Court Opinion

ID: 9706485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:44:35.307696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:23.063080
License: Public Domain

*266SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(concurring). The court's opinion correctly states the applicable federal constitutional law and I therefore join it. I write separately to emphasize my concern that we have embraced the United States Supreme Court's recent departure from its longstanding harmless error test without having had an adequate opportunity to consider whether Wisconsin should follow suit or, alternatively, retain our adherence to the standard enunciated by the Court in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 23 (1967) and adopted by this court in State v. Dyess, 124 Wis. 2d 525, 370 N.W.2d 222 (1985).
As the opinion correctly observes, Chapman had warned that some constitutional rights are "so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error," citing as examples the use of a coerced confession, the right to an impartial judge and the right to counsel. Chapman, 386 U.S. at 23. In clarifying the application of harmless error analysis in Wisconsin, the Dyess court referred to this caveat in Chapman and cautioned that the violation of constitutional rights comparable to the three rights enumerated in Chapman renders a harmless error analysis inapplicable and "automatically results in reversal." Dyess, 124 Wis. 2d at 543 n.10. Dyess also drew support for its adoption of the Chapman standard from Wisconsin's harmless error statute, Wis. Stat. § 805.18 (1993-94). Dyess, 124 Wis. 2d at 547.
As the opinion explains, in the subsequent United States Supreme Court decision of Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991), a narrowly divided (5-4) Court effectively overruled this language in Chapman. This change of direction in federal constitutional jurisprudence created a tension between the Chapman *267standard which we had adopted in Dyess and the new federal standard articulated in Fulminante.
At least one and arguably two of the rights enumerated in Chapman and Dyess — the right to counsel and the right to a voluntary confession — are implicated in this case. The defendant's counsel did not address the tension between Dyess and jFulminante or the prospect that an application of harmless error analysis under the Wisconsin Constitution, Dyess, and Wis. Stat. § 805.18 might afford defendants more protection than does the federal constitution. Had counsel done so, the court would have been in a position to assess more fully whether it should adopt the new harmless error standard announced in Fulminante in lieu of this court's Dyess standard. Because the state law issues were not briefed, however, I do not comment on their merits. See State v. Pitsch, 124 Wis. 2d 628, 646, 369 N.W.2d 711 (1985).
For the reasons set forth, I join the opinion.