. Such an application of the statute treads heavily on fourth amendment values. Judge Schatz wrote:
The state argues that stopping a vehicle is the only practical method of enforcing Section 60-435. Such an argument, however, should not and cannot justify the unwarranted intrusion and infringement upon an individual’s constitutional right. Otherwise, such rights could be *749emasculated by statute alone. The Fourth Amendment requires all seizures to be reasonable and in the context of random license and vehicle registration checks, it demands something more than the broad and unlimited, albeit good faith, discretion of law enforcement officers.
Accordingly, this Court holds that the random stop of petitioner’s vehicle without any founded and reasonable suspicion of criminal activity violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. “To hold otherwise would be to give the police absolute, unreviewable discretion and authority to intrude into an individual’s life for no cause whatsoever.” State v. Holmberg, supra, at 349, 231 N.W.2d at 679 (J. McCown dissenting), quoting, Commonwealth v. Swanger, 453 Pa. 107, 307 A.2d 875 (1973). [Footnote omitted.]
The issue presented here is an important one. In a sense, Holmberg represents every motorist travelling the highways of this Nation. The authority which Nebraska claims for its highway patrolmen threatens everyone’s freedom of movement in a motor vehicle. In order to avoid unconstitutionality, a similar Pennsylvania statute has been construed to limit police officers’ authority to stop a vehicle for license and registration checks to cases where the officer has a reasonable suspicion based on specific, articulable facts that the vehicle or driver is in violation of the law. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Swanger, 453 Pa. 107, 307 A.2d 875 (1973). Thus, given these court interpretations, the fourth amendment rights of travellers change as they cross state borders. Clearly, some final resolution of this issue should be reached.
Of course, the Supreme Court has the right to enunciate a single supreme law of the land through its “oversight” certiorari jurisdiction to review state criminal convictions. Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 3051 n. 35, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067. But this avenue of relief is now foreclosed to Holmberg, as noted in the majority opinion. See page 747, majority opinion. Usually, the rule of Stone v. Powell applies retroactively. Here, however, Holmberg may have foregone direct review because of the Supreme Court’s previous invitation to seek federal review of fourth amendment claims on habeas corpus, rather than immediately seek direct review of the state conviction in the Supreme Court. See Kaufman v. United States, 394 U.S. 217, 89 S.Ct. 1068, 22 L.Ed.2d 227 (1969); Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 437-38, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963). If Stone is applied retroactively, Holmberg will be deprived of any opportunity to seek federal review of his federal constitutional claim, through no fault on his part.
The language of the holding in Stone v. Powell, taken literally, bars habeas corpus relief for Holmberg. But the societal interests at stake here are decidedly different than in Powell, and Holmberg seeks federal review of important and unsettled constitutional issues. Because of special circumstances, Stone v. Powell should not be applied retroactively here.
Thus, I would reach the merits of this appeal.