Court Opinion

ID: 9426785
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:55.578541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.150153
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment, but I find it unnecessary to resolve the question of New York criminal law considered by the Court, ante, at 155-157. In my view, the federal court was precluded from granting respondent’s petition for collateral relief under 28 U. S. C. § 2254 because he failed to object to the jury instructions at the time they were given. By that failure he waived any claim of constitutional error. This was precisely why the New York Court of Appeals refused to consider respondent’s belated claim. Cf. Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U. S. 443 (1965).
This Court has held that under certain circumstances a defendant’s failure to comply with state procedural requirements will not be deemed a waiver of federal constitutional rights, unless it is shown that such bypass was the result of a deliberate tactical decision. See Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963); Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U. S. 504 (1972). These *158cases, however, involved posi-trial omissions of a technical nature which would be unlikely to jeopardize substantial state interests. Midtrial omissions such as occurred in this case, on the other hand, are substantially different. “It is one thing to fail to utilize the [state] appeal process to cure a defect which already inheres in a judgment of conviction, but it is quite another to forgo making an objection or exception which might prevent the error from ever occurring.” Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 704 n. (1975) (Rehnquist, J., concurring);* see Estelle v. Williams, 425 U. S. 501, 513-514 (1976) (Powell, J., concurring). Thus, by failing to object to the jury charge, respondent injected into the trial process the very type of error which the objection requirement was designed to avoid. Federal courts may not overlook such failure on collateral attack.
The “deliberate bypass” doctrine of Fay v. Noia, supra, should not be extended to midtrial procedural omissions which impair substantial state interests. I would simply hold that the United States District Court was barred from examining the substance of respondent’s constitutional claim, and rest our reversal of the Court of Appeals on that ground.

This is not a case such as Mullaney, where the State’s highest court ruled on the defendant’s claim even though he failed to raise the issue at trial. Rather, as the Court notes, ante, at 150, the New York Court of Appeals here expressly refused to rule on the adequacy of the charge because respondent failed to object in the trial court.