Court Opinion

ID: 9424443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:11:38.363207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:50.316033
License: Public Domain

*89Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Black-mun joins, concurring.
In joining the opinion and judgment of the Court, I add these few concurring words.
The three-judge District Court's decree suppressing the use of the seized material as evidence and ordering its return to the appellees was an injunctive order, from which an appeal was properly taken directly to this Court. 28 U. S. C. § 1253. The decree was plainly wrong under Stefanelli v. Minard, 342 U. S. 117, and I agree that it must be reversed. In Stefanelli we affirmed the refusal of a federal district court to suppress the use in a pending state prosecution of evidence that the petitioners alleged had been obtained in an unlawful search. Our ruling there is clearly applicable to the facts before us:
“We hold that the federal courts should refuse to intervene in State criminal proceedings to suppress the use of evidence even when claimed to have been secured by unlawful search and seizure.” 342 U. S., at 120.
See also Cleary v. Bolger, 371 U. S. 392, 400.
I also agree that the appeal from the declaratory judgment holding the parish ordinance unconstitutional is not properly before us. This Court has no power to consider the merits of that appeal for two quite distinct reasons, each sufficient to defeat our jurisdiction. First, the ordinance is neither a state statute nor of statewide application. The case thus presents a fortiori the situation in which the Court found no jurisdiction in Moody v. Flowers, 387 U. S. 97, 101. Second, the appeal is from the grant of declaratory relief, not from the grant or denial of an injunction, and jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1253 is therefore lacking. Gunn v. University Committee to End the War in Viet Nam, 399 U. S. 383; id., at 391 (White, J., concurring).
*90This is not a case in which the District Court’s action on the prayer for declaratory relief was so bound up with its action on the request for an injunction that this Court might, on direct appeal, consider the propriety of declaratory relief on pendency grounds. Cf. Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241; Samuels v. Mackell, ante, p. 66. Indeed, the District Court itself recognized that the request for a declaratory judgment regarding the local ordinance was so unrelated to the prayer for injunctive relief against the state statute that the single District Judge entered a separate order declaring the ordinance unconstitutional.