Court Opinion

ID: 9655830
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:23:12.94448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:22.368959
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(dissenting). In the course of his special concurrence (Gideon v. Wainwright [March 18, 1963], 372 US 335 [83 S Ct 792, 9 L ed 2d 799, 93 ALR2d 733]); Mr. Justice Harlan wrote what appears immediately below. No other Justice undertook to question these words (p 351):
“The special circumstances rule has been formally abandoned in capital cases, and the time has now come when it should be similarly abandoned in non-capital cases, at least as to offenses which, as the one involved here, carry the possibility of a substantial prison sentence. (Whether the rule should extend to all criminal cases need not now be decided.)”1
The sole and controlling question before this inferior Court is whether it, distinguished from the Supreme Court of the United States, should “extend” the constraint of the Sixth Amendment to “all criminal eases.” I prefer as before to let the Supreme Court lead the way when it comes to ascertainment of what was required and so is required by some standing principle or provision appearing in the National Constitution; that Court having expressly refrained thus far from such ascertainment. So much said, I stand by such Federal guidelines as are known rather than those which the civil liberties committee of the State Bar, appearing here amicus, confidently predicts are ahead for petty-case justice in every magisterial court of this land.
First-. With its companion (People v. Copeland, 378 Mich 611) this case has plunged the Supreme *583Court of Michigan into another thorny thicket of supreme constitutional law; a thicket made the more spinous by importunate prodding on the part of the aforesaid committee. Arriving as in People v. Foster, 377 Mich 233, with an issue made technically moot by completed service of a maximally imposed jail sentence, the committee insists that this Court should lead off by proclaiming that the right to counsel, provided as it is by the Sixth Amendment2 extends to all cases of “petty offense,” the accused person being indigent.
To the writer the committee is a little too ardent. Moreover, its predictive record is not sufficiently dependable for any such far-reaching proclamation by this Court. See the committee’s recent reliance upon the petitioner’s presentation in Schmerber v. California3 (45 MSBJ, No. 9, pp 24 — 26) and compare it with the Supreme Court’s ruling that Schmerber had been denied no constitutional right as claimed (Schmerber v. California [June 20, 1966], 384 US 757 [86 S Ct 1826, 16 L ed 2d 908]).
Now this defendant’s conviction was for an offense somewhat less than “petty.”4 That being so, I cannot bring myself to join others in voting to overthrow the policy congress effected when the criminal justice act of 19645 was enacted, or to join in holding that that act failed to conform fully with Sixth Amendment assurances. Surely this Court is or at least ought to be sated, by now, with these *584attempts “to outrun the Supreme Court of the United States.”6
The Supreme Court has never gone so far as to say that the framers, debaters and adopters of the Sixth Amendment, intended that counsel and transcript should be provided at public expense for the indigent who has been charged with or convicted of petty offense as well as the indigent who has been charged with or convicted of felony or other serious offense. Griffin v. Illinois, 351 US 12 (76 S Ct 585, 100 L ed 891, 55 ALR2d 1055); Douglas v. California, 372 US 353 (83 S Ct 814, 9 L ed 2d 811); Lane v. Brown, 372 US 477 (83 S Ct 768, 9 L ed 2d 892) and Draper v. Washington, 372 US 487 (83 S Ct 774, 9 L ed 2d 899), speaking as they do of discrimination against the poor “on account of their poverty” in cases of conviction for murder, assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, et cetera, do not as presently contended support any such conclusion. Indeed, had any one of the cited cases ruled as thus claimed, then the constitutional infirmity of the presently discussed exception, made by the aforesaid criminal justice act, would stand forth for all to see.
*585In this latest of civil liberties cases certain mutually assured Justices have placed unitary bet that the Supreme Court will, sooner or later, say that the National Constitution compels each of the States to bear the load of supplying counsel and all trappings of appeal where the accused or prisoner has been charged with or convicted of a “petty offense,” and is indigent. For terse reply I suggest that if that guess proves out, then congress will have to amend — hastily—subsections (a) and (b) of aforesaid section 3008A. The two subsections exhibit the considered policy of congress (not retroactive by the way); a policy which, by presumption specially forceful in this State Court, validly limits the free counsel and other free benefits thereof to cases where the indigent defendant is charged with or convicted of felony or misdemeanor not constituting a “petty offense.” To be precise:
The initial sentence of subsection (a) provides:
“Each United States district court, with the approval of the judicial council of the circuit, shall place in operation throughout the district a plan for furnishing representation for defendants charged with felonies or misdemeanors, other than petty offenses as defined in section 1 of this title, who are financially unable to obtain an adequate defense.” ;
and the initial sentence of subsection (b) pursues the same “petty offense” exception:
“In every criminal case in which the defendant is charged with a felony or a misdemeanor, other than petty offense, and appears without counsel, the United States commissioner or the court shall advise the defendant that he has the right to be represented by counsel and that counsel will be appointed to represent him if he is financially unable to obtain counsel.” (Emphasis supplied by present writer.)
*586“Petty offense” has been defined, ever since the amendment of December 16, 1930 (see Duke v. United States, 301 US 492 [57 S Ct 835, 81 L ed 1243]), as one where the statutory penalty does not exceed imprisonment for a period of six months, or a fine of not more than $500, or both. Section 1 “of this title,” to which (a) above refers, presently defines “petty offense” this way:
“(3) Any misdemeanor, the penalty for which does not exceed imprisonment for a period of six months or a fine of not more than $500, or both, is a petty offense.” (18 USCA, § 1.)
So there is nothing new about the distinction congress has made and retained between felonies and serious misdemeanors on the one hand and petty offenses on the other. As said in Duke v. United States, supra at 494:
“The original section divides crimes into felonies and misdemeanors. The evident object of the proviso [defining “petty offenses”] was to bring about a subdivision of misdemeanors by creating a class of misdemeanors of minor gravity to be known as petty offenses; to be tried, as proposed by other legislation (which failed), by United States commissioners.”
Second: Pressed upon us is section 20 of article 1 of the Constitution of 1963.7 Pertinent to the charge against the defendant Mallory and his ensuing conviction, I am unable to find anything of present persuasiveness in that section, our question *587being whether the 172-year-old constitutional phrase “In every criminal prosecution” includes, by intention of the people voting in 1963, “prosecution” for minor or petty offenses. The answer to that question is the answer this Court has given before;8 that a constitutional provision is looked upon and construed by the judiciary as the people understood it at the time of debate and vote, having regard for the “laws and usages” of that time. As said in People v. Harding, 53 Mich 481, 485:
“Every constitution has a history of its own which is likely to be more or less peculiar; and unless interpreted in the light of this history, is liable to be made to express purposes which were never within the minds of the people in agreeing to it. This the Court must keep in mind when called upon to interpret it; for their duty is to enforce the law which the people have made, and not some other law which the words of the constitution may possibly be made to express.”
Now this Constitution of 1963 has “a history of its own” so far as concerns the constitutional expression “criminal prosecution;” a history of words, meanings and public comprehension going back to the Sixth Amendment, and carrying from there through our Constitutions of 1835, 1850, and 1908. It is that the quoted expression has never been understood generally, or by any judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, or by any judgment of this Court, or by “any sense most obvious to the common understanding,” as including within its compulsive scope all prosecutions for all offenses cognizable in all of our courts. Instead something gratuitously new has arrived in the seemingly prodigal minds of those who consti*588tute today’s majority of the aforesaid committee; the idea that every indigent who is charged with violation of any penal law ought to have, at public expense, all of the rights enumerated below the mentioned constitutional expression and, accordingly, that the expression should be “extended” by judicial process right down the line so that the indigent jaywalker, simple trespasser, petty traffic violator, even the indigent expectorator upon the floor, platform, or steps of a passenger car or bus (see CL 1948, § 750.476 [Stat Ann 1954 Eev § 28.744]), is provided free counsel and free transcript — at public expense, of course.
Now if all the courts of this country are to be bound by any such extension, it would appear more appropriate that the extension be announced first by the Supreme Court; not by a hopelessly divided State Court the past and as yet unassailed decisions of which, consistent as they are with that State’s legislative policy (PA 1963, No 132 [CL 1948, § 775.16 (Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 28-.1253)], quoted post), hold that the various constitutional guaranties that are headed “In all criminal prosecutions” do not apply to those who are summoned into court as petty offenders.9
Third: Justice Souris contends by amended opinion that “We are not required in this case to consider whether trial counsel must be appointed to defend an indigent charged with a misdemeanor, or an offense otherwise described as ‘petty,’ or an offense *589against a village or city ordinance.” As to this see Justice O’Hara’s rejoinder (p 607) and compare, post at page 595, the constitutional position taken by Justice Souris when the Court voted the amendments of Rule 785 (378 Mich xxxviii-xl) with that which now appears in the corresponding full paragraph of his opinion. The fact is that Mallory’s appeal and Copeland’s appeal turn exclusively upon the validity of their contention that counsel should— by constitutional force — have been provided immediately by the court before which they were called to account;10 also that such was the exclusive basis upon which leave to appeal was granted simultaneously for both cases.
This is not all. The civil liberties committee has made doubly clear the purpose of both appeals. Refer to “Recommendation No. 4” made by the committee in its recent annual report, and to the committee’s comment thereon (45 MSBJ, No 9, pp 24, 25). The recommendation:
“4. That the State Bar continue to recommend to the Supreme Court and the legislature that all necessary orders, rules and statutes be entered and enacted to guarantee:
(a) Effective representation in all criminal cases at all stages of trial and appeal for indigent defendants.
(b) Provision for adequate funds for investigative aids and other expenses incident to the adequate defense of the indigent.
(c) All reasonable and adequate aids to perfect an appeal for an indigent defendant, including trial *590transcripts or necessary parts thereof, including the indigent accused who waives preliminary examination without benefit of counsel.
(d) Adequate compensation for assigned counsel.”
The comment:
“4. Recommendation No. 4 has been made on previous occasions. The committee feels that if an offense is so important that the accused can be deprived of his liberty for as much as one day if he is convicted, then the matter is of sufficient import to require the appointment of counsel where the accused is indigent. This past year there were pending in the Supreme Court of Michigan two cases involving the question of whether an indigent misdemeanant is entitled as a matter of right to the appointment of counsel. People v. Alton Mallory (No. 51,212) and People v. Larry Tyrone Copeland (No. 51,213). The committee, with the consent of the executive committee of the commissioners of the State Bar submitted amicus briefs urging that there was such a right.”11
Repeated for emphasis is the fact that the only reason all members of the Court were finally persuaded to grant the application of defendants Mallory and Copeland, for direct review by this Court, was to bring up for early determination the constitutional question Justice Souris says is not here. That question is here. Two opinions at least will deal with it.
Fourth: The foregoing appeal to Michigan’s constitutional history is fortified by something not mentioned in the briefs or in any contributed opinion save that of Justice O’Hara. Justice O’Hara’s fully warranted criticism, of the Court’s recent adoption of what to both of us are “unworkable” amendments *591of GCR 1963, 785, suggests that some one ought to say openly on our record that this Court does not control the tax-limited purse strings of any public treasury ; that the judiciary of Michigan is possessed of no power to perform in fact what those amendments— left nnrescinded — will call for come January 1st, and that the extent as well as the cost of any such heady program is properly a matter for legislative consideration and determination.12 Indeed, if one may speak as a citizen distinguished from a judicial position, it may well be said that the kind of money proposed to he spent on behalf of indigent petty offenders might better be devoted by the legislature to preventive law enforcement, the kind a State may obtain only by equipping enforcement agencies with the manpower and support they these days so sorely need.
Unless and until the legislature supplies that ever necessary wherewithal (as congress did in the criminal justice act), the mentioned amendments of G-CR 1963, 785 will he confined to the more or less wholesale release of those who, being indigent, are charged with an inestimable number of petty offenses. Nay, it will mean more. There will he hut spotty “prosecution” as against indigent petty offenders. Why should already" discouraged peace officers apprehend such persons, knowing that the Supreme Court of the State .will have rendered them practically immune from prosecution?
Does not someone wonder why, in the Federal system, the question of how and to what extent free counsel and auxiliary rights for indigents was left to congressional consideration and legislation? Is it not fully known that the beginning as well as future cost of such a program is so unascertainable *592and unpredictable that Congress was compelled to appropriate for the criminal justice act, not in the usual form of a fixed sum or sums but in this form (§ 3006A):
“(h) Appropriations. • — There are authorized to be appropriated to the United States courts, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, sums necessary to carry out the provisions of this section'. When so specified in appropriation acts, such appropriations shall remain available until expended. Payments from such appropriations shall be made under the supervision of the director of the administrative office of the United States courts.”?
Does not someone wonder how, also, this Court means to square, constitutionally, the mentioned amendments of Rule 785 with the legislative policy which appears in present section 16 of chapter 15 of our criminal code? The section (CL 1948, § 775.16), last amended by PA 1963, No 132 (Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 28.1253):
“Sec. 16. Whenever any person charged with having committed any felony or misdemeanor not cognisable by a justice of the peace or magistrate and who appears before such justice of the peace or magistrate without counsel, and who shall not have waived examination upon the charge upon which he appears, such person shall be advised of his right to have counsel appointed for such examination, and if such person states that he is unable to procure counsel, the justice or magistrate shall notify the presiding judge of the circuit court in the jurisdiction of which the offense is alleged to have occurred, and upon proper showing the presiding judge shall appoint some attorney to conduct the accused’s examination before a justice court or examining magistrate and to conduct the defense, and the attorney so appointed shall be entitled to *593receive from the county treasurer on the certificate of the presiding judge that such services have been duly rendered, such an amount as the presiding judge shall in his discretion deem reasonable compensation for the services performed.”13 (Emphasis supplied by present writer.)
Summary oe Notes Made During and Since Oral Argument
1. Until the Supreme Court speaks otherwise, I shall look upon the pertinent requirement of the Sixth Amendment and of our Constitution as being fully consistent with the petty offense exception made by the criminal justice act. Doing so, I follow the view other subordinate courts have taken when a Federal “forecast” is proposed. References to their actions in such regard may be found in footnotes appended below the following passage taken from the 3-judge determination of Moody v. Flowers (DC MD Ala), 256 Fed Supp 195, June 14, 1966 (p 200):
“It is not for us to forecast the likelihood that the Supreme Court will ultimately extend the principles of Reynolds v. Sims, 377 US 533 (84 S Ct 1362, 12 L ed 2d 506), to the tens of thousands of sub*594ordinate political units of the States to which have been delegated some power to which the label -‘legislative’ may be attached. Some courts have essayed to do so, while others have been content to await the development of judicial standards in this comparatively uncharted area of constitutional law. A warning to make haste slowly may be read into refusal by the Supreme Court on two occasions to consider cases involving the contention that the Federal Constitution requires local governmental bodies below the State level be apportioned on a population basis.”
The “two occasions” mentioned are Glass v. Hancock Co. Election Comm., 378 US 558 (84 S Ct 1910, 12 L ed 2d 1035), and Tedesco v. Bd. of Supervisors of Elections for the Parish of Orleans, 339 US 940 (70 S Ct 797, 94 L ed 1357).
2. No one should assume that the constitutional issue which divides us was overlooked either by the judicial conference of the United States or congress when the senate and house considered and adopted the criminal justice act. The senate stood steadfast for the restriction to felonies and misdemeanors other than petty offenses; whereas “The house version of the bill would cover all cases, including petty offenses,” with the house managers insisting that “The constitutional mandate of the Sixth Amendment is without doubt applicable to petty offenses.” Having said that, the managers went on to yield. See 2 U.S. Code Cong. and Adm. News 1964, pp 3002, 3003.
• 3. The judgment for which the civil liberties committee moves is not only extreme and immoderate; it is directly invasive of the prerogative which is vested with the legislative branch of Michigan’s government. The connected text of that proposed judgment should be exposed again and again that everyone may realize the colossal supererogation *595thereof. Here it is, copied from Justice Souris’ contributed opinion:
“Our Constitutions and the United States Supreme Court’s decisions cited compel the conclusion that appellate counsel and trial transcript must be furnished every indigent defendant entitled to an appeal as a matter of right. In this State that means every indigent convicted ‘in every criminal prosecution’ (Art 1, § 20, Const of 1963), without distinction between those convicted of felonies, misdemeanors, circuit court misdemeanors or offenses cognizable by a justice of the peace.”14
So Michigan is required, rather than permitted, to provide for those charged under her laws with petty offenses that which congress so far has refused to supply for those charged under Federal law with corresponding offenses. Not with my vote. I vote instead to affirm.
Addendum (November 2, 1966):
The foregoing opinion was submitted to the other Justices September 29th. October 4th the Court directed the Chief Justice to “announce publicly that the amendment of G-CR- 1963, 785.3, made *596August 24, 1966, is being reconsidered in light of objections made since publication.” October 19th Justice Souris substituted for this case a new opinion for that which theretofore included the contextual and now deleted quotations appearing above (pp 588 and 595). Another development of intervening significance is the Supreme Court’s denial (October 17th; 385 US 907 [87 S Ct 207, 17 L ed 2d 137]) of certiorari to review Winters v. Beck, 239 Ark 1151 (397 SW2d 364).
In the Winters Case “an indigent Negro” was charged with a 30-day imprisonable petty offense. He was convicted without the aid of counsel (court-proffered or otherwise) and sentenced ultimately to nine and one-half months imprisonment.15 The ruling of the Supreme Court of Arkansas was (p 1152):
“On the strength of Ark Stat Ann § 43-1203 (Eepl. 1964), the courts of this State have always appointed attorneys to represent indigent defendants in> felony cases. Thousands of misdemeanor cases are tried in the municipal courts of Pulaski county annually. In most of these cases the defendants are not represented by counsel. But petitioner contends that on the strength of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 US 335 (83 S Ct 792, 9 L ed 2d 799), it is now the duty of the courts to appoint attorneys for indigents in misdemeanor cases. We do not so construe Wainwright. There, the court was dealing with a felony case where the defendant had been sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. Here, the petitioner, Winters, had 30 days to take an appeal to the circuit court. He did not appeal, although the procedure for appealing from the municipal court is very simple. The services of an attorney are not required at all.”
*597Now it is quite true that the Supreme Court’s refusal to review this decision by Arkansas constitutes no precedent either way (United States v. Carver, 260 US 482 [43 S Ct 181, 67 L ed 361]). But it is equally true that such refusal is ink-fresh proof that the Supreme Court has not yet said and is not yet ready to say that the Sixth Amendment provides what Justice Souris and the aforesaid civil liberties committee aver in behalf of defendant Mallory.16

APPENDIX

The “Report of the ad hoc committee to develop rules, procedures and guidelines for an assigned counsel system” makes up a part of the report of a special meeting of the judicial conference of the United States held January 13, 1965. The latter report was transmitted to the speaker of the house by Chief Justice "Warren January 25, 1965 (House document No. 62, iii). The ad hoc report presents in detail the legislative history of the criminal justice act and discloses the participation of the judicial conference in the requisite implementation thereof. It notes that the act requires assignment of counsel at the level of the office of the United States commissioner and, consequentially, that “in order to protect the record, courts and commissioners will be less inclined to accept waivers of counsel by defendants who appear before them.” Summarizing (p 92) the ad hoc report concludes:
“In any case, it seems certain that the criminal justice act will require in the future a very large *598increase in the number of counsel assigned to indigent persons accused of crime in the Federal courts.”
Bearing in mind that the committees of the judicial conference at the time were attempting to formulate plans for carrying out the provisions of the criminal justice act, it is significant that the conference finally approved a budget of $7,500,000 for the first year’s operation, conceding (p 80): “Thus the budget request is more than twice the $3,500,000 cost figure submitted by the attorney general.”
All this relates, of course, to performance of duty under legislation designed to aid indigents charged with serious crime distinguished from petty offenses. As for the latter, we find in Lee Silverstein’s Defense of the Poor, Volume 1 (ABA Foundation 1965), that there really is no way as yet to guess the appropriational cost of providing counsel for petty misdemeanants. Mr. Silverstein examines the problem in chapter 8 and reports (p 123):
“It is difficult to estimate the number of persons charged with misdemeanors in the United States each year. Only a few States publish reports on misdemeanors, and even these are lacking in uniformity because of differences in definitions and methods of reporting. Table 34 shows that the number of misdemeanors, not counting motor vehicle offenses, is very much larger than the number of felonies. The ratio ranges from about 4 times the number of felonies in Iowa to about 30 times the number in New Hampshire. The 12 States shown in this table had approximately 35% of the population of the United States in 1960, and 35% of all felonies in 1962. If the number of misdemeanors in this group of States is projected over all the States, then there were about 4,470,000 misdemeanor defendants in the United States in 1962, not counting-defendants in motor vehicle cases. At the present *599time, allowing for motor vehicle cases and for increases in misdemeanors since 1962, it seems fair to say that about 5,000,000 persons a year are charged with misdemeanors in the State courts.”
Supplemental Memorandum of Black, J. The day before this case was supposedly settled for signature and release of opinions (that day was November 10th), Justice Souris caused to be delivered to the undersigned 13 typed pages of additional changes of the opinion which presently carries his name at the masthead {supra, pp 560-577). Since the Court that morning faced a full day of hearing and conference upon docketed cases, and a final day of the November session for conference arid decision upon a previously prepared judicial and administrative agenda, the timing of the aforesaid delivery was such that decision of People v. Mallory had to be held up again, this time by the writer. As Michigan lawyers interested in our doings have come to know, it is necessary that one compare with contemplative vigilance that which in quantity is tendered at the last minute as and for “amendments” of an opinion due for release. Witness Justice Souris’ mournful admission, presently quoted, that he has “many times” signed an opinion “barely scanned” by him. Now to proceed:
In these November 10th amendments I find a highly personal suggestion that my judicial ethics are not up to the daintily professed standards of Justice Souris; a matter no man may let pass unnoticed. I find also in those amendments more than-pertinent reason for full exposure of the whole background of that incredible folly of August 24th last; the arrant occasion when Justice Souris led a majority of the Court into the unwarned adoption1 *600of that which, under the angry pressure of an aroused judicial and professional opinion, the Court has since been compelled to renounce as all of us cast about now for some means of paling the Court’s visage. I refer of course to the Sourisproposed amendments of GrCB. 1963, 785 (378 Mich xxxviii-xl); the amendments which, had they gone into effect this coming month as then ordered, would have crippled — for all but nonindigent cases — the enforcement of every Michigan ordinance and statute the design of which was and now is the punishment of “misdemeanors of minor gravity.”2
Before proceeding further the following must be recorded. In an effort to avoid the forthcoming outdoor wash of our highly personal linen, the writer vainly moved to strike from Justice Souris’ said opinion all of the personal gratuities appearing therein. The impertinence referred to will he found *601on pages 561 and 562 supra, headed “In his current opinion Justice Black breaches that confidence.” Had that motion received affirmative action this supplement would have been put back in briefcase for return to Port Huron and permanent suppression there. However, the motion having failed, it is time to be off to the fair.
Justice Souris is undoubtedly right if, as I glean from his presently alleged concern for the privacy of “views expressed by judges of an appellate court while deliberating upon their decisions,” he has come finally to belief that this Court should adopt firm rules of personal and really nonpartisan conduct for observance by Michigan Supreme Court Justices. Sure it is that some but not all of us, seemingly forced by the fact of continued legislative failure to fully implement the so-called nonpartisan judicial amendment of 1939 (Const 1908 as amended, art 7, § 23; Const 1963, art 6, § 2), have not been able to eliminate either the outward appearance or the recorded appearance of typical party partisanship. So if this latest personal joust of two members of the highest Court of a State will result in the adoption and effective enforcement of comprehensively rigorous rules of Supreme Court conduct, applicable to all while they are outside as well as inside our alleged cloister of privacy, I indeed shall abide by them. In the meantime I mean not to cringe before one supported by some others who alleges on our record that he conducts himself with ethical purity and that the undersigned does not. Nor do I intend to abide rules of ethical conduct three of the Brethren would set for Justice Black which they by their recorded action regard not as binding upon themselves.
I would examine openly a few publicly recorded instances of judicial doings for array Avith Justice Souris’ assumption of the vestments of holiness. I *602do not recall, for instance, nor can anyone else, that any member of this Court challenged the ethical conduct either of Justice Kelly or the undersigned when, the occasion being Spoon-Shacket Company, Inc., v. County of Oakland, 356 Mich 151, 157, 173, each of us previously quoted — and then left in — matter in the other’s opinion which was subsequently deleted or “changed.” Nor was there any objection when the writer listed, in Mosier v. Carney, 376 Mich 532, 595, 596, our internal gyrations in that particular instance of fitfully irresolute overrulement. And especially do I recall that no one objected to the noiv irrevocably recorded quotation of and reliance by Justices Souris, Kavanagh and Smith upon certain of the minutes of our January 12, 1966 conference: a conference which preceded preparation of all but one of the several opinions of that most politically divisive case of all (Badgley v. Secretary of State [In re Apportionment of State Legislature — 1965-1966], 377 Mich 396, 465, 466, 469, 470). Yerily, the Justices must have an ethical rule of conduct for themselves, and another more prim for such others as have the effrontery to challenge what they pushed through August 24th last.3 Whatever the controversial fact thereof, let it be known that when Justices Souris, Kavanagh and Smith thus overtly breached what our Brother refers to as the “privacy of our deliberations,” the undersigned for one warmly welcomed that act. Had there been any lingering doubt regarding the “privacy of our deliberations” then, what the 3 Justices did at the time made wholesome precedent for more revelation publicly of what goes on within.
*603The above is by no means all. Throughout the judicial history of the United States one may search in vain for' evidence that any high court judge, speaking out publicly of a suggested legislative measure not yet before his court for judicial test, has gone so far as to give forth a flat declaration of constitutional invalidity of that measure. There is one exception. , It was committed in Michigan last March.
The Detroit News (March 3, 1966), headlining “Souris says ‘Stop-Frisk’ Law is Unconstitutional,” reported to the public (and to a manifestly startled profession):
“State Supreme Court Justice Theodore Souris said last night that the proposed ‘stop and frisk’ law for the State is unconstitutional. * * *
“Souris spoke at Grosse Pointe High School Annex Auditorium in a lecture series sponsored by the Grosse Pointe Democratic Club.
“The series, ‘The Constitution and the citizen,’ covers the next three Wednesdays. Other guest speakers will be Circuit Judges Horace W. Gilmore and Joseph A. Sullivan and Detroit attorneys Avern Cohn and Theodore Sachs.”
I make no comment now on this business of constitutional opinions ahead of submission. The Saginaw News subsequently (March 13, 1966) provided all that so far is necessary:
“Justice Theodore Souris a week or so ago gave a talk before Grosse Pointe Democrats in which he bluntly said that a proposed ‘stop-and-frisk’ proposal is unconstitutional.
“That’s none of Justice Souris’ business at this point in the game.
“The proposal had just been suggested. It is not being debated in the legislature. Most important it is not before the Supreme Court for study or opinion. Yet Justice Souris ‘killed’ it.”
*604There is a silver lining in all this. Now that nigh to seven years will have elapsed since Justice Souris came to this bench by appointment,4 it is something more than comforting to learn by his word, written unimpeachably on our official scroll in these waning days of December, that he too can and does err. Once the Justice was publicly blaming the Brethren for his “many” mistakes. See quotation below. Now the rest of us may relax a bit, reassured that all seated here are, after all, mere mortals; also that the last of Michigan’s great nonpareils really did leave this bench when Justice Fellows died in harness July 16, 1929 (247 Mich iii).
As for such “many” mistakes it is not difficult to recall that our Brother, complaining at the time about this Court’s burdensome workload, surprised the annual (1961) conference of Michigan judges at Dearborn with this “inside” information headlined “High Court ‘Slipshod’ in Work, Souris says” (Detroit News, September 28, 1961):
“What we are doing is dividing the cases eight ways, with the result that frequently the controlling decision is made by one justice with that decision receiving only cursory consideration by the seven others.
“I have many times signed my name to an opinion I have barely scanned and realized later that I had made a mistake. It makes you sick.”5
One may well digress at this point to suggest that there must be a real and continuing danger in the *605situation thus exposed at the Dearborn conference; a situation with respect to which this Court should have acted and now should act as soon as its personnel changes next month. There may indeed be a number of explosive time-bombs of hidden bad law ticking away in volumes 358, 359, 360 and 361 of Michigan Reports; the reports which necessarily contain the “many” opinions that made Justice Souris “sick.” Those bombs should be ferreted out and disarmed immediately with the knowledgeable assistance of our Brother. He should know where those “many” mistakes are. As he doubtless will agree, any controlling opinion contained in those volumes, the effect of which made an apparently healthy Justice “sick” at the time, should receive correction by overrulement or sua sponte correction through a crash program; all else cast aside lest more lawyers and judges rely and act upon those opinions only to become “sick” themselves.
Now these quotations that are said to be a breach of confidence, an “implicit threat to the continued privacy of our deliberations,” have not been released or exposed prior to decision day. Nor were they taken from any tentative “what do you think about this” memoranda, or from any probative draft such as we regularly circulate on white sheets. They came to us on our professionally-known “blues”; part and parcel of a constitutional “decision” to be released upon strength of whatever signatory support it might attract. Those blues had to be written against, with painstaking care, to avert if possible the kind of vote which the Court —mistakenly as all now agree- — did record on August 24th. And they were challengingly before us, without amendment or declared prospect of withdrawal, when Justice Souris insisted that the Court vote *606August 24th upon the aforesaid amendments of Rule 785.
To comprehend the “why” of our August 24th blunder the trial bench should have before it — and now will have before it — the complete conclusion of Justice Souris’ aforesaid withdrawn opinion. See page 595, infra. And I cannot refrain from writing here that it is high time courts consider at greater length the “civil rights” of that great unnumbered multitude of law-abiding citizens and that constantly multiplying number of victims of today’s fearsome crime wave. Everyone has civil rights; not just those who may be arrested and charged with crime or petty offense. This Rule 785 issue, bound up as it is with the Mallory and Copeland appeals, must continue to a Cannae-like showdown with all delicate perfume excluded from our internecive notes, opinions, and conversations.
So far as the writer is concerned there need be no misunderstanding of.what has been, is now, and truly shall be. Everything turned in to the Court by him since January 1, 1956, — everything that is— has been written as if ultimately due for public examination. Right or wrong it may be quoted freely, any time. That is my ethical policy. And until we have rules of the kind outlined above, binding on all of us, it is going to stand. I conclude with these observations:
The Supreme Court of Michigan is not owned and possessed by the eight gentlemen who, berobed here in regal dignity, are seated as Justices for successively fleeting intervals of time. The Supreme Court of Michigan belongs to the people of that State. Its business is the people’s business. And the more we conduct ourselves from within as well as without as if in an auditory glass bowl, the better will be our supposedly serviceable product.
*607So the undersigned, is implicitly threatening (he is the only one of course) “the continued privacy of our deliberations upon pending appeals.” So be it until the constitutional supervisor of Michigan’s “one court of justice” goes about policing all of the member-supervisors thereof.

 The Justice, emphasizing “all,” was speaking to the text of review of a conviction for felony which resulted in a sentence “to serve five years in the State prison,”

 Also in identically premised words by tlie 1835, 1850, 1908, and 1963 Constitutions of Michigan (1835, art 1, § 10; Í850, art 6, § 28; 1908, art 2, § 19; 1963, art 1, § 20).

 Certiorari granted January 17, 1966; 382 US 971 (86 S Ct 532, 15 L ed 2d 464).

 Defendant Mallory was charged and convieted with having received stolen property “of the value of $100.00 or less,” contrary to CLS 1961, § 750.535 (Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 28.803). He was sentenced to and did serve a term of 90 days in 'the Detroit House of Correction. That was the maximum. CL 1948, § 750.504 (Stat Ann 1954 Kev § 28.772).

 Public Law 88-455, 88th Cong., Aug. 20, 1964; 18 USCA § 3006A.

 The expression is that of Justice Adams. He wrote (In re Apportionment of State Legislature — 1964, 372 Mich 418, 473):
"It [Justice Souris* interpretation] may well reflect the decision the United States Supreme Court will hand down any day now. When that day comes I will be pleased to join with him. Until it does, I do not conceive it to be the proper duty or function of this Court to attempt to outrun the Supreme Court of the United States.”
These sensible sentiments seem to have been forgotten sinee April of 1964. See challenge and silence in Muskegon Prosecuting Attorney, ex rel. Schaub, v. Klevering, 377 Mich 666, 672. Yet it remains constitutionally true that this Supreme Court of Michigan is, so far as concerns Federal questions, a subordinate'Court. Its duty is to stand fast in honor of currently applicable Federal guidelines; not to guess that the Federal Supreme Court will lay down some contrary new rule of Federal law for retrospective application. It is better, say I, that a subordinate court risk direct reversal than risk indictment and conviction for having predicted by a soothsayer’s judgment what ultimately does not come to pass.

 “Sec. 20. In every criminal prosecution, the accused shall have the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, which may consist of less than 12 jurors in all courts not of record; to be informed of the nature of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; to have the assistance of counsel for his defense; to have an appeal as a matter of right; and in courts of record, when the trial court so orders, to have such reasonable assistance as may be necessary to iDerfeet and prosecute an appeal.”

 See cases and quotations appearing in Bacon v. Kent-Ottawa Metropolitan Water Authority, 351 Mich 159, and Lookwood v. Commissioner of Revenue, 357 Mich 517, 565-570.

 See eases cited in 10 Words and Phrases, Criminal Prosecution, p 536 et seg. and 1966 pocket supp pp 176-178; also In re Cox, 129 Mich 635, holding that the constitutionally guaranteed right of trial by jury does not extend to prosecutions under local ordinances. At 637 the Court said:
“This Court has held that cases under municipal ordinances proper do not rise to the dignity of criminal proceedings, and that neither a writ of error nor exceptions before sentence would lie. (Citing eases.) In this connection, see People v. Vinton, 82 Mich 39, 45; Village of Northville v. Westfall, 75 Mich 603.”

 Both briefs (for Mallory and Copeland) declare the claimed constitutional right in these words:
“Whenever there is the possibility that an indigent defendant will be deprived of his liberty for as much as one day, he is entitled to be informed of his right to be provided with counsel and, moreover, to be provided with competent counsel, unless he intelligently waives such right.”

 This recommendation and comment was indorsed by the signatures of present “Of Counsel” for both appellants (Mallory and Copeland).

 See appendix for discussion of cost in conjunction with the report of the “Ad Hoc Committee” of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

 Norris and Hammond refer to this section as being “The heart of the assigned counsel system.” 42 U of D Law Journal 397, p 407, April 1965. They go on to reeommend (p 428) :
“3. Michigan General Zule 785 should be amended to cover all felonies and all misdemeanors punishable by confinement or imprisonment for one year or more. This is in accord with the present practice of most of the circuits, particularly since the adoption of the assigned counsel system of 1963.”
It is interesting to note that Professor Norris, “as a delegate to Michigan's Constitutional Convention, was the author of the provision creating a constitutional right of appeal.” (p 429.) The provision thus authored is the same section 20 upon which, along with the Sixth Amendment, Justice Sotrsis relies for reversal.
Emphasis of the “one year or more” limitation, appearing in the Norris and Hammond recommendation above, is also supplied by the present writer.

 (September 29, 1966) : This is the way such connected text reads at present. When the Court’s majority considered and adopted the amendments of Rule 785 Justice O’Hara and the writer opposed on August 24th, the connected text of such proposed judgment went sled length, reading this way:
“Our constitutions and the United States Supreme Court’s decisions cited compel the conclusion that appellate counsel and trial transcript must be furnished every indigent defendant entitled to an appeal as a matter of right. In this State that means every indigent convicted 'in every criminal prosecution’ (Const 1963, art 1, § 20), without distinction between those eonvicted of felonies, misdemeanors, circuit eourt misdemeanors, offenses cognizable by a justice of the peaee or offenses against village or city ordinances.”
Wording the allegation of constitutional law either way, the resultant question cannot be evaded. It is whether any constitutional provision requires that Michigan provide — in the context of these Mallory-Copeland appeals — more than her legislature already has by PA 1963, Ño 132, amending CL 1948, § 775.16 (Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 28.1253).

 On account of subsequent application of Arkansas’ “dollar-a-day” statute. As to this, see Justice Stewart’s dissent from denial of certiorari, 385 US at 907.

 (December 12, 1966). There can be little question about this now. December 5th last the Supreme Court denied certiorari to review petitioner De Joseph’s conviction of the Connecticut misdemeanor of criminal nonsupport and consequent sentence to six months in jail. Dor the facts, see Justice Stewart’s dissent from such denial with pointed reference to Winters v. Beck. De Joseph v. Connecticut (1966), 385 US 982 (87 S Ct 526, 17 L ed 2d 443, 444).

 No notice was given pursuant to G-CB 1963, 933. No publication i'ri' the State Bar Journal was made bsfQrehanct. And no pretense gf *600“finding of a need for immediate action” was then made or is made now.

 Consider, with forbearance, the Court’s “Press Release” of October 6, 1966 (45 MSBJ, No. 10, p 33) :
“The Supreme Court announced today, through Chief Justice Thomas M. Kavanagh, that the Court is reconsidering the amendment of GCR 1963, 785.3, made August 24, 1966, in light of the objections made since its publication. The rule refers to the question of appointment of counsel and other procedures in ordinance cases in justice of the peace and municipal eourts. The Court will continue its reconsideration at its November 1966 conference;”
and then our most recent order, due at this writing for publication in the advance sheets and Michigan State Bar Journal:
“On Order of the Court dated November 16, 1966 (Chief Justice T. M. Kavanagh and Justices Dethmers and Souris dissenting), the effective date of amendments to GCR 1963, 785, appearing in volume 378 Michigan Reports, at pages xvii-xxii of part 3, Advance Sheets, is suspended until further notice. The beneh and profession are advised that the Court has Rule 785 under consideration for further revision and that, until such revision is drafted and placed in effect, subrule 785.3, as it read prior to the amendments of August 24, 1966, shall continue to be applied, subject, however, to the requirements of CL 1948, § 775.16, as amended by PA 1963, No 132 (Stat Ann 1965 Cum Supp § 28.1253).”

 The moral of an old fable comes to mind here; the fable of the lawyer, the farmer and the farmer’s ox, aptly found in “The Partial Judge.” For source reference, see Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (Morley’s 1947 ed.), p 1139. It does make a difference whose os is being gored.

 January 5, 1960; 358 Mich iii.

 Now I for one will not admit that any indorsement of mine has been appended to any “barely scanned” opinion. Too many beartraps lurk in that kind of negligence. Nor have I been made sick distinguished from hindsight regretful on account of anything which, since January 1, 1956, has recorded my indorsement. I have on occasion coneeded (on our record; not elsewhere) that some indorsements should have been qualified in some specific regard. The most recent example appears in Currie v. Fiting, 375 Mich 440 at 477, 478.